Eternal Life...

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The Holy Spirit is Eternal Life because He is of the Person of God. The body and blood of the Lord Jesus are Eternal Life because they are of the Person of God. The more we have of God, the more Eternal Life we possess.

(4/25/2010) I think we sometimes regard eternal life as a reward we receive for "accepting Christ." It is our ticket to Heaven and immortality. I don’t suppose most of us think much past the idea of going to Heaven and living there forever. Sometimes added to this is the idea that once we get the ticket we never can lose it.

I do not believe these are scriptural concepts. Eternal life is the Life of God that comes to us through the Spirit of God. It is substance. It is the body and blood of Christ. He Himself is the Tree of Life.

Unlike the ticket concept, we can have eternal life in degrees. Each day we are to lay hold on eternal life by exercising godly behavior. Eternal life is the fruit of our pursuit of righteousness and holiness.

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. (Romans 6:23)

It is clear from the above passage that deliverance from sinful behavior and slavery to God leads to holiness. The result of such behavior results in eternal life.

It is interesting to note that eternal life is a transformation of what we are in personality. At one time we lived by the sinful life of adamic flesh and blood. Now the Lord Jesus has given us of Himself so that we live a holy life, the very Life of God. This new life by which we now are living has little to do with where we are, whether in Heaven or upon the earth.

Just because we are in Heaven does not mean we have eternal life. We receive eternal life through interacting with the Lord Jesus. We do not receive eternal life by going to Heaven. If there is a passage of Scripture that states that all the creatures in Heaven have eternal life, I am not aware of it. If there is a truth more needed in Christian thinking today, I do not know what it is.

The following is a passage that is very important to me:

Just as the living Father has sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me shall live because of me. (John 6:57)

The point here is the idea of "feeding." The prevailing viewpoint seems to be that if we once make a profession of Christ, we have our "ticket." We have eternal life. We will go to Heaven when we die and live there in a mansion forever.

However, eternal life does not come to us as a ticket but as "food" which we must feed on continually. The "food" is the body and blood of Christ. Christ is the Tree of Life. We must eat of Him every day.

If we are to partake of Christ each day, and thus lay hold on more and more of eternal life, we must practice Christian behavior.

But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. (I Timothy 6:11,12)

God gave His Son that we might not perish but have eternal life. Until we receive the Life that is in the Son of God we are dead spiritually, little more than an intelligent animal.

God’s goal for us is that we might live for eternity in our body. Our opportunity to receive this gift was lost when Adam and Eve disobeyed God. Now through the Lord Jesus Christ, the Tree of Life, we can gain eternal life in our body.

And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you. Romans 8:11)

The redemption of his body was the goal of the Apostle Paul, the resurrection from the dead.

We attain to the redemption of our mortal body in two steps. The first step is the resurrection of our inward nature. We lay hold on inward eternal life each day of our discipleship, by pursuing righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. We save ourselves by doing these works.

Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers. (I Timothy 4:16)

If we are faithful in the work of laying hold on inward eternal life, when Jesus next appears our flesh and bones will be raised from their place of interment and clothed with our body of eternal life that has been formed in Heaven. Our body of eternal life is formed in Heaven as we lay hold on inward eternal life today.

This program of redemption does away with the last enemy, which is physical death.

There are several errors in today’s preaching. Perhaps one of the most damaging is the concept that God is going to save our present personality by bringing it to Heaven to live in a mansion. This would be humorous if it were not so harmful to Christian growth.

True salvation proceeds as we surrender our first personality to Christ, day by day, line upon line, that we may replace it with a new life. Another way of saying this is that as we live a victorious life we are given to eat of the Tree of Life.

It is the new life that inherits the Kingdom of God and is the Kingdom of God. It is the new life that will be clothed with the spiritual house from Heaven. As far as location, whether our redeemed body is on earth, in the air above the earth, or in the spirit world, is not significant. Redemption is not a change of where we are but what we are.

Christ entered the world and walked among us. He is the Tree of Life. We are dead flesh until we begin to partake of Him. He is God’s gift to us, but we have to prove ourselves worthy of this unparalleled gift by setting aside our own life as we follow the Spirit of God at all times, every day and every night.

You can hear the morning sermon at morning. http://www.wor.org/audio/audio.htm

You can hear the evening sermon at evening. http://www.wor.org/audio/audio.htm

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