Friday, November 09, 2007

FOLLOWING ON FROM THE ANGELS’!

CROSS PURPOSES 104

9th November 2007


Hi Guys

A couple of weeks ago in the blog I put forward the view that to imply that a loved one who has died has somehow been promoted to angelic status is to demean them. Angel status is not the goal of God’s action with humanity. His goal, when he puts people “in Christ”, is to cause them to share the status of Christ! As Ephesians 2: 6 makes clear, he raised up up with Christ to the right hand of the throne! He’s the heir and we get to “co-heir” with him.

So today, along similar lines, another challenge to muddled and unhelpful thinking. Someone we knew had been called from this life. We sent a condolence card to the family. A few months later a preprinted card arrived in the mail with a photo of the dearly departed. Underneath, an inscription that looked like this:

Fred Bloggs
Born: April 24, 1922
Entered Eternal Life: August 16, 2005

Nice card! Nice thought! But not true. The starting point for “Eternal Life” is not the moment the soul departs the body. It’s the point at which one is born again – born from above – through water and the Spirit. Your (and my) eternal life begins at the point we come “into Christ Jesus”, usually at our Baptism.

That is a core position for followers of Jesus Christ. We are called and challenged to live our lives here on earth out of the gift we already have. It’s not how the world sees it of course. Where there is some sort of belief in God and an afterlife it likes to proclaim that we live towards life with God – and mostly implies that if you do reasonably well in your life (at least what the public sees) your family and friends can declare, at your funeral, that God ought to be pleased to receive you!

Unless you get this difference between ‘living to express’ and ‘living to impress’, the chances are we will live unrestfully, always hoping we’ve done enough for acceptance. Thank God that it is by grace you have been saved!

Pastor Fred

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