The Third Heaven

NIV 2 Corinthians 12:3

  "I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows."

Why is this ponderable?

According to this vision, all people can be resurrected and, at the Final Judgment, can be admitted to the third heaven, or Christ's Kingdom in their spiritual body. 

Photo by Arto Marttinen on Unsplash

A third heaven, also called shamayi h'shamayim (שׁמי השׁמים or "Heaven of Heavens"), is mentioned in such passages as Genesis 28:12, Deuteronomy 10:14 and 1 Kings 8:27 as a distinctly spiritual realm containing, or being occupied by angels and God.

• Genesis 28:12, NLT: "As he slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from the earth up to heaven. 
• Deuteronomy 10:14, NLT  “Look, the highest heavens and the earth and everything in it all belong to the Lord your God. ¹⁵ Yet the Lord chose your ancestors as the objects of his love. And he chose you, their descendants, above all other nations, as is evident today. 
• 1 Kings 8:27 NLT. “But will God really live on earth? Why, even the highest heavens cannot contain you. How much less this Temple I have built! 

To describe what happened in his vision or revelation of the Lord (2 Cor 12:1), Paul says that he was “snatched up” and went to the “third heaven.” Both the language of snatching (arpagenta) and “up to the third heaven” (eos tritou ouranou) describe an upward ascent in the same manner that Jesus ascended into heaven. 

Since Paul admits to being unable to explain his experience (2 Cor 12:3), we should not think of it as "space travel" but as transformation of consciousness and shedding of the earth-bound body.

In 1 Corinthians 15:35–49, Paul describes a three-tiered hierarchy of bodies:

• earthly bodies (15:40) by using the words “kernel,” “seed,” and “flesh” (sarx). Humans, animals, birds, and fish have different sorts of fleshly bodies (15:39). 
  

•  heavenly bodies which have differing glories  including the sun, the moon, and the stars (15:40–41).  

•  spiritual bodies that are sown naturally but will become  spiritual bodies (15:44). The spiritual body approximates the heavenly bodies with their differing glories. 

The specific cause for our reception of a spiritual body is Christ’s resurrection. He first gained a spiritual body via the resurrection. So we will also gain our spiritual body via our resurrection.. 

However, it must first be transformed into a spiritual body because  “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 15:50).

Our body of flesh and blood must die just as a seed must die to germinate new life., so our earthly body will germinate a spiritual body.

We can discern a pattern in Paul of a three-tiered body: the earthly, the heavenly, and the spiritual. They all relate. We should not think of distinct tiers in a hierarchy per se. Instead, these are three parts of the cosmic body—the makeup of the universe.  

If we grant that Paul had some conception of a tiered-universe, then we can understand why he proclaims: "I was snatched up to the third heaven." By third, he may mean something like: the spiritual realm that exists in the heavenly places. 

It is not unusual for Scripture to identify the spiritual resurrection body with the heavens. Daniel says that resurrected people will shine “like the brightness of the sky above” and “like the stars forever and ever” (Dan 12:3). And Job 38:7 describes the angels as being stars: “the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” So Paul may have entered into the heavenly realm in which spiritual bodies lived—where the resurrected Jesus dwells in the abode he has prepared for his followers.