Wednesday, July 04, 2012

Eternal Inheritance


And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us. (Hebrews 11:39-40, NKJV).
The Promise we have received from God through Christ is comprised of three principle parts: the Holy Spirit indwelling believers after Christ's Ascension; an eternal inheritance; and eternal life.

The thing about an inheritance is that you can't earn it in the sense that you earn a paycheck, or someone's gratitude, or anything else that becomes yours through your own efforts. It is yours by the explicit declaration of the testator, the one who designates you as heir.

And while you can't earn it, you can lose it. By this I mean that it is possible to be excluded from the Testament that directs to whom and in what portion an inheritance is distributed.

In terms of God's Eternal Plan of Redemption, that legal and spiritual instrument by which He has determined who of His children gets what, His estate, if you will - all of Creation and Existence, is ours only if we are adopted into His family by faith. This is unequivocally spelled out in the New Testament of the Bible, and reiterated repeatedly with remarkable clarity, especially throughout Paul's epistles.

It works like this. As descendants of Adam we lost the inheritance that was ours by birthright. Through his rebellion, he and his descendants forfeited their claim as natural born Children of God. Yes we are still His creatures by right of His sovereign authority over all things, but we are disinherited from what was originally intended to be ours.

That is the bad news, but it gets worse.

Not only are we bereft of the inheritance, but in it's place we are under penal judgment. Sin, the thing that came into human nature at the Fall, is inevitably and eternally fatal. It is not just that we are impoverished of all things that could be ours, we are also condemned to suffer the loss of God Himself, forever.

By definition, exile from God IS Hell. When you are removed from all that God is - life, love, light, righteousness, holiness - you are immersed in existence without God, apart from all things of which He is the only Source. Instead of eternal life, eternal torment. Instead of love, hatred. Instead of righteousness, insane inequity. Instead of holiness, crushing and banal profaneness. Forever.

It is no wonder that this inescapable prison of existence is described as Outer Darkness, the Lake of Fire, and the Place of Torment - a place where the flame of agony is never quenched, and the worm of decay never dies.

Dismiss these as quaint or primitive superstitions all you want in this life. If these are real, your tune will change incontrovertibly in the next. For if the Word of God is true (and He has provided inexhaustible evidence that it is while not removing the possibility of the only thing that we are capable of to earn His pleasure - faith), then you are immortal regardless of your thoughts, beliefs and feelings about that fact.

And your default eternal disinheritance results in your immortality spent in the very fires of existence apart from God.

Thankfully, that is not the only outcome, because the adoption that enables the Father to view you in the same light He views His Beloved Son is possible through faith in that same Son's payment for your rebellion. Jesus died on the Cross for OUR SIN. He paid the penalty that without faith in Him we are destined and obligated to pay ourselves.

Because He was Man He could die in our place, providing us a means of escape from that sin debt, in the same way that Adam's Fall indebted us in the first place. Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin. Through one Man's righteous act, grace abounded and forgiveness was made possible for all who believe.

The Last Will and Testament of our Lord and Savior is far superior to anything we could possibly imagine or envision. Through that will we have been made co-heirs with Christ. We inherit all that is His, and that means we inherit all that is good, for He is good, and His mercy is everlasting. This good inheritance MUST be eternal, else it would end and thus not be fully good, for the end of something good is necessarily bad.

And beyond that (if that is even possible to conceive), we are saved from the wrath which is our natural inheritance by birth.

Through Christ we are adopted as sons and daughters into the family of God just as if we were born in perfection - just as if we were born again.

There is both unspeakable beauty and unspeakable terror in this knowledge.

The beauty is that through God's grace and mercy at Christ's immeasurable expense, we are heirs to that good which would have otherwise been beyond reach.

The terror is that if we refuse this free gift, the condemnation under which we are born will be beyond hope to escape.

He provides all that we need to make the choice, and then leaves it up to us - a terrible freedom denied even the angels who followed Satan in his rebellion.

His desire for all mankind is that we choose wisely.