5 Feb 21

We have considered what “Eternal Life” refers to. It is needful for us to examine the scope and glory of “Eternal Life” in order to truly appreciate deeply what God has done for us who believe, and to praise Him for the glory of His wondrous grace, and to worship and praise Him for His glorious Being!

The Source, origin and sphere of this Life

Eternal Life is the life given to us in Christ – it is given, to those who believe, by the Father through Christ in the Spirit.
God the Father has chosen us before the foundation of the world and blessed us with every spiritual blessing; He is the source and origin of all these blessings. He freely and richly bestowed on us His wondrous grace, adopted us to be His children, and destined us to share His glory as He unites all things in Christ, according to the purpose and counsel of His will.

The sphere within which we receive all these divine blessings is the Lord Jesus Christ. In Christ, we have redemption, forgiveness of sin; in Him we have reconciliation with God and with one another and in Him, a new humanity is re-created and all would be in Him and in God, uniting all, including the spiritual and unseen world. Christ would reign supreme with everything under His feet and His people would reign with Him.

Every spiritual blessing of the Holy Spirit has been given us by the Father if we are in the Son. The Spirit applies the work of Christ to our hearts; we were sealed with the Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we take possession of it (Eph. 1:3-14).

Notice the trinitarian content in the verses: Christians are trinitaian – we believe in one God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. All three persons of the Trinity are involved in giving us the gift of eternal life and election is a divine revelation, not a human speculation. According to the Old Testament, God chose Israel out of all the nations of the world to be His special people. According to the New Testament, God is choosing an international community to be ‘His saints’, His holy or special people – the Church. We must accept ‘election’ humbly: John Calvin wrote: “Although we cannot conceive either by argument or reason how God has elected us before the creation of the world, yet we know it by His declaring it to us; and experience itself vouches for it sufficiently, when we are enlightened in the faith”.

In Deuteronomy 9:6, the Lord God declared to Israel: “know, therefore, that the Lord God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people”.
“Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth. You shall remember the Lord your God , for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may confirm His covenant that He swore to your fathers, as it is this day” (Deut. 8:17-18).

Similarly, in the New Testament, God chose us in the new covenant to be His people, His church, according to the good pleasure of His will. It is according to His wondrous grace He lavished upon us; He chose us not because we deserve it (for grace speaks of unmerited favour); He chose us not because of our own ‘righteousness’; surely it is He, who, in love, destined us to be His children not because we are ‘lovely’ and ‘beautiful’. In fact, when we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. In Adam , we are a fallen people, destined for destruction and judgement, in Adam, we would not choose to come to God, if left to ourselves, for we are a rebell ious ‘stubborn’ people, like Israel of old. God took the initiative to reach us and to save us through Christ in the Spirit. He is the One who made us alive when we were ‘dead in sin’. Christ is the author and perfecter of our faith; He who began a good work in us would bring it to completion and consummation.

If we appreciate these clearly, we would not cry out “unfair!’; we would not insist that we deserve God’s mercy and demand our ‘rights’ and claim that we are ‘entitled’ to be blessed by God because we have done so much for Him. Know for sure that we do not deserve anything from God; we are a wretched people without Him; we are not in a position to query ‘Why?”; instead we must abound in thanksgivings, praise and worship as we recognise how God has not left us in our lurch and transgressions. The heart that understands how much God has extended Himself in His grace, mercy and love to save an undeserving people would not question why God has elected a people for Himself.

The doctrine of election is difficult to understand. We may claim that it is we who chose God and it is we who decide for Christ. Indeed, it is so, but only because in eternity, before the foundation of the world, God had first chosen you and decided for you. The Bible does not dispel the mystery of election. Similarly, we note the mystery in the doctrine of the Trinity, that God is one and yet the Godhead is in three persons. The best of brains in the Christian world still find these baffling; but the best we can conclude that God is God and we are not.

The Lord willing, we would consider further the scope and glory of eternal life in future sharings.