Eternal Life: It Starts Now
And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
-John 17:3 (NKJV)
When Jesus died for us on the cross, the end goal was to restore us to God. Not just so that we could live forever in Heaven. We were created for God (Colossians 1:16) and to live in fellowship with Him. You will see this is true if you look in Genesis at the way Adam and Eve lived; daily they tended the garden but most importantly they met with God and fellowshipped with Him. They heard His voice. They knew Him. That is what Jesus came to restore to us to, the eternal life that comes from knowing God. But that eternal life is not something we need to wait to experience only once we have died. No, eternal life starts now, in this life.
Eternal Life Starts Now
Christ’s death on the cross accomplished so much more than most of us understand and realise. When Jesus hung on that cross, He was not just bleeding for us. He took every single kind of sin that you can think of onto His shoulders. He bore the shame and the condemnation that comes from all that. He also bore all our sickness, all that existed then and that exists now. In doing this Jesus was healing us and bringing us peace, (Isaiah 53:5) and He was ensuring that we would not have to suffer any of this, not only in the next life but in this one.
Most of us believe that all of this will only take place once we die and go to heaven. But that is not the case. Don’t you think it would be strange for Jesus to come and begin a ministry of healing, a ministry that brought freedom and life to all people and then die to further cement that ministry, then say “Alright you’ve had a taste of what Heaven will be like, I’m going back now and taking all this great stuff with me. You guys stay on earth and suffer a little more until I come back”? An action like that would be completely contrary to Jesus’ character and contradict what He said about His coming.
I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly Jesus says in John 10:10. This is why Jesus came. He did not come to leave us with some hope and then let us suffer through oppression, sickness, pain until He returns. Jesus has come to give us abundant life and this abundant life is the same eternal life He speaks of in John 17:3. This abundant and eternal life starts now and the first step to receiving it is knowing God.
Eternal Life is Knowing God
John 17:3 tells us that eternal life is knowing God. The reason it is so important to know God, and not just on a surface level but on a deep, intimate and spiritual level, is because it is only through a proper knowledge of God that we will understand all the good things that God has prepared for us and already given us. (Ephesians 1:17-20)
God is not just some distant being who watches what we do but has no interest in it. God is our Father. He is love and He loves us. (1 John 4:8, 10) Just think of an earthly father who really loves their son or daughter. Think of all the good things that that father does for his children, the way in which he takes care of and watches over them; the way he loves them. God’s love toward us is a thousand times greater than that man’s love for his children. God wants to take care of us more perfectly and more carefully than that man takes care of his children. When you begin making an effort to know God you will understand this.
You see knowing God, knowing who He is and what He wants for us, leads to eternal life because we begin believing His promises to us. When we know that God, without a shadow of doubt, loves us, has healed us now, has set us free from suffering now, it will change the way we live. We will begin to understand that God only wants the best for us and we will begin to live in God’s best for us. But to get here you need to make an effort to start understanding who God is and to do that you must spend time in the Word.
Knowing God through the Word
The Bible reveals to us who God is, it testifies to us. It is through the Word that we can begin knowing who God is. How perfect is that? We have a sort of “Guide to God” that we can carry around with us daily and that we can read from whenever we want. But many of us don’t spend as much time reading it as we should. It’s no wonder that we don’t know that God wants us to live an eternal and abundant now.
God is a good God, full of compassion and mercy. (Psalm 25:8, 145:8) There is height, breadth and depth to God; His ways and thoughts are higher than our own (Isaiah 55:9, Ephesians 3:18) and because of this it is not easy for us to grasp all that He is. But thank God, He has revealed them to us through His Word. If we pray and seek God through the Word with all our hearts, He will reveal Himself to us as well as all the riches in glory He has set aside for us.
God sent his Son to die so that we could be free from lack, from sickness, from all afflictions today and so that we could know Him. We are no longer slaves or victims and we are victorious in Christ. I pray that you begin to understand this so that you can go out and start living the eternal life that Jesus died to give us, now.
