Part Ten: Human Redemption Initiates Animal Redemption—Confirming Evidence Resurrected Animals Will Join God’s People in Heaven
The Bible teaches the redemption of God’s people will initiate nature’s redemption; it provides the framework by which the curse will be removed and nature restored to its pre-Fall state. The Apostle Paul explains in Romans 8:18–23:
Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he [God] will give us later. For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, everything on earth was subjected to God’s curse. All creation anticipates the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And even we Christians, although we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, also groan to be released from pain and suffering. We, too, wait anxiously for that day when God will give us our full rights as his children, including the new bodies he has promised us (NLT).
Biblical theology and church tradition—taken as a whole—agree that saved humanity’s redemption will include the whole of creation. Paul expresses this great hope in the passage above, and its a major theme in some Old Testament prophecies. Moreover, as we saw in Part Eight, the best explanation for the Bible’s revelation that earthly animals will inhabit Heaven with God’s people is resurrection. The question is, how exactly will creation’s redemption—the removal of the curse and the restoration of Earth to Eden-like conditions—be linked to animal resurrection?
The Bible teaches that the damage wrought on creation (the “curse;” Genesis chapter three) is due to fallen humanity. But, as Paul explained, it will be removed in the same redemption of God’s people (Rom. 8:21; cf., Rev. 21:1; Rev.22:3). All creation, Paul declares, “is waiting eagerly” for its redemption alongside saved humanity, when it will finally “join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay” (Rom. 8: 19, 21. Other passages confirm this, which I quote in Will Dogs Chase Cats in Heaven?
It makes perfect theological sense that God will redeem creation through human redemption. Animals did not sin, and nature did not fall when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and were banished from Eden. Nature was cursed because of the first couple’s sinful rebellion—and to this day, it continues to suffer because of human sin. In the case of people, those who accept salvation offered by Jesus Christ are granted forgiveness of sins and promised eternal life in a renewed new heaven and earth. Because the curse is tied directly to human sin and is removed by human redemption, it follows that soul-bearing animals (see Parts Four and Five) will share in that redemption. Why would God give humans such glorious grace and not the animals whose curse people are responsible? There is no biblical reason why animals will not be redeemed alongside saved humanity and resurrected as well.
This blog has only summarized a more detailed biblical explanation of this remarkable event in my book, Will Dogs Chase Cats in Heaven? People, Pets, and Wild Animals in the Afterlife.
Next week’s blog will discuss what “kinds” of animals besides pets will inhabit the New Earth with God’s people.