Jesus told his troubled disciples not to let their hearts be troubled: in his Father’s house are many rooms, and he was going to prepare a place for them so that where he is they may be also. Paul makes the same hope concrete: if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, and it is for this very future that the Spirit himself has been given as a guarantee. Even creation groans, waiting with us for the redemption of our bodies, because our hope for life after death is not groundless.
That hope stands or falls on whether God exists: if he does, heaven is real, and this temporal life has a great continuity into eternity; if he does not, the hope of a heavenly dwelling is just fantasy and false hope. Jesus warned that those who reject him die in their sins because they belong only to what is below, but to those who believe, the King himself will say, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” The message’s closing question presses the point home: where is your heart set, on the passing tent of this life, or on the eternal mansion Christ has gone to prepare?