Heaven is a World of Love

Scripture focus

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

1 Corinthians 13:13 KJV

At a glance

Summary of the chapter

In his sermon series Charity and Its Fruits, Edwards devoted his final sermon to picturing heaven as fundamentally social and relational rather than a private, mystical absorption into God. Because God himself is triune love, heaven is the place where that love is most fully communicated to creatures, uniting saints to God and to one another in what Edwards called a single “society” bound by holy affection.

Edwards broke with strands of the monastic and mystical tradition that treated special human loves — friendship, marriage, family affection — as rivals to pure love for God. He insisted instead that affections formed on earth and “duly subordinated to divine love” do not vanish in glory but continue and even intensify; the saints, he wrote, carry into heaven “a particular respect” for those they loved and knew below.

Edwards's own dying words to his absent wife, Sarah — asking that she be told their “uncommon union...will continue for ever” — voice the same conviction he had argued as a theologian: that heaven is also a “progressive state,” an eternity in which redeemed love, and the saints' capacity to give and receive it, keeps growing rather than reaching a static ceiling.

Key points

• Edwards's climactic sermon “Heaven is a World of Love” pictures the afterlife as a relational society, not a solitary absorption into the divine.
• Because God is triune love, heaven is where that love is most fully communicated to creatures and shared among them.
• Edwards rejected ascetic traditions that saw particular human loves as competitors to love for God, arguing sanctified friendships continue into glory.
• He taught that earthly relationships “duly subordinated to divine love” will “last forever” and even deepen in heaven.
• Edwards described heaven itself as a “progressive state,” in which the saints' love and joy increase throughout eternity rather than remaining fixed.

A line worth remembering

Neither do I see how it argues infirmity for a saint in glory to have a special respect to another.

McClymond & McDermott The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, ch. 19

Related Scripture

• Revelation 21:3-4
• 1 John 4:16
• John 17:24
• 1 Corinthians 13:12

For reflection and discussion

1. How does picturing heaven as a growing 'society of love' rather than solitary bliss change the way you imagine eternal life?
2. What did Edwards mean by loves 'duly subordinated to divine love,' and how might that principle apply to your own relationships now?
3. Edwards's dying words to his wife expressed hope that their marriage bond was 'spiritual' and would 'continue for ever' — what earthly relationships of yours do you hope will carry into eternity?