I Believe in Life Everlasting
Minister: | Rev. Ronald Van Overloop |
Date: | 10/11/2015 AM |
Text: | John 3; Lord's Day 22 |
Psalters: | 260, 331, 248, 31 |
Series: | Heidelberg Catechism (2015-16) |
- What it is.
- Negatively.
- Everlasting life is not existence on earth without end; nor is it activity.
- Those experiencing God's wrath do not even see life (John 3:3), let alone enter it and enjoy it.
- Positively, life is God's gift of being able to know (in love) God (John 17:3).
- God's life is harmonious activity of perfect fellowship.
- It is to taste His love, to experience His friendship, to see His face (Ps. 73:28a).
- Negatively.
- How? Only through Jesus, God’s Son.
- Adam could know God by virtue of creation.
- Eternal life is a new life because it has its source in the incarnated Son of God.
- Also eternal life is resurrection life, i.e., it is life on-the-other-side-of-death.
- Believers experience this eternal life by means of the gift of faith.
- We experience eternal life already now by believing (John 3:36; 11:25) (it is not experienced only in the future).
- Regeneration is that life, for it is the power of Christ's resurrection (I Peter 1:3).
- The joy and blessedness of eternal life is found in being forgiven and in the peace through being justified by faith.
- In heaven this beginning of eternal life will be changed into a fullness of joy.
- Believe, embrace Christ as the fulness of all your emptiness, and live forever.
- We experience eternal life already now by believing (John 3:36; 11:25) (it is not experienced only in the future).