Mankind lost eternal life in the Garden of Eden. The Lord Jesus Christ came in order to help us regain eternal life. Eternal life is not the same as eternal existence, rather it is a kind of life. Eternal life is the incorruptible Life of God. How much of it we attain depends on how we follow Christ in the present world.

Current Christian teaching and preaching associate eternal life with going to Heaven to live forever. The truth is, eternal life has nothing to do with going to Heaven. Eternal life is a kind of life by which we live. Heaven is a place.

Salvation is not a plan to move us from one place to another. Salvation is a program that changes us from what we are so we can be acceptable to God wherever we are.

In the beginning Adam and Eve were flesh and blood creatures. The life of flesh and blood was never meant to be eternal. This type of life was intended to be a beginning, temporary form of the creation of man. True human life is life lived in the Spirit of God.

The Lord placed the Tree of Life in Eden so man might have the opportunity to bring eternal life into his personality. Many of the elements of Eden were allegorical. The serpent stands for Satan. The dust the serpent was condemned to eat was human flesh. Satan was forced down from his high place in Heaven onto his belly on the earth.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was the eternal moral law of God. The Tree of Life was the Lord Jesus Christ.

Had Adam and Eve partaken of the eternal Life of Christ while the condemnation of sin was upon them they would have lived forever in a state of alienation from God. God in His mercy drove them from the garden so He might restore them at a later time.

Since that time our flesh has been increasingly contaminated with sin. We are born in sin. There is a law of sin in our body. The expression "living in the flesh" found several times in the New Testament does not mean inhabiting a flesh and bone body, for when we are raised from the dead we still will have a flesh and bone body. Rather living in the flesh means living in the sinful inclinations that have become part of life as a human.

In order to save us from our body of sin and death the Lord Jesus Christ shed the blood of atonement on the cross. This step was necessary in order to give us access to God in Heaven, to remove the condemnation resting on mankind, on all the children of Adam and Eve.

But forgiveness of sin is the merest beginning of our salvation, as essential as it is. If our sin were forgiven but we were forced to remain in sinful flesh, we indeed would be condemned to a miserable existence.

To be continued.