June 3 – LD 22, Day 7: Eternal Life
by Prof Herman Hanko
Read: Revelation 22:1-9
The final article in the
Apostolic Confession reads: “I believe in…the life everlasting.” And so the teacher who is showing us what glorious things the Bible
says about our future, now teaches us a few things concerning “life
everlasting.”
We must learn, first of
all that we cannot know very much about what everlasting life is like. To drive
this home to us, our teacher quotes I Cor
2:9. That shall have to be enough for us.
We will, however, I am
sure, when finally we open our eyes in glory, say the same thing that the Queen
of Sheba said when she saw the glory of Solomon’s kingdom: “The one half . . .
was not told me” (2 Chr 9:6).
Our teacher tells us one
surprising thing: we do have the beginnings of heaven in our hearts already
while we are here in this earth, struggling along on our pilgrim’s journey. “I
feel in my heart the beginning of eternal joy.”
Our happiness is a true
happiness, for we know that we belong to Christ, are cared for by him, and will
in a very short time see him face to face. There are moments of great joy when
in a flash, the greatness of God’s perfections is seen by us,
when the blessedness of the forgiveness of sins makes us sing; when our musings
on our everlasting destination suddenly bursts upon us in all its spendour.
Our teacher also points
us to the fact that we shall inherit perfect salvation. This is a delightful
prospect. Here on earth we still sin so much. We confess our sins and find
forgiveness with God, but the next day it is the same old story: sin, sin, sin.
We weary of sin, of the battle against it, of the times we are overcome by it.
But in heaven we will never sin again, but will be perfect in loving our God
and our neighbor.
This is the real
blessedness of heaven. Not sunny skies, meadows filled with flowers, cooling
breezes, beautiful landscapes, singing birds; but think of it: we will never
sin again!
We shall be in heaven
with all the saints. We shall meet Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Peter,
Athanasius, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and all the saints. We shall be with the
angels who will be our servants. We shall be with Christ; to live with him and
see the adoring look in his eyes for us, his bride.
And we shall praise God
forever. Each will have his own story to tell. It will be a story of a foul
sinner saved by grace: Rahab, Ruth, the Philippian jailer, you, me. But the story will be about
God’s grace in us.
Forever
and ever. One minister once described everlasting as being like a bird
which takes one tiny bit of stone from a huge cliff, carries it a thousand
miles, comes back for another, and does this a billion
years. Everlasting life is longer than that.
Our home is everlasting.