Green Baggins

posted by R. Fowler White

Having considered the place God prepares for the life everlasting of His people, we turn finally to consider the life everlasting as the church’s hope of glorification and as the promise that God will keep.

In our day, it comes as a shock to many that the God of the Bible has no plan to save everyone without exception. In fact, as the Divine Judge who is completely just, He is under no obligation to save any sinner. Yet, because the God of the Bible is a merciful Savior as well as a just Judge, He has made known to us that His plan is to save any and all who repent of their sins and trust in Christ as He is offered in the gospel. Indeed, He has purposed to save a remnant from all nations (Rev 5:9), a multitude of sinners that no human can number (7:9).

The Apostle John describes in a remarkable way that multitude who will go into the place of the life everlasting we described in our previous post. They are the thirsty to whom Christ gives the water of life: To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment (Rev 21:6). They are those who, formerly unclean, have washed their robes: Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates (Rev 22:14). They are those who conquer: The one who conquers—the one who perseveres in faith despite suffering or death—will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son (Rev 21:7). These are the heirs of God (Rom 8:17), the Bride, the Wife of Christ the Lamb (Rev 21:9). They stand in stark contrast to the people who will suffer the second death. John describes them as the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars (Rev 21:8). They are those outside, the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood (Rev 22:15). This dramatic and sobering disparity provokes us to ask, would we be among the people who will enter the place of the life everlasting? Then, examine yourself. Are you thirsty? Come and be satisfied by Christ who gives living water. Are you defiled? Come and be cleansed by the blood of Christ. Are you suffering or even dying? Come and receive from Christ that life which is without tears, death, mourning, crying, or pain (Rev 21:4).

Friends, the life everlasting that the historic church confesses is not just polite talk, is it? It is a promise that God will keep. His words, documented in Scripture, are true and trustworthy. Ponder the realities that His words hold out to all who embrace them: life will overcome death, good will conquer evil, light will dispel darkness, blessing will defeat curse! Since the beginning of history, because of God’s promise, sinners who have trusted Him have looked for these realities in that city where He dwells with His people, in that city of the world to come that is, at long last, secure and pure, beautiful and bountiful, and at rest. In other words, God has documented in Scripture that promise in which He offers us a hope like no other, a promise that is no mere soothing but empty word.

How can the Bible make such audacious claims? Because the Bible, as the documentation of God’s revealed will, makes known to us that the evils of sin and death are not eternal. Yes, they had a beginning, but because God is just, they will meet their end in the lake of fire. God is also merciful, in that He sent Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord, to be the only way to life for sinful and dying people who repent and believe in Him. How is it that only Christ can save? Because in His life He was entirely faithful where sinners are entirely unfaithful, and in His death He bore the punishment sinners justly deserve. In His resurrection, God the Father furnished proof that He has fixed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness through this same Jesus Christ, His only Son (Acts 17:31). Presently, then, while seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, Christ commands sinners everywhere to repent and trust in Him as their only hope of the forgiveness of sins and the life everlasting (Acts 4:12; 16:31; 17:30).

Following Scripture and using the words of the Apostles’ Creed, the historic confession of the church has been I believe in … the life everlasting. In keeping with God’s revealed plan to save an innumerable company of sinners, faithful congregations of His church make known to us that He will give a final demonstration of the glory of His mercy and His justice on the Day of Judgment. On that last day, those who have looked away from themselves to receive and rest in Christ Jesus alone for their salvation will be raised to honor, their bodies conformed with Christ’s own glorious body (Phil 3:21), and ushered into everlasting life in the comforting presence of the Lord Himself (Rev 7:15-17; 21:3-4). Meanwhile, those who have not seen fit to acknowledge God (Rom 1:28) and have refused to obey the gospel of Jesus Christ will be raised to dishonor and cast into the lake of fire to endure everlasting torment in the wrathful presence of the Lord (John 5:29; Rev 21:8; 2 Pet 3:7, 13). So, again, we examine ourselves: would we live with God, forever enjoying Him, fully and finally freed from sin and death, in the splendor of a New Jerusalem on a new earth under new heavens? Then, adapting the words of Heb 10:23, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.

