Faith In Life Everlasting

Minister:
Date: PM
Text: Romans 6:23; Lord's Day 22
Psalters: 259, 247, 202, 30
  1. Knowing God.
    1. First, our understanding of eternal life is helped by seeing it contrasted with “eternal death.”
      1. This eternal death is everlasting punishment; it is to be under God’s wrath as punishment for sin!
      2. God’s wrath does not wait until after physical death (hell), but is already abides on them (John 3:36).
      3. Those experiencing God’s wrath do not even see life (John 3:3), let alone enter it and enjoy it.
    2. Life is God’s gift of being able to know (in love) God (John 17:3).
      1. Life (eternal life) is perfect bliss, light, and joy; not just unending life.
      2. God’s life is harmonious activity of perfect fellowship.
      3. To know God is personal, conscious experience of God as the highest good.
  2. God realizes eternal life only in Jesus Christ.
    1. Adam could know God by virtue of creation, but he lost it.
      1. He was created with a mind which could react in love to the revelation of the mind of God.
      2. But Adam lost this life when he fell away from God into sin, and then he experienced only divine anger.
    2. Eternal life is a new life because it has its source in the incarnated Son of God.
      1. The incarnation is God dwelling with man in perfect friendship and fellowship.
      2. Eternal life is to know God in Jesus, so only in Jesus does God realize and reveal eternal life.
    3. Also, eternal life is resurrection life, i.e., it is life on-the-other-side-of-death.
      1. This bliss is reached through the deep and dark way of sin and death.
      2. Eternal life is resurrection life because eternal life is forgiven life - life in Christ, without God’s wrath.
  3. Believers experience this eternal life by means of the gift of faith.
    1. We experience eternal life already now by believing (John 3:36; 11:25).
      1. Regeneration is that life, for it is the power of Christ’s resurrection (I Peter 1:3).
      2. Faith is the union of one to Christ, so the recipient partakes of Him and abides in Him.
      3. The joy and blessedness of eternal life is found in being forgiven.
    2. In heaven this beginning of eternal life will be changed into a fullness of joy.
    3. Believe, embrace Christ as the fulness of all your emptiness, and live forever.