Inheritor and heir

The Catechism goes on to say that in Baptism each one of us is also made an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven and the Baptismal Service in the Prayer Book tells us that, besides that, we become heirs of eternal salvation. (2) The Kingdom of Heaven means the Church, the people whom God rules as King.  So an “inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven” means one who has come to possess the blessings of the Church.  An “heir of eternal salvation” means an heir of Heaven itself.

Being an heir has to do with the future, not with the present.  If you are an heir to a fortune, it means that one day it may be yours.  I say may and not will, because whether the fortune will actually be yours depends on whether you are still alive at the time.  In other words, there is no certainty about being an heir.  So although you and I have been baptised and are therefore heirs of Heaven, that does not mean we are sure to go there.  Heaven is where God is seen, and there is one thing which can separate us from God and keep us from him, and that one thing is sin.  That is why, at the end of the Public Baptism of Infants in the Prayer Book, it says, “It is certain by God’s Word, that children which are baptized, dying before they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved”. (3)  Notice, by the way, that nothing is said at all about infants who die unbaptised.  We leave that to God.

However, as far as we are concerned, sin can stop us getting to Heaven, and we have to face that fact.  But we can face it with confidence because, by the powerful blessings which we possess as members of the Church, we can get the better of our sins, and come to love and serve God and our neighbour, and be well set on the road to Heaven and to God.

For in the Church all those blessings which God promised to Abraham long ago come true.  We are taught what God is like, and in the Sacraments we are given the power to imitate him ourselves.  And in the Eucharist Jesus brings us, Sunday by Sunday, before his Father’s Throne and there we join in the worship of Heaven itself, with the angels and archangels and all the Blessed Saints.  So God’s Family on earth and his Family in Heaven become one (Hebrews 12:22-24).