April 14, 2021 | Eternity
John 5:24, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my Word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life. He does not come into judgement, but has passed from death to life.”
Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Have you ever stopped to think about eternity? Is it even possible to grasp? Can someone even put to vision something without end? I dare say we could never properly appreciate it. What person confined by time could ever understand being somewhere where time is no longer a factor?
I think all of us would have to agree that eternity is a hard thig to fathom but does that mean we are not already experiencing it. Deep down I believe we all know, believer and non-believer alike, that something is eternal, that this life is not all there is. Some will do their best to lock that thought out of their minds because they can’t reason it to reality, but we don’t need to have a reason for believing in eternity – we just know it intuitively. “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, He has put eternity in man’s heart, yet so that He cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
Unfortunately, many still fail to grab hold of what that something is! They get lost in their worldliness and think their inability to grasp eternity means that eternity cannot exist. They ignore that yearning in their heart because eternity is a godly thing and they have not let God into their life to show them what that something is. Because of this, they risk making the consequences of their ignorance an eternal regret.
When we think of eternal life in the Christian perspective we tend to think of heaven, but that is not the only destination described. In Matthew 25:41 -46 we read these Words, “Then he will say to those on his left, depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’
Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
In the end, eternity will greet every soul, some to everlasting glory and others to everlasting torment. Some will find themselves at the foot of Christ, others will wallow in eternal regret. That life begins as we live our lives on earth through the choices we make, they ways we serve our God and the people we choose to follow. Eternity has already claimed you, as we live this life, we must choose which eternity to live.
Jesus died to make everlasting glory a reality for all believers. By Him taking on our sin and paying out debt, we have escaped eternal torment and have replaced it with a forever free of all the things that sin brought to us in this life. Sin will be no more and death an afterthought. We will be in the company of angels and the souls of those we loved here on this earth. That is certainly something to look forward to, but, until then, we must begin our eternal life the right way by trusting fully in our God to guide us from this life to the next.
So, which eternity are you going to strive for and whom will you share its glory with? God has done for us what we could never do, but for that to benefit others they must hear the Good News. Let’s take with us as many people to eternal bliss as we can and help them avoid a life that never ends filled with what could have been. That is the truest definition of hell. Please pray with me:
Heavenly Father, thank you for providing us a place that we may live forever without the limitations we find on earth. Lead us to a truer understanding as to just what eternity means and help us to share your Good News so that others may experience it also. Amen.
