http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15096736/christ-loved-himself-in-loving-the-church
John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Providence.
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My Cancer-Free Answered Prayer: How God Healed Our Little Girl
Death is our mortal enemy — an enemy that Jesus defanged (Hebrews 2:14–15), and one day will utterly destroy (Revelation 21:4). He revealed his omnipotent power over death by raising people from the dead (Mark 5:41–42; Luke 7:11–17; John 11:33–34). Through his own resurrection, he revealed that all authority in heaven and earth is his (Matthew 28:16). D-Day over death for all who believe has arrived (2 Timothy 1:10), and V-Day’s future has been secured (1 Corinthians 15:25–26).
How then should we pray for God to heal our dying loved ones? On the one hand, until Jesus returns, death is an inescapable reality for everyone (Hebrews 9:27). So praying for healing isn’t always God’s will. In the case of a dying great-grandmother, for example, we may be more in line with God’s will not by praying for healing, but by praying for her to finish well (Philippians 1:23), trusting that because her Savior has conquered death for her, she will never see it, not even for a second (John 8:51).
On the other hand, because Jesus robbed death of its life-stealing power by bearing the full wrath of God for our sins (2 Corinthians 5:21), we sometimes should pray that he would snatch our loved ones from the grasp of death. We can pray for miracles, asking him to spare us the sorrow upon sorrow that comes from seemingly untimely deaths (Philippians 2:27), even as we trust him for his answer, whatever it might be.
‘She Can’t Breathe’
In a recent article, I shared how God humbled me and taught me to trust him through my daughter’s battle with cancer when she was 8 years old. Despite our prayers for God to spare her life, she drifted closer and closer to death’s door. The new “promising” experimental treatment we authorized further robbed us of hope when it gave her a life-threatening side effect called VOD of the liver.
The worst part was how she was laboring to breathe. That’s the final line to cross before death, isn’t it — no longer being able to breathe the breath of life (Genesis 2:7; 3:19)? Our doctor told us that if she continued to struggle, they would have to put her on a ventilator. They would sedate her and strap her down before intubation so that she could not pull out the ventilator. Taking that step could mean that my wife and I would never speak with our daughter again.
Then it happened. It was two o’clock in the morning when the pediatrics ICU doctor woke me up. “We have to put your daughter on a ventilator right now. She can’t breathe, and her carbon-dioxide level is past the emergency benchmark.” Everyone had been dreading this moment, but here it was. Desperate, I called my wife so she could rush to the hospital, perhaps in time to speak one last time with her baby, but she didn’t pick up the phone. My daughter was dying, and the person she loved more than anyone on earth wouldn’t be there to hold her and say goodbye. I was broken.
Waiting and Praying
Then, like the voice of an angel, the nurse whispered to me, “Dad, if you are not comfortable, they can’t make you do this.” And so, when our doctor returned with the ventilator, I told her I wanted to wait and pray. The doctor’s countenance morphed. Her voice steeled. She said that if they didn’t intubate my daughter right then, she could go into cardiac arrest. The doctor warned me repeatedly, but each time I firmly told her I wanted to pray and wait. I’m no doctor, and as a rule, I hear and receive doctors’ recommendations. But in this moment, I couldn’t shake the sense that God wanted me to pray and wait.
“God calls us to pray, believing that there is nothing too difficult for him.”
Eventually, everyone left the room, and I dropped to my knees. “God, you said if we ask you for a fish, you won’t give us a serpent. If we ask you for bread, you won’t give us a stone. God, I am asking you to give me my daughter’s life.” I prayed through the night. Each hour I prayed, my daughter’s carbon-dioxide levels dramatically improved, and her breathing grew stronger. In the morning, her doctor came into the room and removed the order for the ventilator, and the following week, he let her come home for a weeklong visit before her second round of chemotherapy.
Our daughter, who had been at death’s door only a few days before, was home with no detectable cancer to be found in her body. God and God alone did that.
