9 minutes
We study about the Garden of Eden and we often feel drawn to its beauty and abundance and innocence. It must have been wonderful to live in such a pristine environment, with every need met, to experience an intimate marriage full of delight in each other, and to have a satisfying sense of purpose in ruling over God’s creation together. We sometime loose focus and talk about the future in terms of a return to, or restoration of, Eden. But to speak of the new creation in terms of a restoration of Eden is actually a reduction of what God has planned for His people and for His world. Eden was never intended to be the end. It was always headed somewhere. Somewhere even more glorious: an eternity with new heavens and a new earth. Eden met perfection but eternity will always pursue potential. Just as Eden was not all that God intended, nor was Adam and Eve. The tree in the garden brought disobedience. The tree at Calvary brought obedience. The cross is our guidepost to eternity. Eden was limited. The first pair were sinless, but they were vulnerable to temptation. They were alive, but they were vulnerable to death. They were made in God’s image, and crownedwith a measure of His glory, but they weren’t yet as glorious as God intended them to be. What eternity will have is never a temptation, it will be forever secure in holiness, never a thought of evil, of waywardness of any sort, never a death of any kind and most of all the fullness of the stature of Christ in its inhabitants. God created eternity for the escalation of all excellences.
God created eternity as a focus of our learning, that we might grow a sense of our identity as citizens of heaven, that changes how we see ourselves now. Nothing can capture our anticipation of being just like Christ but seeing God face to face. Our love to Christ begins on earth and the expectation of the love relationship in eternity must inform how we live by faith here on earth. Eternity is that evidence, that substance that God has made us for Himself, and our heart is restless until it rests in Him. We are created with a knowledge of God and a longing for eternity. As God grants us the trials of life under the sun in perceiving the ways of God, He pushes us to recognize our innate awareness of eternity when God’s ways are incomprehensible. God has given us the capacity to discern that history has a purpose, even if we are unable to understand fully what God has done from the beginning to the end. Being confronted with our finitude should increase our dependence on God. We are to live our lives from the vantage point of eternity. We must show ourselves as the people of History under God’s providential rule that live far beyond just the moment. We are made to know God. Nothing apart from eternity with Him will satisfy our deepest longings. And it is Christ who provides the way for us to dwell in the presence of God forever.
I Peter 3:18
We ought to recognize that every Lord’s Day is a foretaste of eternity. It developes in us this sense of “wanderlust” knowing of that soon coming journey with Christ. Eternity is more than God restoring His creation to the state of integrity that was Eden. Christ came to accomplish what was necessary to open the better way for us. When we join to the risen Christ now we have the newness and glory and life of the greater Eden breaking into our life. We aren’t yet experiencing redemption in the full and complete way we one day will, but it is breaking us up into the shivers for the potter’s remaking.
Revelation 2:26-28
God’s preparation pattern for His people is overwhelmingly impressive. Consider the wilderness theme; the first couple was sent into the Edenic wilderness because of sin, the Israelites’ in their wilderness wanderings were being made peculiar in the presence of God dwelling in the sanctuary, and Jesus’ perfect contentment in the wilderness in preparation to face the enemy face to face. Note the thread of emptiness without God that was the experience. We too will have an emptiness experience of wilderness ourselves in trials and tribulations. It must be endured to heighten the sense of awareness and elevated consciousness beyond the mere dimensions of human understanding. God sees the emptiness in our life as His greatest opportunity, because God does His best work with empty as He fills it with Himself. We are God’s work on full display. This is God performing that begins to shape our perspective on whatever it is we lack. We receive instruction toward God-ward living, and how keeping eternity in mind can shape our current assessments of truth. And when God has a seriously faithful people who are informed and influenced, knowing that eternity is not simply a destination but the way of reverent expectation to worship God in Spirit and in Truth by His transcendant design...the ultimate spirituality of God’s holy law to be written in lively stone.
Eternity is our ultimate rest. This world is our tour of duty per se - one continuous assignment after another of waging spiritual warfare. We are not alone in this. Christ is with us always. Our faith is that powerful means to draw upon to guide us to the ultimate eternal union with God the Father and God the Son. Our coming to Christ now is the spiritual essence of our anticipation of dwelling together with all created beings in the declared glory of God’s excellence.
Our thoughts of eternity contain massive theological truths that move beyond the biblical narrative. All nations, partaking from a tree with root spanning both sides of a crystal clear river of the water of life, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb, bearing twelve kind of frutis every month, whose leaves heal all who are already changed into incorruptible immortality. Humanity existing in God’s image. There is no temple there...eternity is God’s Holy of Holies.
Will scripture be relevant in eternity? Hear the grand design of God that He is empowered and has undertaken to set before us. To know Him, the only true God, and all the discoveries and principles of truth, and Jesus Christ in whom we will have every excellency in duration in the vision and fruition of an eternal God. In the perfection of eternal life will be the intuitive knowledge of God and Christ. We will rejoice in eternity as it will take even longer to know the inexhaustible glories of God. Our understanding may extend itself as far as it will. Eternity is created for us that we may never exhaust the beauty and lovliness of God. We are now upon the threshold of possessing eternity. Let us not think of it as an unending progression of time. Let us think of the experience of possessing life as in Christ. It is then that eternity is not something that has no beginning, no ending, it is the ever revealing of the awareness of God where all things are woven into His love. God’s love is not the end, it is the aim declaring His eternal purpose which never ends. Our words, our thoughts, regardless of how intentional can only begin to grasp what eternity really means.
God created eternity to be a motivator for our obedience and that we be called to holiness. God created eternity that we might know of our reward for walking through undeserved hatred and abuse and holding to His calling so firmly that nothing could overwhelm our mind. God created eternity that our ultimate vision is heavenward, and our purpose is to bring people there. Eternity offers us untold performances of love. From grasping the mysteries of heaven to glimpsing every promise of God. God created eternity that He may be ever present in our life. God created eternity that His infinite essence will be found in peace, in ease, in glory. Eternity makes heaven to be heaven.
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