Is Heaven Really a Place We Go When We Die?

 While contemplating Saint Nikolai Velimirovic’s Prayer IX in Prayers by the Lake, I was struck by his description of God as clothed in seven heavens. He uses this image to express God's transcendence beyond creation and our inability to perceive Him because of our spiritual limitations. This led me to wonder about the meaning of the word “heaven,” and specifically, what do we mean when we say we hope to go to heaven?

Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers use heaven for many things: the sky, the created universe, the angelic realm, and God's dwelling place. Most of us have the last one in mind. Yet our faith teaches that God is everywhere present, fills all things, and cannot be contained. 

We tend to think of heaven as God's dwelling place, but we cannot mean that God occupies a particular region of the universe if He is clothed by heavens. We must be using this term to speak of a mystical reality in which His glory is revealed and experienced. Heaven, in our common thought, is where we expect to live for eternity, so it must transcend our ordinary experience of space and time. Because Scripture teaches that Christ ascended bodily into heaven, it shows that our salvation involves not only the soul but the whole person.

In Orthodox understanding, heaven is a spiritual reality, but it cannot be reduced to a place. In John 17:3, Christ identifies eternal life with knowing God. He prays: “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” This suggests that heaven involves a personal relationship in which we know God.  Through our participation in the sacramental and spiritual life of His Church, and our struggle to live according to His commandments, we open ourselves to His grace and grow in communion with Him. It’s a relationship that we develop before we die. The Church calls this process of growing into union with God through our cooperation with His grace theosis.

So thinking of heaven as simply a place we go when we die falls short. When we are baptized and chrismated, we enter into new life in Christ. Then, through a life with prayer, continual repentance, and participation in the sacraments, God leads and supports us in a struggle to live according to His commandments. The result is a continual process of growing in communion with Him. This means we can begin to experience the life of God's Kingdom even while living in this world. 

At our death, our soul temporarily separates from the body, but death does not destroy the person. If we depart this life in communion with Christ, we remain alive in Him, awaiting the resurrection and the restoration of our bodies in Christ’s Second Coming. This state of waiting is not yet the final fulfillment of salvation. Our ultimate hope is for the resurrection of the whole person and the transformation of creation at Christ's return.

In Revelation 21:1–4, we are given a vision of a new heaven and a new earth.

Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

Notice that the New Jerusalem descends from heaven, and God dwells with humanity. It is not simply humanity leaving earth forever to live somewhere else. Rather, God brings creation to its intended fulfillment.

Saint Paul similarly describes creation awaiting liberation from corruption.

…because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.

 (Romans 8:21–23)

Our hope is the resurrection, the renewal of creation, not simply to escape this creation for another place, but to share in its transfiguration and renewal through Christ.

Conclusion

So what does it mean to say, “I want to go to heaven”? We should abandon this familiar expression. Scripture and the Church speak of heaven, Paradise, the heavenly Kingdom, and the inheritance prepared for those who love God. Yet we should understand that heaven is not merely a destination we travel to after death, nor a physical location where God resides.

The greatest blessing of heaven is the fulfillment of our lifelong striving for loving communion with God, for which we were created: to know and love God, to participate in His divine life by grace, and to share eternally in the love of the Holy Trinity.

The purpose of the Orthodox Christian life is not simply to reach heaven when we die. It is to develop communion with God now, to be transformed by His grace with our participation, and to attain the fullness of that communion in the resurrection and the life of the age to come. Heaven is not merely a reward awaiting us at the end of life. It is the fulfillment of the life in Christ that we are already participating in.