Amazing Providence
My daughter was cancer-free, but she was far from being out of danger. Because the first round of chemotherapy had almost killed her, her bone-marrow specialist wanted her to skip the final two rounds and go straight to receiving a bone-marrow transplant. Our oncologist disagreed and told us he believed bone-marrow transplants work best when even the imperceptible levels of cancer are reduced by the final rounds of chemotherapy.
Because they couldn’t agree, they left the decision with us, giving us the weekend to decide whether to continue with two more rounds of chemo or go straight to a transplant. So my wife and I went away for a night to pray and seek wisdom from a multitude of counselors. We called friends with medical backgrounds, although we hadn’t spoken to some of them in over twenty years. And how God providentially answered our prayers seemed even more amazing than how he miraculously strengthened my daughter’s breathing.
Oncology Expert
We called Judy, who used to attend a UCLA Bible study with me. I had heard that she worked as an oncology nurse at a children’s hospital in Los Angeles. She told me that the doctor who trained our oncologist was actually at her hospital. Then she said, “You won’t believe this, but the doctor who wrote the national experimental protocol that your daughter is on just walked past me, and I’ll check with her!” Both doctors agreed that under our circumstances, we could go straight to the bone-marrow transplant and skip the final two rounds of chemotherapy.
Bone-Marrow Expert
Then my wife, who years ago had spent a year in medical school, called a former classmate, Larry, who suggested that we reach out to the UCLA bone-marrow transplant department. When we pulled up their webpage, my wife recognized a high-school classmate, LaVette, and I recognized one of the doctors, Ted Moore, with whom I had attended a UCLA Bible study. We called the number listed, and my wife’s high-school friend picked up. She said she had never answered that phone but had just so happened to be walking past it when it rang. Dr. Moore was in a meeting, but she would have him call us back as soon as he was free. Within the hour, I answered the phone to “Hey, Bobby. It’s Ted.” The unassuming UCLA student I knew from sixteen years ago had become Dr. Theodore Moore, a renowned expert in bone-marrow transplants. With complete confidence, he counseled us to go straight to the transplant.
VOD Expert
Finally, we called Dr. John Vierling, a liver specialist. My wife and I had met him years ago when her cousin asked my wife to sing at the funeral for Dr. Vierling’s son. Our concern was whether having a history of VOD would make the risk of undergoing a bone-marrow transplant too great for our daughter, because a major risk from these transplants is contracting VOD. As God would have it, Dr. Vierling was an expert on VOD, and he counseled us that we could safely proceed with the transplant.
Through the unveiling of his amazing providence, God had answered our prayer. We authorized our daughter to undergo a bone-marrow transplant at City of Hope eighteen years ago. Eighteen years later, she is a walking cancer-free miracle of God.
He Holds Every Breath
I know my daughter’s story is just one among many stories that end so differently. We journeyed through our trial with four other families — three children my daughter’s age and one adult, all of whom had similar types of cancer. We prayed for each of them, but none of them survived. God does not answer every prayer for healing. So, how might he have us pray when our loved ones need a miracle?
“Our primary prayer is always that God would prepare the hearts of our dying loved ones to see Jesus.”
First, armed with the trust that God sovereignly ordains our prayers as a means to accomplish his ends, we freely pray for miracles, as Elijah did (James 5:17–18). Honestly, before God healed my daughter, I would pray for God to heal others, but I didn’t necessarily expect to see a miracle. For that, I repent. God calls us to pray, believing that there is nothing too difficult for him, including healing our loved ones on their deathbeds.
At the same time, however, we pray with the kind of faith that does not rest on God saying yes to our prayers (2 Corinthians 12:8–9). By his grace, we can accept his answer when it’s no, as David did (2 Samuel 12:16–23), and we can submit to his will and worship him when we can’t understand his answer, as Job did (Job 1:21; 42:1–3).
Christians also embrace the reality that, until Jesus returns, everyone we love will die, and our lives are but a vapor in light of eternity, whether we die at age 10 or 100. So our primary prayer is always that God would prepare the hearts of our dying loved ones to see Jesus, and that he would grant our unbelieving loved ones repentance and faith toward Jesus. Our first prayer for our daughter was for her soul’s salvation.
