Commenting on Ephesians 2:4-6:

"But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." ESV

Frederick Buechner writes:

"We think of Eternal life, if we think of it at all, as what happens when life ends (here). We would do better to think of it as what happens when life begins. St. Paul uses the phrase Eternal Life to describe the end and goal of the process of salvation. Elsewhere he writes the same thing in a remarkable sentence in which he says that the whole purpose of God's slogging around through the muck of history and of our own individual histories is somehow to prod us, jolly us, worry us, cajole us, and if need be, bludgeon us into reaching 'mature manhood . . . the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:13). In other words, to live Eternal Life in the full and final sense is to be with God as Christ is with him, and with each other as Christ is with us."

And, though there is a literal heaven to gain that Jesus and the Apostles and the Scriptures speak of, it is also just as true that if I right now 'am walking in the light as He is in the light and Christ's blood is cleansing me from all sin,' then I am having unbroken fellowship with Him and heaven - or as much as I can know of it down here on this earth - has begun for heaven is Jesus - in this life and the next - and fellow shipping with Him.

Posted by Steve Mounts at 8:26 AM

Print Page View Blog Reactions