I’m convinced that the Bible is clear that though we will have freedom to choose in Heaven, we will have no ability to sin. Consider Revelation 21:4-5: “Death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new’” (emphasis added).

What follows the word for explains why the evil that causes death, mourning, crying, and pain will no longer exist. It’s because the old order will have once and for all passed away, and God will replace it with a new order—one that is fundamentally transformed. Deception, sin, and rebellion against God will be things of the past. Those in Heaven need never fear another Fall.

Since “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23, NIV), the promise of no more death on the New Earth is synonymous with a promise of no more sin. Since sinners always die, those who are promised they will never die are being promised they will not sin anymore.

Sin causes mourning, crying, and pain. If those will never occur again, then sin, their cause, can never occur again either.

But, some argue, “Adam and Eve were sinless, yet they fell into sin. Why shouldn’t the same thing happen again?”

Adam and Eve’s situation was very different from that of God’s resurrected saints. The first man and woman were innocent, but not righteous. That is, they had not been made righteous by the atoning work of Christ. All people who will be in Heaven, on the other hand, have been made righteous through Christ: “As by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19).

To suggest we could have Christ’s righteousness yet one day sin in Heaven is to say Christ could one day sin. God completely delivers us from sin and vulnerability to sin. Scripture emphasizes that Christ died once to deal with sin and will never again need to die (Hebrews 9:26-28; 10:10; 1 Peter 3:18). We’ll have the full experience of our new nature, so we will in Christ “become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Possessing God’s own righteousness, we won’t sin in Heaven for the same reason God doesn’t: He cannot. Christ purchased with His blood our eternal inability to sin: “By a single offering [himself] he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14).

“Nothing unclean will ever enter it [the New Jerusalem], nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (Revelation 21:27). The passage doesn’t say, “If someone becomes impure or shameful or deceitful, they will be evicted.” No eviction will be necessary, because nothing impure can ever enter in the first place.

The fact that evil will have no footing in Heaven and no leverage to affect us is further indicated by Jesus when He says, “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. . . . Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:41-43, emphasis added).

Even in the present Heaven, prior to the Resurrection, people cannot sin, for they are “the spirits of the righteous made perfect” (Hebrews 12:23). Ultimately, we’ll be raised “incorruptible” (1 Corinthians 15:52, NKJV). Incorruptible is a stronger word than uncorrupted. Our risen bodies, and by implication all that we are, will be immune to corruption.

We will have true freedom in Heaven, but a righteous freedom that never sins.

Heaven will harbor no evil desires and no corruption, and we will fully participate in the sinless perfection of Christ. What does this mean in terms of human freedom? Remember, though God can’t sin, no being has greater free choice than He does. That we won’t be able to sin does not mean we won’t have free choice.

Once we become what the sovereign God has made us to be in Christ, and once we see Him as He is, we’ll see all things—including sin—for what they are. God won’t need to take away our ability to choose; He won’t need to restrain us from evil. Sin will have absolutely no appeal to us. It will be, literally, unthinkable. The memory of evil and suffering in this life will serve as an eternal reminder of sin’s horrors and emptiness. Sin? Been there, done that. And have seen how ugly and disastrous it was.

Theologian Paul Helm writes, “The freedom of heaven, then, is the freedom from sin; not that the believer just happens to be free from sin, but that he is so constituted or reconstituted that he cannot sin. He doesn’t want to sin, and he does not want to want to sin.”

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