A wise friend reminded me, when we were enduring our trial, that God holds the pen that is writing our story. Everything God writes is good: in the end, we will see his story as good, and in the present, we believe it to be for our good. So yes, pray for a miracle, and trust that God holds your loved one’s next and last breaths.
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The Spiritual Discipline of Sky: How the Heavens Shape a Heart
Sometime soon, consider conducting a little experiment. Grab a jacket, go outside, find a nice patch of grass to sit or lie upon, and then, for fifteen minutes, simply stare at the sky. Having conducted such an experiment myself, perhaps I can give you a sense of what to expect.
Expect, first of all, to feel strange. Unless you find a private patch of grass, you may be the object of spectacle and whispered concern. Thrust such discomfort behind you and stare on.
Expect also a small reacquaintance with natural elements often avoided: some dew upon the back, some aphid upon the wrist. Embrace them. For these fifteen minutes at least, you are an outdoorsman.
Then perhaps, with eyes upward, you may wonder what in the sky could keep you occupied for a full quarter of an hour. Bored, you may feel an urge for your phone; you may look at your watch and find that, no, ten minutes have not yet passed — only four.
But then, at last, you may begin to notice. You discern some variety among the billows above, and words from sixth-grade science class begin to drift beside them. Are those cirrus clouds? you wonder. And that — a cumulonimbus? You allow yourself to see again through a child’s eyes and observe now not clouds but the shapes of seals and bears, dogs and dragons. Between white wisps, you spy a faded half-moon, hastening late to its rest.
And then, maybe, you will begin to feel small, as the few square feet beneath you fit like a tiny photo in a large frame. A question may trail to your lips with new feeling: “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:4).
Finally, if the Spirit opens your eyes and ears, you may hear a hint of that silent song always sounding: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). You may suddenly feel not alone, but enfolded within the vast and personal presence of God — glorious as the sun, inescapable as the sky, near as the next breath of air. And you may go back to your day different, carrying with you the song of the sky.
The Heavens Declare
The word heaven — usually referring to the sky — appears some seven hundred times in Scripture, from the very first verse (“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” Genesis 1:1) to one of the last (“I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,” Revelation 21:2). Saints of old found something worth seeing in the sky. They looked up a lot.
To them, the sky was wonderful. It was a castle for King Sun and Queen Moon (Genesis 1:16). A celestial clock chiming the days and seasons (Genesis 1:14). A spacious tent for the children of man (Isaiah 40:22). A stage for the players of cloud and wind, rain and lightning (Job 37:2–4). A canvas colored daily. A ceiling more beautiful than the Sistine Chapel’s. A friend ever familiar, ever new.
“To our fathers in the faith, the shapes of the clouds always found a way to spell one word: G-L-O-R-Y.”
And yet, the sky was wonderful only because it was something else first: personal. From clouds to constellations, from eastern rise to western set, the sky was God’s work. He names the stars and nightly bids them shine (Psalm 33:6; Isaiah 40:26). He raises the morning sun and scatters midnight shadows (Matthew 5:45). He throws thunderheads across the horizon and aims their every drop (Psalm 29:3–4; 147:15–18). And therefore, to our fathers in the faith, the shapes of the clouds always found a way to spell one word: G-L-O-R-Y (Psalm 19:1; 29:9).
Something deep within us answers back. Days of gray oppress the soul. Smog has a way of clogging not only the atmosphere but our hearts. When, some months ago, the smoke from Canadian wildfires coated Minnesota skies with ash, the loss was palpable. We may feel as dour as Puddleglum by disposition; even still, we can’t bear to live in Underland.
And yet, apparently, on ordinary days of blue and white, we can bear to give the sky barely a passing glance. While our forefathers traced the shape of God’s goodness in the clouds, and heard the shout of his glory from the sun, we often run through the world with heads covered, like men holding umbrellas on clear days. Fifteen minutes, even under a sky of wonders, can feel like a stretch.
