I Believe in Life Everlasting

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