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The Daily Word of Righteousness
An Examination of Current Teaching, #28
Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. (John 17:3)
To have eternal life means we go to Heaven to live forever.
I may be wrong, but I suppose most Christian believers equate eternal life with Heaven. The truth is, eternal life has nothing whatever to do with Heaven.
Heaven is a place. In fact, there are at least three heavens. God, Christ, the holy angels, and the saints are in the third Heaven, in Paradise, as far as we know. But this is not eternal life. Eternal life has to do with our personality, not with the place called Heaven.
Eternal life is a Person. Eternal Life is the Lord Jesus Christ. Eternal life is the knowledge of God that comes to us through Christ, as we are filled with the incorruptible resurrection life of Christ. Eternal life has to do with our being filled with the Holy Spirit, with living by the power and wisdom of the Spirit. Eternal life begins in our inward nature. If we live according to the eternal life we have now, then, in the Day of Christ, our body will be raised from its place of interment and filled with incorruptible resurrection life.
None of this has anything to do with Heaven.
We have eternal life now, in the present world, if we are a genuine Christian. We will not receive more eternal life by dying and going to Heaven. What passage of Scripture tells us we will receive more eternal life by dying and going to Heaven?
The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is the Resurrection and the Life. To have more of Christ is to have more of the Resurrection and the Life.
The Christians of today live in the delusion that their problems will be solved when they die and go to Heaven. How does passing into the spirit realm solve our problems? It may be true that some of us will be far worse off after we die than we are now. Death is not our redeemer.
All that we desire is in the Lord Jesus Christ. If we have Him we have everything. Heaven is heaven only because Christ is there. When Christ comes to earth, Heaven will have come to earth. Eternal life will have come to earth.
How would you like to be stuck in Heaven when the Lord Jesus is ruling on the earth?
To be continued.