Mobile Roofs
Several forces conspire to keep our heads down — some new, some old. We might group them under two main heads: we are disenchanted and distracted.
The biblical writers bear the marks of a holy enchantment with the heavens, an enchantment many find difficult to kindle today. Part of the problem lies in our large electrified cities, where streetlights substitute for stars. God’s word to Abram to count the celestial lights holds less force for urbanites like us, who often can count them quite easily. The moon has lost its army, and we have lost our awe.
Many also feel too enlightened, too scientific, to be much impressed with blue-sky magic and starry spells. The ancients may have heard the sky-clock chime; we have cracked it open and seen the gears. And so, we have heard many intelligent people say something along the lines of Stephen Hawking’s quip: “The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies.” Such words corrode wonder.
Perhaps most of us, however, face a larger foe: distraction. We are, in the main, a hurrying and scurrying people, a buying and selling people, a screened and headphoned people, and we have neither time nor interest to consider the sky. We may catch a billow of cloud reflected on the screen, but such heavenly reminders rarely raise us in self-forgetful, still-thumbed worship. I, for one, often spend more time looking at the weather app than the weather.
“I, for one, often spend more time looking at the weather app than the weather.”
But even if we were untethered from our pocket portals, who has the time to walk at the pace of clouds? As children, we could spare a few moments to lie upon the grass and spot animals above, but no longer. Now we have places to go, people to see. Now we run through our days, and you can run faster with your head down.
Punching Skylights
In a world like ours, and with roofs like ours, we need to find a way of getting out and looking up. We need to punch some skylights through this plaster. And not simply because a little wonder does wonders for the soul, but also because, for those who know Scripture, the sky reinforces lessons we can hardly live without. What might happen, then, if we made a habit of staring at the blue with Bible in hand?
We might feel, first, a deeper sense of God’s greatness. The biblical writers didn’t need a telescope to know the heavens were huge, nor did they need knowledge of galaxies to feel themselves small — too small for significance, even (Psalm 8:4). The sky, to them, was enormous.
Still, vast as it may be, it was only the finger-work of God (Psalm 8:3), a house far too small to hold him (1 Kings 8:27). The heavens have always been God’s giant throne (Isaiah 66:1); modern astronomy, in telling us the throne is even larger than we thought, simply underlines the greatness of the one who sits upon it. He is “Lord of heaven and earth” (Acts 17:24), outstripping the skies by infinity.
Yet as we start to feel small beneath such greatness, we might also feel a fresh sense of God’s goodness. If he “determines the number of the stars” and “gives to all of them their names,” then no broken heart lies hidden from his sight (Psalm 147:3–4). If the sky rises to unthinkable heights, then God’s steadfast love in Christ must outstretch our small assumptions (Psalm 103:11). And if God upholds the “fixed order” of the heavens without fail, then his faithfulness to his loved ones will never cease, no matter how dark the night or late the dawn (Jeremiah 31:35–36).
For those in Christ, the sky everywhere proclaims that curious mixture of our smallness and our significance. And small but significant people have a wonderful way of walking through this world: humble and happy, self-forgetful and satisfied, lowly and yet, remarkably, loved by the Lord of heaven.
Light of Lights
Most of all, however, the sky offers a big, ever-present reminder of a big, ever-present truth: we are made for God. The sky’s bigness is a sign that we are not the center; its song is a soundtrack of a story not our own. Like small planets to the sun, we orbit God, not he us. And our joy and glory lie in living before him as pervasively as we live beneath the sky.
For one day, this celestial parable will give way to the Person; the sky will not simply sing his glory, but show the Glorious One. The sky, so steady and familiar, will “roll up like a scroll” (Isaiah 34:4), and the lyrics of love written there will give way to the Lord of love.
God sowed this tapestry to be torn. He built this firmament to be broken. He laid the beams of the heavens so that one day they might become the stage for his Son’s return.
