Wednesday, July 04, 2012

Eternal Life


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).
It is more than fitting to offer this final study on Hebrews Chapter 11 as an examination of the third and final component of The Promise we have received from God through Christ.  As mentioned in previous posts, I have found it instructive to present this as comprised of three principle parts: the Holy Spirit indwelling believers after Christ's Ascension; an eternal inheritance; and eternal life.

I believe that our view of eternity is twisted by the Fall. Our natural perceptions are steeped in time - successive moments, or weeks, months or years progressing forward in a stream of events that begin and end. From that viewpoint, eternity is often conceived of in the same way, with the exception that there is no end, and that, indeed, can be a double-edged sword.

Inevitably, this leads to the mental image of endlessly repeating time intervals stretching outward forever that cannot help but cause a sneaking suspicion that boredom or apathy will be the ultimate result. Look at the common vernacular we use to describe unpleasant temporal experiences. We say this or that annoyance/grievance/discomfort/agony "takes forever".  

In the corporate or business world, for instance, we liken certain mind-numbing activities we are compelled to engage in as "endless" or "interminable". Our outlook is chained to our current existence where unvarying repetition becomes quickly boring, the prospect of such things recycling endlessly is seen as worse than death itself, and escape into oblivion appears more enticing.

Coupled with our inherent misperception is the enemy's undermining of the Bible's picture of heavenly hope by trite cartoon images of winged human caricatures strumming tunelessly on harps while resting stuporously on endless fluffy white clouds.

I am unconvinced that this is even remotely accurate. In fact I believe that in eternity, time itself is barely perceived, let alone experienced as we do in this life. Time, in fact, may not pass in a real sense at all, or only to the extent necessary for one immensely satisfying and blessed experience to flow into another.

As children, I also believe that we had a much more comprehensible picture of eternity in the way that certain blissful summer days never seemed to end, or time with friends, family and loved ones passed without any recognition of what a given clock might say. It is only as we age into adulthood that this clarity of perception becomes clouded by jaded experienced, seared conscience, and the necessities of life.

How many of us long for those days, real or imagined, when we did not know or care what day it was, and had nothing pressing on the event horizon that would darken the pleasure of the endless moment we were currently experiencing.

Even now, we can retrieve glimpses of that same timelessness, perhaps in the embrace of a loved one, the innocent life-filled laughter of a child, or the quiet and unhurried focus on a particularly pleasant activity unbounded by any start or stop time. 

It is not surprising, given the current state of the world, that these glimpses may be few and far between, but I suspect that if most of us searched hard enough, we could capture that "magical perception of childhood" even as a typically harried or stressed adult.

Eternal life with our Creator and Savior is described as perfect, blissful, glorious, safe, blessed, filled with fellowship, companionship, worship, and delight. Unless the Bible is being deceptive in this regard, in which case we have far more serious problems than our perception of eternity, than our jaded fallen view cannot possibly be the case.

Anything and everything that would somehow denigrate or degrade that life could not possibly hold true with what the Bible's description provides, else it would, by definition, not be those very things. A thing cannot be both boring and perfect. An event cannot be both delightful and tedious.

I, for one, long for the day, if indeed it can even been termed "the day" when time, that ancient slave master, has no significance beyond what is needed for one perfect event to follow another. 

And do not make the mistake that this promise of eternal life is our due. It is not, as Adam our primary ancestor forfeited that provision when He rebelled against God. No, rather than our due, it is a glorious gift of the Father purchased with the priceless life of His Son.

What we are due is an endless torment that supports our jaded earthly viewpoint.

It is only our faith in Christ, and in His payment of that debt on our behalf, that enables us to enter into the Presence of God, and all the wonders that entails, forever.