posted by R. Fowler White

What appeal, if any, does everlasting life hold for you? For us who confess I believe in … the life everlasting, those words are a reminder that this present fallen world is not all there is. Oh, yes, we already experience in our hearts and affections the beginning of eternal joy. Yet we know that the best is yet to come, and with an understated accommodation of language, we call it the life everlasting. For our better understanding of exactly what we confess in this twelfth article of the Apostles’ Creed, we divide our final installment on the Creed into two parts: the first under the heading “A Place Prepared,” and the second under the heading “A People Glorified, A Promise to Keep.” With our topic thus divided up, let’s consider the place prepared according to Article 12 of the Creed, I believe in … the life everlasting.

When we confess belief in the life everlasting, we speak of life in what Isaiah describes as new heavens and a new earth (Isa 65:17), in what Christ describes as His Father’s house with many dwelling places prepared by Him for His people (John 14:2-3), in what Peter, echoing Isaiah, describes as new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells (2 Pet 3:13). It’s life in what Scripture comprehensively describes as the world to come (cf. Heb 2:5), conceived as John presents it in Revelation 21–22. Carried away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, John was shown New Jerusalem in a garden setting from which the river of life-giving water flows down the mountain to all the new earth (21:10; 22:1-2). This is more than Paradise Regained: it is Paradise Glorified. It is Immanuel’s Land where God and man will live together in beauty and in bounty.

Still further, the life everlasting is life in the glory that is to be revealed to us (Rom 8:18), life in a creation set free from bondage to decay (8:21). This is life in what OT prophets foresaw as creation so transformed that former deserts become thick with blossoms (Isa 35), that the earth becomes full of grain and fruit, milk and honey, oil and wine (Isa 4:2; 27:2-6; Joel 3:18; Amos 9:13). It’s life where springs of water become a river so fountainous that it fills the seas (Zech 14:8), so satisfying that the city of God is glad (Ps 46:4), so refreshing that the salty become sweet (Ezek 47:8-9), so purifying that it washes away iniquity (Zech 13:1), so healing that it sustains the health of the nations (Ezek 47:12; Rev 21:1-2).

The life everlasting is life where God and man live together in security. It’s a life that exceeds what Moses foresaw on the day of Israel’s exodus: God’s people brought into the land, planted on the mountain of His possession, with the place for His dwelling prepared and the sanctuary established (Exod 15:13, 17). It’s the life that the Prophets foresaw, where the nations have hammered their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks (Isa 2:4; Mic 5:10-11; Ps 46:10), and where their animals and plants, though diverse, are in harmony and balance (Isa 60:6-7, 13-14). It’s life in New Jerusalem, the city of peace whose gates will never be shut because all threats, natural and supernatural, will be no more.

The life everlasting is also life where God and man live together in purity. As the Apostle sees it, it’s life in Paradise forever fortified against all that is unclean, all that might defile, all that is evil. In other words, all who live there—both God and man—are holy and nothing profane, and thus the temple is no more. It’s a portrait that reminds us of what Moses taught us about the original Paradise, but better. We remember Eden, a garden-sanctuary surrounded by regions with precious stones and metals, a meeting place for God and man, lush with trees (the trees of knowledge and life in their midst) and brimming with the world’s life-giving waters that welled up and flowing from the garden to the four corners of the first earth (Gen 2:8-14). John gives us a word picture of the final Paradise. Life there will also be in a mountain-top city, having for its light the glory of God, a radiance like that of a very costly jewel. It’s life in a city that is four-square like the holy of holies (Rev 21:3), surrounded by gates and a wall made of every kind of precious stones and metals. Clearly, Christ, who brings His own out from this world, will yet bring them into a new world with Paradise Glorified, a new world with a mountain-top city in which God dwells with His people, at long last, secure, pure, beautiful, bountiful, and at rest.

The life everlasting that we confess in the Apostles’ Creed is, in part, life in a unique other-worldly place, a new, transfigured world to come, in which God and man are to live together forever. With such a panoramic vision before us, we cannot help but ponder the question: does the life everlasting hold for us the appeal that it should have?

We take up the second part of the Creed’s twelfth article in our final post of this series here.