Eternal Life: Embracing Our True Calling in Christ

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The importance of clarity about what lies at the end of the Christian pilgrimage seemed to Richard Baxter incalculable. The more strongly one desires an end, the more carefully and diligently one will use the means to it. The love of the end is the Poise and spring which setteth every wheel a going. [00:02:04]

Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we shall be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him because we will see him as he is. Everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself. Every wheel of purification is set in motion by that vision of what we will be. [00:05:13]

The dead body that is sown is perishable; it is raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. [00:05:58]

Marshall Shelley's story of his son Toby, who lived only two minutes, underscores the eternal perspective. Toby was not created for this brief earthly existence but for eternity. This challenges us to consider that our true calling may not be fully realized in this life but in the life to come. [00:12:26]

Store up treasure for yourselves as a good foundation for the future, so that you may take hold of that which is truly life. I want to know what that means. That's what this message is about. So my focus is not on Glory. I love to talk about Glory. It's on life. [00:14:54]

One of the glories of Christianity is that this future life, this real life, has come into the world by Christ, by the spirit, and it is Wonder of Wonders dwelling in hundreds of people in this room. First John 5: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his son. [00:18:04]

Jesus said in John 17 verse 3, this is the most important verse I can think of for getting at this question: this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. The true life, real life, final life, Divine Life, is to know God and his son. [00:35:12]

God's life is absolute Eternal being, is a life of knowing and loving, and our eternal life, true life, real life, Divine Life, comes into that knowing and loving and shares in it by the spirit. Before there was creation, and when there was only God, God knew and God loved. [00:40:00]

Lest you think or we think that true life, eternal life, God's life in us will become boring after some millions of years, remember two things: first, remember that this life is a loving rooted in a knowing, and the knowing will increase forever, so that the loving increases forever. [00:47:15]

Their knowledge will increase to all eternity, with what increased with what? He answers, a whole million million ages of those great and most glorious things that come to pass in heaven. And you get that things happen in the age to come to happen. They're new, and so your knowledge is new. [00:48:00]

The true life that we will have for countless future ages will not be boring, not only because it will be a life of ever-increasing knowledge of God and ever-increasing love of God and ever-increasing enjoyment of God as he reveals more and more of himself and his ways. [00:51:18]

For the sake of your own soul and for the good of your people, take hold on life, which is life indeed. Father, this world is so desperately in need of people whose Wheels are set of going by the hope of life, people who know this is not it, this is not it, this is shadow. [00:53:23]

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