One day our Lord will split the sky,The joy or dread of every eye.The sun will fall before his face,The moon will hurry to its place,And every star will see the sightOf heaven’s Glory burning bright.The Morning Star will take his throneAnd, Light of lights, will shine alone.
Look up, then, as one in darkness aching for dawn. Wait at this window like a wife who hears that the war is ended, her husband comes. Befriend this path on which our Lord will soon return. Consider it worthwhile, even every now and then, to stop and hear again the song of the sky.
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What Will Man Be Like for Countless Future Ages?
What I have in mind in this message is not primarily what our human nature is now, nor the process by which we become what we will be, nor the events of death or the intermediate state between death and resurrection, nor the event of resurrection or judgment — but the final condition or nature of redeemed humanity when history as we know it is completely past, and the resurrection is past, and the judgment is past, and the new heavens and the new earth have come, and the final condition of what we will be like for future ages has come.
Why Does This Future Reality Matter Now?
Why is this question — and this reality of our final condition, in which we will spend billions of ages — worthy of our attention? To answer that question, I quote with great approval J.I. Packer (who is citing Richard Baxter):
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. [Baxter:] “The Love of the end is the poise and spring, which setteth every Wheel a going.” But an unknown end will not be loved. “It is a known, and not merely an unknown God and happiness, that the soul doth joyfully desire.” Such desire will then give wings to the soul. “It is the heavenly Christian that is the lively Christian. It is strangeness to heaven that makes us so dull. It is the end that quickens to all the means; and the more frequently and clearly this end is beheld, the more vigorous will all our motion be. . . . We run so slowly, and strive so lazily, because we so little mind the prize.” (Honouring the People of God: Collected Shorter Writings of J.I. Packer on Christian Leaders and Theologians, 274, emphasis added)
Is that not the mindset of the apostle? “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13–14).
Baxter again: “The Love of the end is the . . . spring which setteth every Wheel a going. . . . It is the end that quickens to all the means. . . . We run so slowly, and strive so lazily, because we so little mind the prize.” That is a thoroughly biblical understanding of how Christians are to be energized during this vapor’s breath on earth. Consider a few texts.
1 John 3:2–3
Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
The wheel of purity and radical Christian living now is set “a going” by the hope of what we will become when we see the Lord. That’s John’s inspired answer to why we should talk about “What Will Man Be Like for Countless Future Ages?”
1 Corinthians 15:42–43, 52, 58
[The dead body that] is sown is perishable; what is raised is 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. . . . Therefore [that’s the key word here!], my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
“It is the end that quickens all the means; and the more frequently and clearly this end is beheld, the more vigorous will all our motion be. . . . We run so slowly, and strive so lazily [and abound so little in the work of the Lord], because we so little mind the prize” — because we so little mind what it will be like to be raised imperishable, glorious, powerful. If we love this end, we will abound in the work of the Lord.
2 Corinthians 6:16–7:1
“I will be their God, and they shall be my people. . . . And I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.
“The Love of the end . . . setteth every Wheel a going.” The engine of holiness is the hope of what we will be for countless ages in the presence of the Lord Almighty, who calls himself our Father.
2 Corinthians 4:16–17
We do not lose heart. . . . [Why? Because] this light momentary affliction [a mere eighty or ninety years] is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.
“The hope of glory is the great heart-sustaining force in our momentary lives.”
The hope of glory — what we will be and see for countless ages — is the great heart-sustaining force in our momentary lives. We will not lose heart. “The more frequently and clearly this end is beheld, the more vigorous [the more hearty] will all our motion be.”
How then shall we maintain our joy and love our enemies without this clear hope of what we will be?
Matthew 5:11–12
Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.
For countless ages, the reward of what we will be and what we will see will be great beyond reckoning. Over and over, the Bible makes it clear that it is the love of the end — what we will be like for countless future ages — that sets “every Wheel a going” in this life.
Will Our Future Life Be Our True Life?
