Friday, December 17, 2010

(Pt.12) Can We Really Have Eternal Life?

Who We Are In Christ
Can We Really Have Eternal Life? (Chapter 12)  
Questions Answered

My brothers and sisters, a question that haunts the minds of many people is, "How do I know for sure that I have eternal life?" It is a question that keeps many people in bondage (most times even unawares to themselves) to the fear of death. People "fear" death for many different reasons, but the one I will focus on here and now is, there are people fearful of death because they fear they have somehow "un-done" what God said He has "done" - and that is give us eternal life when we accept Jesus as God's Son, our Lord, our Savior, our Way, our Truth and our LIFE! The Bible is very clear when it comes to this issue. God never intended for us to doubt the quality of life Jesus Christ gives us both in the here and now, and eternally. In order for our identity to be secure in Christ, we MUST come to an understanding of what ETERNAL life really means. But rest assured, God answers these important questions through His Spirit and His Word.

As human beings, we find it easy to forget 
about how consuming God's Power is! 
Your salvation is HIS! And He'll never let you go.

There are so many people I know that have just started their precious walk with our Savior, Jesus Christ. Many of them are newly born again Christians who have turned their backs of faith on the religion of isLam. These people have been held "hostage" by the man-made imaginations of religion. They have always been told that their eternal existence was based on a set of "scales", that weighed the "good against the bad" performances in deed throughout their lives. If the scales were tipped the wrong way? They were doomed to an eternal hell. What a horrible place to be within one's faith. They could never be certain of anything concerning Heaven or Hell! But like the rest of us, if they were truthful within themselves, they knew it wasn't looking good.

These ex-islaMists need to realize the TRUTH of God's Word concerning their eternal life in Heaven with Him! They need to know it because God wants them to experience many things in their relationship with Him and He wants them to be certain of a great many things. Three of them being "eternal love, eternal fellowship and eternal "Life" with God, as people that have accepted Jesus as Lord, Savior, their Way, their Truth and their Life!

In a way, I wish the ex-islaMist were the only one I needed to address in this writ. But this writ is for every other "religion" in this world that is void of the full Truth of Jesus... But even further yet? I must also address a great many that have even accepted Jesus as Savior! Many people that view themselves as "Christians" need to learn the full Truth of God's Word, accept it by faith in their hearts, and stop "denying the power thereof" (1Corinthians 1:18 and 2Timothy 3:5), even though they may be doing so with the best of intentions.

Our eternal life, if correctly understood, has atomic impact on every aspect of our being, including this flesh. By knowing what God has already done for us in the Spirit, it will free us in the physical to do His bidding, which namely is to simply spread the Good News of The Gospels of Salvation in whatever form God has designed. If we have error in our understanding of our eternal life, hope and future? We'll spend our physical life chasing our own tails on the innumerable performance treadmills, and we will get... nowhere.

Our eternal life, if correctly understood, has atomic impact 
on every aspect of our being, including this flesh.

Brothers and sisters in Christ? Join me as we reveal the plain Truth of God's Word about that which we have to look forward, concerning our eternal citizenship in Heaven! It's nothing other than Good News for your heart, mind, body and Spirit! Bless God's wonderful Name! Don't be surprised if you find yourself absorbed with your mouth full-open as you realize, maybe for the first time in your life, that this earth - this existence - is NOT your Home. You have so much more with which to look forward! One day soon, you are going Home my brother! You are going Home my sister! Bless God! Let's learn a little more about that! Shall we? Amen.

"And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life." - 1John 5:11-13

Dear friends? Are any of you familiar with rocket science? Well neither am I. And you'll find none of it here as God's Words to us as born again believers explains ever-so-simply what is available to us as born again Christians. And not only what's available to us, but how we get it!

In the above scripture, God offers up to us HIS TESTIMONY concerning our eternal life, that we may once and for all understand something ever so critical to our own personal existence in mind, body and soul which in turn enables everything concerning our effectiveness in His ministry of spreading the Truth of The Good News to a hurting and dying world! GOD'S OWN TESTIMONY clearly tells us that 'IN CHRIST', we have 'ETERNAL LIFE'! If we have The Son, we have eternal life! For those that do not have the Son, they do not have life! Also, John wrote these things so we could know we have eternal life!

"John wrote these things so we could know we have eternal life!" - 1John 5:13

Do you have to gumption to read God's Word for what it plainly says? 
Or will you choose "religion" over relationship? If you do, you're going 
to miss the biggest point God makes in the entire Bible. 
God wants you to KNOW that you have ETERNAL LIFE!

How about it my brothers and sisters? Can you read the Words of God given to man and have the Spirit given faith to believe what It says? The enEmy wants to steal this understanding away from you! Will you allow it? Do you want to believe you have eternal life? If so, there's Good News! You can do so with a clear conscience because it is IN the Word of God! Here it is, right here in your Bible! You now have ETERNAL LIFE! Eternal means "without end"! You are IMMORTAL!

