If you are dreaming, and within the dream you realize that you are dreaming, you would know that you are really lying on your bed. Your bed would be your real location, and with this knowledge you would be made free within your dream. In a similar way, our real location is in Christ, “For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).
An enormous portion of our life is wasted as Christians if we labor under the deception that we are trying to get to heaven: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death” (Romans 6:3-4). In other words, the substance of your old life is dead and buried. You are a new creation in Christ. As such, “you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11).
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
You are not trying to get crucified, trying to die, trying to get buried, trying to rise again, and trying to ascend into heaven in order to sit at the right hand of God the Father. You must start where Jesus finished, where He is, and not try to reproduce what He accomplished, what only He can accomplish, for “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). In other words, God comes to you, for “you, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses” (Colossians 2:13). You have already been crucified, you have already been buried, and you have already been raised, and so your life is currently hid with Christ in God. This is why you must consider, reckon, and account yourself dead already. And you must consider yourself alive and reborn already.
St. Paul teaches: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” (Colossians 3:1-2) You are being told to set your mind where you already are in substance in Christ. You have been raised with Him, and you are in Him, for He is in you. This is a spiritual fact rooted in the reality of Christ’s historic death and resurrection. He has brought all of the elect with Him, and so now, dear Christian, you are in Christ where He is in the heavenly places.
“God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:4-6)
Like being in a dream but knowing that you are really in your bed, you are in the world but really and truly you are in heaven. You have been set free in Christ to live the life of heaven here in the world, with all the confidence of knowing that you are already reborn and sitting in the heavenly places in Christ. You cannot be touched by this world, therefore “do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” (Matthew 10:28). This knowledge will transform you if you accept it simply. You are already free; you only must appropriate this freedom by walking in it. What passion or sin can compete with the freedom that comes from knowing that you are really, right now, with Christ in the heavenly places? Passions and sins only hold a man so long as he buys into them and their story, identifies with them, and makes them his own. If a dreamer awakes to the fact that he is dreaming, then he will be able to just walk away.
This knowledge is the truth that sets you free. Therefore, as “you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so live in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving” (Colossians 2:6-7). To know that you received a crucified, risen, and ascended Lord Jesus Christ, and to know that all that is old is done away with in Him, and to know that you are currently in heaven in Him, is the substance of freedom, even though to all appearances you are still in the world, for “faith is the substance (hypostasis) of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1) Faith substantiates what is hoped for, like ears that substantiate sound and eyes that substantiate sight. Like awakening within a dream you will be given freedom to respond according to your real and heavenly identity, not the dream identity born of the world. For “if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
The truth is, “for freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). Slavery is all that flows in the heart, mind, and life from false belief and false identification with the world, its deception, and all its false identities born of fallen Adam. These false beliefs are the strongholds of the enemy. Strongholds are those clusters of beliefs that serve to chain a person’s perspective to the world, to circumstances, and to appearances. The reality is, “you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another” (Galatians 5:13).
“For though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, 4 for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. 5 We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)
The strongholds require a divine power to destroy them, and these strongholds are arguments and beliefs that militate against the knowledge of God. This is especially internalized arguments and false beliefs that a person carries within their heart. We must take every thought captive to obey Christ in order to live in the freedom that He has won for us. You are already free in Christ, and the false belief that you are enslaved, the false belief that God is far away, the false belief that you are not already in Him, the false belief that you must have the perfect dream life, the perfect dream circumstances, the perfect dream world, are all lies sown by the enemy to keep you from living the life of heaven here and now on earth, for “the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17). The Evil One hates to see man walking in the freedom of heaven.
What is the divine power that breaks strongholds? The Gospel! “For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith” (Romans 1:16). The Gospel is both that Christ has been victorious over sin, Satan, and death, and that His victory is made yours through faith. Since the victory is made yours through faith, and faith receives the power of all that is contained in the Gospel, the very Life of God, then you can live in the power of His victory, the power of eternal Life. Even now you are sitting with Him on His throne of victory, for your present life is hid with Christ in God. When this knowledge, which comes with power, is welcomed into your heart, and you begin to reckon yourself dead to the world and alive in Christ, then heavenly and holy freedom will come upon you, and it will well upon within you and flow as streams of living water.
Awake! “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light” (Ephesians 5:14). It is time to wake up from the dream! Live the reality of heaven even in the dark dream of this fallen world. “Let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober” (1 Thessalonians 5:6). Walk down the street knowing that you are really sitting in heaven. Talk to people here knowing you are really there. Do this and you will give heaven to people here. Give the hope of heaven to those enslaved by the strongholds of deception that have been erected throughout the world by the passions of fallen man and the machinations of the Evil One. Let them smell the perfume of heaven as it wafts through your personality, as you walk in heavenly, righteous, peaceful, joyful, and holy freedom. “Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes” (Luke 12:37). Make your time in this world one of the Way of heaven on earth, the Truth of heaven on earth, the Life of heaven on earth, as Jesus dwells in your heart by faith and you rest in Him in heaven.
Never forget, keep ever in mind, that you are really sitting in heaven, right now. When people speak ill of you, remember that you are really in heaven. When you are stuck in traffic, remember that you are really in heaven. When your spouse is difficult, or your parents or children, remember that you are really in heaven. When your boss is mean, remember you are already in heaven. Would someone awake inside a dream get angry at those around him? Or lose his patience? No, and in this life the man who is awake in Christ will patiently labor to waken those who are asleep. And if a sleeper lashes out in his dream, the awake one will not take it personally, for the sleepers know not what they do.
This faith pierces through the false appearances of the world system, and renews your mind so that you may walk in the ever newness of eternal life: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2). For “we were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). And don’t fall back asleep within the dream, which is to forget the reality of you in Christ and “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27), and so make a shipwreck of your faith. Keep awake, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God” (Ephesians 3:17-19).
-Fr. Joshua Schooping