To bring a particular focus to my question, let me recount a story that Marshall Shelley told 29 years ago about the loss of one of his children. Marshall Shelley was the former editor of Leadership Journal for 34 years, and he is now a professor at Denver Seminary. He raises a question that helps me limit my focus from the endless possibilities of how to talk about our final condition.
I was with my son his entire life — two minutes. He entered the world of light and air at 8:20pm on November 22, 1991. And he departed, the doctor said, at 8:22.
“Do you have a name for the baby?” asked one of the nurses. “Toby,” Susan said. “It’s short for a biblical name, Tobiah, which means ‘God is good.’”
John’s vision of eternity suggests what is in store for all the saints: “The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. . . . And they will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:3–5). Serving God and reigning — those tasks sound like they have more significance than the careers most of us pursue in our lifetimes. Could it be that when I finally begin serving with God’s name on my forehead, I will find that this is what I was truly created for? I may find I was created not for what I would accomplish on earth, but for the role I will fulfill in heaven.
Why did God create a child to live two minutes? He didn’t. . . . God created Toby for eternity. He created each of us for eternity, where we may be surprised to find our true calling which always seemed just out of reach here on earth. (“Two Minutes to Eternity,” emphasis added)
That’s a provocative phrase — “our true calling” or “what I was truly created for.” As if we have a calling in this life, but in the life to come we have a true calling. What would that mean? I was created for purposes in this life, but in the life to come, he asks, will I find what I was truly created for? Or is that question even biblical?
Lay Hold of Real Life
I think the Bible does encourage us to think of our eternal life beyond this present world as our true life, our calling there as our true calling. There is a connection between Marshall Shelley’s question and Scripture that focuses my attention for the rest of this message. It’s found in 1 Timothy 6:19, where Paul instructs Timothy to say to the rich, “[Store] up treasure for [yourselves] as a good foundation for the future, so that [you] may take hold of that which is truly life.”
The phrase “truly life” is ontōs zōēs. Zōēs, of course, is life. And ontōs is an adverb built on the participle ōn meaning “being,” which might come over into English as “beingly,” except there is no such English word. So, it comes over into English as “really” — “really life” or “true life.” So “beingly life” is life that is full of being. Full of reality. As full of realness as a created life can be.
Paul is trying to find words that express our final condition in terms of life. It is true life. Real life. Life full of being. And his point is that you don’t have it yet fully. Take hold of that which is truly life. Live for that. That is your future: real life. Not just what you have now.
We Have Tasted True Life
Oh, yes, one of the glories of Christianity is that this future life — this real life — has come into the world. And by Christ and his Spirit, it has begun to dwell in us, has begun to be our life. First John 5:11–12 says, “God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” Then he adds, “He is the true God and [is!] eternal life” (1 John 5:20). This idea of Jesus as life is all over Scripture:
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).
“I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25).
“The Son gives life to all whom he will” (John 5:21).
“Everyone who believes . . . has been born of God” (1 John 5:1).
“He has passed from death to life” (John 5:24).
He has died with Christ and been raised to “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).
“The life of Jesus [is] manifested in our bodies” (2 Corinthians 4:10).
He has the Spirit, and “to set the mind on the Spirit is life” (Romans 8:6).So, yes. This is at the heart of Christianity: real life, Christ’s life, true life, final life, has come into our lives. This life is our real life. But oh how imperfectly we now experience it, and how hidden this life is. Colossians 3:3–4: “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” So, I say it again. Paul’s point in 1 Timothy 6:19 is this: You don’t have it yet fully. So, take hold of it! Take hold of that which is truly life. Handle your possessions so as to gain that. Live for that. True life. Real life.
Entering and Being Swallowed by Life
Jesus thought in these same ways about present life and future life. For example, he said in Matthew 18:9, “If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.” We have a kind of life now. But there is life that we don’t have — a life yet to be entered. Live so as to enter it.
The apostle Paul raises the issue of how this future life relates to our bodily life. In 2 Corinthians 5, he speaks of our bodies as tents or garments. He says that as much as he wants to be away from the body and at home with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8), it’s not his first preference. He does not want to be unclothed — that is, stripped of his body in death — even though that would mean being at home with the Lord.
