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The Daily Word of Righteousness
Pressing Toward Salvation, #10
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matthew 7:13,14—NIV)
Eternal life is the Life of God in Christ. In order to gain eternal life we not only must receive Christ at some point in time, we also must live in Him daily. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We must be changed into His death if we would be filled with His Life. We cannot live by our first personality and by Christ at the same time.
The gate to eternal life is narrow and the way is restrictive. We cannot bring our first personality along the road to eternal life. There are few who are willing to enter in. However, multitudes are on the broad road that leads (they think) to Heaven.
Eternal life is closely identified with the Kingdom of God because the Kingdom of God is the rulership of the immortal saints—those in whom the Life of Christ has been developed and perfected—over the nations of saved peoples of the earth.
There are at least two stages in gaining the Kingdom of God:
Perfecting the Life of Christ in us.
Entering our own inheritance, into our unique participation in the Kingdom of God.
As the Life of Christ is formed in us God begins to reveal to us our inheritance. We ourselves enter life, and then our destiny unfolds.
This twofold process starts the moment we receive Christ as our Lord and Savior, placing our faith in the atonement made by Him. It begins then provided we recognize that our entire first personality has by faith been placed on the cross, and that we abide in Him continually and learn to lean on Him and to live by His power and wisdom.
If we "accept Christ" and then continue on as we always have, living our own life and waiting to go to Heaven, we have not begun to enter the eternal life of the Kingdom of God. We merely have assumed a theological position. There is no life in this.
We enter eternal life as soon as we are ready to do God's will, and our life in God's Presence then will continue throughout eternity. It is not interrupted by physical death. Eternal life lays down the flesh and takes it up again according to the will of the Lord Jesus.
We conclude there is a great difference between the state of the nominal Christian and the state of the Christian who has gained eternal life, after each dies physically. Since the nominal Christian lives in the flesh, when he dies physically his life also dies. Paul warned us of this when he wrote to the saints, "For if ye live in the appetites of the flesh ye shall die" (Romans 8:13).
We do not mean that the nominal Christian will cease to exist when he dies physically; we mean that the blessing and Presence of Jesus will not be with him. He is dead spiritually.
But when the Christian dies who has arrived at "the resurrection of the dead" (Philippians 3:11) he continues as always. He cannot cease living and serving God because he already, while yet in the world, is living by Christ—by the Resurrection and the Life. He who lives and believes in Christ will never die.
To be continued.