Eternal life is to be experienced. This is what Jesus died and rose for, Romans 5:21, ”so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Eternal life is ours to experience now because of Jesus. He “brings” eternal life to us, to use Paul’s term, in two steps. First, by his death, and secondly, by his life. Jesus’ death is the first step. Through his death he brings us right up to the gates of eternal life and unlocks them for us so we can walk right in. And as we walk in, that’s when Jesus’ life takes over. God’s grace now expands from saving us by Christ’s death to actually “reigning” in our lives through what Christ’s life now brings us.
In Romans 6:4, Paul talks of this in more everyday terms by saying Jesus was raised from the dead so that “we may live a new life.” Jesus is now alive to help us experience a completely new life. It’s like the children in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The moment they stepped out of the wardrobe into Narnia, their lives would never be the same. Everything would be new.
It means everything will be new for us, too. Everything will be different as the living Christ now “saves us through his life.” It’s like living in Narnia. At the beginning, everything is totally new for the children, and they have no idea what’s happening to them, or why. But gradually it begins to dawn on them what’s going on. They get a clue here and a clue there, just like Paul drops clues on us.
We know from Paul, for instance, that this new life we’re meant to experience involves rejoicing and reconciliation (5:11). We have no idea what those words mean in God’s terms because we’ve never experienced them before. But at least we’ve got a clue where Jesus is taking us. It’s a clue what this new life is like. In this new life of ours, we experience a completely new relationship with God that brings us enormous joy.
The same thing happened to the children in Narnia in their relationship with Aslan. They had no idea as they entered Narnia that they’d end up in a relationship with a lion that would be so close and so affectionate it would devastate them when he died, and bring them huge joy when he was alive again. They’d never experienced such things before. But this is what Jesus has in store for us too, as he accompanies us now in eternity…
Filed under: Entering eternity now