The next verse of scripture is no doubt the most notorious, the most preached upon, the most reflected upon, and perhaps to many, the most cherished scripture in all the Bible and with good reason. It reveals the subject matter of the entire Bible, Old Testament and New Testament. The Theme of the entire Bible is captured right here in this passage:

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." - John 3:16

Folks? Think about it: What is salvation? 
Salvation is LIFE! If you don't have life, 
you're not saved from anything!
The sacrifice Jesus made on our behalf was the "preparation" for salvation!

Bless The Name of The Lord, Jesus Christ! The very motivation for God sending His own Son to die for our sins was God's Love for His children (that's you and I)... How absolutely incredible! When you stop to meditate upon that, does it awe you as it does me? That God would love "me" so much, that He would send His Son, Jesus Christ to die in order to pay the penalty for my sins? Even while I was yet an enemy (unsaved) of God? My sins were paid for by Jesus (Romans 5:10)? Folks? As hard as we may try, we can't understand that kind of Love, nor know the depths of which it reaches... But? We can understand that it exists, for God has just said so, hasn't He? Amen!

"For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son (*Matts Note: the preparation for salvation), much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. (Matt's Note: SALVATION IS LIFE! We are given LIFE through the RESURRECTION of Christ!)" - Romans 5:10

Lades and gentlemen? My brothers and Sisters? To those that worship Allah, Buddha or any Deity other than the Real God and His Son, Jesus Christ? Romans 5:10 makes a statement so profound... so incredible... so powerful... so loving and Graceful, that even many children of God fail to understand what it is saying in the flesh of man! It describes a fact about what Jesus accomplished for us that absolutely separates Jesus from any other man-made, man-drempt, man-imagined god in this world and beyond! Here is something Jesus did for us in which no other god can lay claim. God has never allowed saTan to tell such a lie, therefore I can only guess God never will allow saTan to tell such a thing. And if saTan can't spread this lie, then it might very well be considered blasphemy if man denied the power of this scripture here in Romans 5:10 !

While we ALL were yet sinners (UNSAVED; UN-BORN AGAIN IN SPIRIT; DEAD in Spirit & heart), Jesus paid the price for our sins, ALL of our sins, with His life! Wow! Can your god say that? Has he ever made that claim? Has your god ever said he loved you enough to take your sin away forever despite you being his enemy? Oh my Ever-Loving God! Of course not! Not once has any other god EVER made such a claim!

Do you want to know why no other god has claimed to have paid for your sins even while you were yet his enemy? You want to know the top three reasons why your god has never said that?

One is that any other god besides the God of Abraham is nothing more than man's imaginations. In any other God? There is no reality... only imagination.

The second reason you never heard of any other god doing this is because these man-made gods are all designed for control. Men want to control other men. To do this, men must remain in bondage to the man claiming to have the knowledge. No other subject has better results in the total control of men than that of religion.

A good third reason? There is no love where there is only imagination. No other god could possibly love you, because in reality, there is no other god.

In the scripture above that speaks to the world, God has again went out of His way to make certain things undeniable concerning the POWER of what Christ did! It tells us that believing in Jesus SAVES us from perishing! It tells us that when we believe in Christ, we have ETERNAL LIFE! But we need to get something straight:

Jesus paid the price for all your sins before we were even born! Look at Romans 5:10 again! Look at it hard! The harder you look at it, the longer you look at it, the harder it is going to be for you to deny the power thereof! There are two specific things mentioned there: your sins being reconciled and your life... your ETERNAL LIFE! They are two separate things! The forgiveness of your sin by God through the Blood of Jesus is NOT salvation! Again, look hard at Romans 5:10! The forgiveness of your sin was your "preparation" for salvation, making it possible that you be saved!

But even after you were forgiven of your sin, you are still... what? DEAD!  So what do you need to be saved? You need LIFE! You need LIFE! You need ETERNAL LIFE! Temporal life will be no good to you in the long run. You need ETERNAL LIFE to be saved! Thus? That's why Jesus demonstrated to us His Resurrection! He DEMONSTRATED the ETERNAL LIFE He offers to us!

As against the grain as what I'm about to say is to so many teachings of error out there, not one man or woman will go to the eternal lake of fire because of any fleshly sin they've committed here on this earth except one: their rejection of Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself said that sin was unbelief in Him (John 3:18).

If you properly understand Romans 5:10 and John 3:16-18, you will understand that what you need to be born again in the Spirit (saved by God's Grace), is that you need to repent... but you need not repent of every sin you've ever committed or will commit in the future. My friends? You couldn't do that if you tried with all your might (and many are trying hopelessly to do just that). Your sins were paid for while you were yet an enemy of God (Romans 5:10). If you wish to be born again, repent of your unbelief in Jesus Christ (John 3:18). In doing that, you will thank Him eternally for the forgiveness He has already provided you, and you will welcome Him into your heart as your Lord, your Savior, your Way (of life spiritually), your Truth and your LIFE (eternal)! Oh my God! When you realize THIS Truth, even your physical being will be atomically impacted! You'll be changed forever into a "new creature"! Oh my God, what a Gift! Praise His Name Forever!

