Tag Archives: eternal life

The Real Test

Bible Study, , ,

THE REAL TEST 

“Just then a religion scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus.’Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?’ He answered, ‘What’s written in God’s Law? How do you interpret it?’

“He said, ‘That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence — and that you love your neighbour as well as you do yourself.’

‘”Good answer!’ said Jesus.’Do it and you’ll live.'” Luke 10:25-28 (The Message).

I think Jesus got it all wrong! Aren’t we supposed to accept Him as our personal Saviour and then we’ll go to heaven when we die?

But that’s not what the man asked Him, not what to do to get to heaven but what to do to inherit eternal life. But aren’t they the same thing? Apparently not, according to Jesus.

According to the Bible, whatever we would like to believe, the moment we are conceived we have human life and that life will never end. We live the first phase of it on earth in an imperfect world and among imperfect people. We have been given free will as part of the package of being human and that means that we have choices to make and we have to take responsibility for our choices. Our choices also have consequences which affect our lives and the lives of the people we interact with every day.

Our natural bent is doing our own thing, to be greedy and selfish and to hate God because we fear the consequences of our rebellion. Why? Because Satan lied to the first pair and lured them into disobedience with false promises. Now we live in the shadow of Adam’s foolish choice!

But God didn’t create us to live like that. He created the universe, the earth and everything on it to live together in peace and harmony as a reflection of His nature. In order to fulfil His dream He wanted us to choose to love Him and to obey Him because of our love for Him. But the devil had other ideas…and we live in the result.

But God was not put off. In fact He used these very circumstances to reveal one of the most beautiful aspects of His nature — what the Bible calls “what is heaviest in Him — His mercy.” Because of His mercy, He sent Jesus to show us what He is really like and to pay the debt of sin we owe Him. He took the punishment for our sin on Himself by sacrificing His life for us so that He could bring us back to the Father.

Because He has done away with the reason for our antagonism, God gives us the opportunity to return to Him and to submit ourselves to His authority. Amazingly, when we do that, He reciprocates by giving us His Holy Spirit to live in us. He replaces our old alienation with a new attitude and disposition.  Rebellion gone, we are now able to love Him and to express that love by the way we treat our fellow human beings.

This is what Jesus means by “life”, not endless physical existence but an exuberant life that embraces all people as family and cares more about them than about ourselves. In the environment of God, where nothing out of character with God can exist, everything that does not reflect Him gets pruned off. This is the process we go through as we serve out our apprenticeship in this life.

Eternal life does not begin when we die. It is God’s gift to those who choose to return to His original plan to have a family living together in harmony with Him and with one another in unselfish caring and generosity. This is the evidence that we are truly His family, living life His way here and now. Death is merely the completion of our apprenticeship and the beginning of participation with Him in His forever family in His presence.

Are you someone who had “accepted Jesus” and think you have eternal life or are you really living by loving Him and His children?

That’s the real test!

Every Chance If You Trust God

Christian Life, , ,

EVERY CHANCE IF YOU TRUST GOD

“Seeing his reaction, Jesus said, ‘Do you have any idea how difficult it is for people who have it all to enter God’s kingdom? I’d say it’s easier to thread a camel through a needle’s eye than get a rich person into God’s kingdom.’

“‘Then who has any chance at all?’ the others asked.

“‘No chance at all,’ Jesus said, ‘if you think you can pull it off by yourself. Every chance in the world if you trust God to do it.'” Luke 18:24-27 (The Message).

Jesus’ terse comment when the rich man turned away, stirred up some silt in His disciples’ thinking about salvation.

They followed the general understanding of their day, that wealth was evidence of God’s favour and blessing; hence a rich person was a natural candidate for ‘salvation’. This way of thinking didn’t necessarily take into account the way that riches were acquired. Jesus’ statement blew a hole in that idea!

Perhaps they also thought, like this young man, that they could work their way into God’s favour by earning ‘brownie points’, keeping the law as best they could.

Unlike any other man-made religion in the world, becoming a disciple of Jesus is not a do-it-yourself or self-help religion. In fact, it is not a religion nor was it ever intended to be.

Following Jesus is a partnership based on the choice to believe and accept His forgiveness, and backed by God’s powerful response in which He, by His Spirit, brings a person’s dead spirit back to life – “As for you, you were dead in your trespasses and sins…But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions…” Ephesians 2: 1,4,5 (NIV), and brings about a transfer from slavery to Satan’s control by deception into the freedom to believe and trust God because of His son’s sacrifice for sin.

This transfer has some pretty surprising results. We are brought from death to life and from darkness to light. “Darkness” refers to our natural disposition towards selfishness and greed; “light” implies a new disposition of God-awareness in place of self-absorption, and generosity towards others in place of self-centredness. From slavery to sin and the devil, we become the sons of God with all the rights and privileges of sonship, brothers and co-heirs with Jesus of everything that belongs to Him by His right of sonship.

Our destiny is instantly changed from the rubbish dump of wasted potential to life in the realm of the eternal God where death is abolished and we rule, in partnership with Jesus, over God’s entire recreated order, according to how we served our apprenticeship here on earth.

Now, for those who are willing to take the long look, that’s a trade-off even a fool would not want to miss. But what’s the catch? Jesus said, ‘Money!’

Human beings are so dazzled by money and things that they are completely blind to its transience and vulnerability. Money and possessions only apply to this life. Even if we could line our caskets with dollars or their equivalent, they would stay in the coffin and rot like our physical bodies because they belong to this present order of things and have no value or influence in the life of the spirit.

Looking at it from Jesus’ point of view, we realise how impossible it is for anyone to ‘achieve’ eternal life on his own. No self-help can cure blindness. It has to be a work of God, a rescue, if you will, from the fatal grip of ‘things’. But what does it take to get free? An honest recognition of money’s snare and a cry for help is where it begins. That’s all it takes for God to hear and respond.

It doesn’t only have to be money. It can be anything that comes between us and Jesus; addictions, emotions, habits, choices, people, reactions; whatever it is that blinds us to the value of eternal life can be removed by the power of God. All it needs is a ‘want to’ and an honest confession of need.

And Jesus does the rest!