What is his first preference? His first preference is the second coming of Christ, when this mortal body puts on immortality. Here’s the way he puts it: “While we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened — not that we would be unclothed [bodiless], but that we would be further clothed [or clothed over], so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Corinthians 5:4).
Why do we need to be swallowed up by life if we are alive? Because there is a greater life, a real life, a true life. Life that is life indeed. And we have tasted it. We are defined by it. But we are far from experiencing it to the full — body and soul. Our final destiny, our final condition, is true life, real life.
And that life is in God and in his Son. Paul describes unbelievers in Ephesians 4:18 as “alienated from the life of God.” God the Father is absolute life. Jesus said, “As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself” (John 5:26). And the Spirit gives life, carrying the life of the Father and the Son.
God — Father, Son, and Spirit — is absolute life. He is not stone or gold or silver. Not a primal gas. Not a cosmic computer. He gives life. He defines life. He is life. Thought. Feeling. Energy. Action. But more. Oh, so much more. This is our destiny for countless ages: to be alive with such life, God’s life, real life. This more is where we are headed. Live for this. Preach this. Help your people lay hold of life that is really life.
What Will True Life Be Like — for the Body?
What will true life be like? For the body, Paul says it will mean being swallowed up by life (2 Corinthians 5:4). The life of the age to come — real life, true life, full divine life, as much as it can be shared with a creature — will swallow up our bodies. Which I think means they will be transformed and perfectly suited to that new life, the real life. We’ll see this more clearly in a moment.
So, how much like our present bodies will they be? The New Testament wants us to expect significant similarity and great dissimilarity. On the one hand, there wouldn’t be a resurrection of the body if there were no continuity with our present body. You don’t raise specific bodies in order to do away with those bodies.
As Paul says, “The dead in Christ will rise” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). And “Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). Christ will “transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). The body raised is our body. His resurrection body was recognizable, touchable. J.I. Packer wrote, “Risen Christians will be recognizable to each other, and joyful reunions beyond this world with believers whom we loved and then lost through death are to be expected” (Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs, 264).
But on the other hand, Paul says,
What you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. . . . Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. . . . But we shall all be changed. (1 Corinthians 15:37–38, 50–51)
In what way? No death. No pain. No crying (Revelation 21:4). And every saint “shining like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43). “[The body] is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:43–44).
A spiritual body! That’s what happens when the body is swallowed up by life — real, true, full, final, divine life. It transforms the body. It fits the body for this new life. The body is so enlivened by God’s Spirit, and purified by the Spirit, and endowed by the Spirit, and empowered by the Spirit, and in perfect harmony with the Spirit, that it may be called a spiritual body. Swallowed up by life — the life of God, the life of the Spirit.
The spiritual body will have the kind of brain that can really know as it is known (1 Corinthians 13:12). It will have the kind of eyes that can really see, truly see, what is really there. And all the senses will be tuned perfectly by the Spirit to detect in every created thing, every created person, the revelation of God.
What Will True Life Be Like — for the Soul?
What about the soul, the non-bodily aspect of our being, when we are swallowed up by life? What effect does it have on the mind and the heart? Jesus said in his prayer in John 17:3, “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” True life, real life, final life, divine life, is to know God and his Son. Why would you call that life? Why would you call knowing God life? Let me make an attempt to answer: because that is what God’s life is.
True Life Knows
For God, to live — to have life; no, to be life — is to know. And if we would share that life, we must know as he knows — know God, for that is what God chiefly knows — the infinite reality that he is. In his absolute existence, without beginning or ending, absolutely there before anything else existed, when there was only God, and nothing besides, God was a knowing God. To be God was to know — to know perfectly and infinitely because he was the perfect and infinite object of his own knowledge.
“When there was only God, and nothing besides, God was a knowing God.”