Eternal Life is just that - it is eternal. If eternal life could be lost, it would have to be called "temporal life". We can be 100% secure in the fact that the eternal life we have been given in Christ can never be taken away from us! Note: This is not "thus saith Matt"! This is the EXACT Words of God, Himself!

"I give them eternal life, and they shall never parish; no one can pluck them out of my hand" - John 10:28

This author can certainly understand why the book of John is many people's favorite book in the Bible. It is dedicated to telling every born again believer the exact terms of our relationship with God as well as all the fine details. And what fine details they are! Bless God!

According to scripture, only God has the power to give eternal life. Once we have that "eternal" life, we can never perish! No one (including self here, because we, ourselves are a person) and no thing can cause us to lose this eternal life because we would have to pluck it out of God's Hand wouldn't we? Do you actually think so much of yourself that you think it possible to overpower God and do something HE says cannot be done? Think about it friends. Of course you can't. No one can.

"For the wages of sin is death, but the Gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord" - Romans 6:23

Some more detail in comparison form: The wages of sin is death. The GIFT of God is eternal life. Eternal life can ONLY be found in Jesus Christ. Therefore, when you received Christ Jesus, what did you receive? Ahhhh-hahahaha! Now you're getting it! Amen!

Wages are earned, but a gift is given freely. In his best efforts, man can only earn death and destruction (we know all about that don't we?). Eternal Life cannot be earned. It can only be given freely by God to those who will accept it by repenting of their lack of faith in Jesus Christ (John 3:18-19).

"Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus" - Romans 6:11

We can know, as born again believers in Christ, that we have eternal life because sin has been dealt with once and for all. If sin had not been forgiven and taken away, every time we sinned we would once again "die spiritually"! Think about it! Every time we sin, we would again die spiritually if it were not already dealt with! And what does Romans 6:11 say? Scripture says to "consider yourselves ALIVE to GOD in CHRIST JESUS"! DEAD to SIN - ALIVE to GOD! ALIVE! LIFE! That's what you have in Christ - LIFE! You see dear friends, it truly is "all about Jesus". In Jesus Christ, we have LIFE! By realizing this reality, we can know we have life even when we sin (and we will, we ALL will, despite our best efforts).

"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the Good Shepherd; the Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep." - John 10:10-11

saTan comes to steal (take away), kill and destroy. Jesus came to give us "life to the full", or full life. This Truth is manifest in God's Word in plain as black and white. Which "doctrine" are you following in your life? Do you have life to the fullest in Christ? Or do you allow saTan to come and steal it away from you every day? Tough questions for sure and quite hard to face. Never-the-less, you need to realize the Truth about what you have or don't have. Please be honest with yourself, and in your intellect as you search this out!

"The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." - Romans 5:21

Sin's reign leads to death. That is all God's Law can do for us individually. It makes it possible for us to know the difference between right and wrong. Without God's Law, there would be no such thing as right and wrong. Thus? The Law came so we would know that our transgressions only increase. Under the judgment of God's Law, there is but one verdict for each and every one of us: Guilty.

But Grace (Jesus Christ) came to reign over sin, bringing us righteousness to each and every individual that accepts Him. Also, in Grace (Jesus Christ), we have eternal life! Is that not what the scripture just said? Amen & Amen!

"For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day." - John 6:40

Oh my friends and family! I want to laugh out loud in the Joy the Truth of the scriptures provide! According to this scripture in John 6:40, what is the will of The Father, God? That everyone that believes on His Son, Jesus Christ will have ETERNAL LIFE and He (God) Himself will raise us up on our last day! Oh! How can it be refuted any longer even by the most educated? Folks? In Christ, we HAVE eternal life! I don't know about you, but when I realized this, it totally changed my attitude toward death, and it forever affected my relationship with God! Now I know I am secure. I am forever God's property and no one or nothing else will ever change that! Talking about freedom? It is true that the "knowledge" of the Truth will set you free! Amen!

Friends? Eternal life is found only in Christ. No where else can It be found. Therefore, since Christ lives in us, we have eternal life. The two cannot be separated. Eternal life begins the moment we accept Christ into our hearts by faith as our Lord, our Way, our Truth and our LIFE. Understanding this reality will free us from the fear of death and give us an eternal perspective on life.

Properly understanding the Truth of God's Word concerning your salvation will change your life forever... It will truly enable you to then be "Motivated By Grace" alone! Amen!

1 comment:

FresnoJoe said...

Thank You Father
Bless You LORD Jesus
Amen Spirit Of The Living God

"For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. Romans 11:29

Amen~!