And he not only knew; he loved. I make the connection between knowing and loving because Jesus does in John 17, as we will see in a moment. Thus, to know God is to share in not only God’s knowing, but also his loving. First John 4:7–8: “Love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” And, as Paul says, “If anyone loves God, he is known by God” (1 Corinthians 8:3). So, God knows and God loves. God’s life is the life of knowing and loving. And our eternal life, true life, is to come into that knowing and loving.
Before there was a creation, when there was only God, God knew and God loved. He knew God and loved God. The Father knew the Son and the Son knew the Father. As Jesus said in Matthew 11:27, “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
And the Father loved the Son (Colossians 1:13), and the Son loved the Father (John 14:31). And the Holy Spirit carried that knowing love between the Father and the Son. And there was life. That was and is the life of God. The ground of the universe — the life from which all else springs — is the knowing and loving God.
Therefore, when we taste that life, and finally are swallowed up by that life, we know God. We know him experientially. We know as he knows. “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).
True Knowledge Loves
And when Jesus said that at the beginning of his prayer in John 17, he knew how he would end the prayer. He didn’t mean, “Know God the way the devil knows God and Jesus.” That’s not life. To know like that is death. What then did he mean? He meant, “Know with affectionate intimacy. Know in such a way that the knowing awakens loving — knowing the way God knows God. Knowing so that knowing and loving are inseparable.” Where do we see Jesus make this plain? We see it in the way he ends the prayer.
Jesus closes his prayer by praying into existence divine knowing and divine loving — that is, divine life — in the souls of his people. John 17:26: “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” Here’s my paraphrase:
I gave them life, real life, true life, our divine life, Father. That is, I caused them to know you for the treasure and beauty that you really are in your knowing and loving. And their knowledge of you is so affirming, and approving, and satisfying, that your love for me has become their love for me. They know you as I know you. And they love me as you love me. Indeed, they love me with your very love for me as it is poured out into their hearts by the Spirit.
This is life — the true, real, final, divine life. This is the life we will possess in fullness for countless ages: to know God and to love God and his Son by his Spirit. Which means that we will enjoy God forever, because to love him is to enjoy him with the very knowledge and love of God himself.
True Life Cannot Be Boring
Lest we think this true life, this eternal life, will become boring after some millions of years, remember two things. First, remember that this life is a loving rooted in knowing, and our knowing will increase forever, so that loving increases forever. Let Jonathan Edwards say it:
Their knowledge will increase to eternity [with what? He answers: with “a whole million million ages of those great and most glorious things that come to pass in heaven”]; and if their knowledge [increases], doubtless their holiness. For as they increase in the knowledge of God and of the works of God, the more they will see of his excellency; and the more they see of his excellency . . . the more will they love him; and the more they love God, the more delight and happiness . . . will they have in him. (Works of Jonathan Edwards, 13:275–76)
“There will be no boredom among the redeemed for the countless ages of eternity.”
There will be no boredom among the redeemed for the countless ages of eternity because his mercies will be new every morning (Lamentations 3:23), and our knowledge of them, and our love for them, and our joy in them will only increase.
Second, remember the passage that prompted Marshall Shelley to raise his question: “Could it be that when I finally begin serving with God’s name on my forehead, I will find that this is what I was truly created for?” That is, finally true life? Revelation 22:3–5: “The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face. . . . And they will reign forever and ever.” To which Shelley responds, “Serving God and reigning — those tasks sound like they have more significance than the careers most of us pursue in our lifetimes.” That’s an understatement.
Therefore, 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, ever-increasing love of God, and ever-increasing enjoyment of God, but also because that knowing and loving and enjoying will be the “spring, which setteth every Wheel a going.” We will not be idle. We will find our true calling. We will serve. We will reign. We will be up and doing, making, creating, singing.
Baxter’s wisdom is true not only for our present life, but forever: “The Love of the end is the poise and spring, which setteth every Wheel a going.” If that’s true now, in view of how little we taste of true life, how much more will it set the wheels a going when the fullness comes! So, brothers, for the sake of your own soul and the good of your people, “Take hold of that which is truly life” (1 Timothy 6:19).