Warren Sentinel "Weekly Pulpit" (05/07/2009)
Instead of asking the question, “If you were to die tonight, do you know where you will spend eternity?” What if we were to ask the question, “What if you knew you were going to live tomorrow?”
The problem with focusing on the first question is that it often has the tendency of making it seem like this life (this life that God gave us, by the way) doesn't really matter all that much; that as long as we believe—or say that we believe—we can live however we want. But most of us will, in fact, live tomorrow … and hopefully for many more tomorrows.
How we live actually matters. It matters, in great part, because how we live—what we do with our lives—reveals what we truly believe. In Christianity Beyond Belief: Following Jesus for the Sake of Others, Todd Hunter writes, "I used to think that eternal life was what we got after we died. (Today, I know better—new life, a different kind of life, starts at conversion and it never ends.)"
He goes on to write, "As 1 Peter 1 says, Christianity is about a 'brand-new life.' This new life does indeed have an unspeakably marvelous future. But that future starts now. ... that is exactly what Christianity is about: a certain kind of life—eternal life. It is about living in alliance with the gospel Jesus announced concerning the kingdom of God. Or as Peter says, it is a 'way of life shaped by God's life.' Christianity is a journey: following Jesus' model of life in the kingdom through the power of the Holy Spirit in the actual events of our lives."
According to Hunter, "The clearest statement in the Scripture regarding eternal life shows it is fundamentally about a type of life. In John 17:3, Jesus says that eternal life is knowledge of God and his Son. As important as good thinking is, the knowledge Jesus refers to is not merely thinking about or mental agreement with a certain set of doctrines. Eternal life is the quality life derived from and lived within the kingdom of God. It is personal, intimate community with the Trinity. It is the kind of life, which was lost due to sin, that God always intended for humanity. In fact, sin is the counterintention of humans to live outside of God's story, outside of a new kind of life."
The author of 1 John, for example, makes it clear that both orthodoxy (right doctrine: what we believe) and orthopraxy (right practice: how we live) matter. And they aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, they depend upon one another. How we live—how we put our belief into practice—demonstrates what we actually believe. And can we really believe something if we aren't living out that belief? The author of 1 John writes, "This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did." (1 John 2:5b-6)
Instead of asking the question, “If you were to die tonight, do you know where you will spend eternity?” What if we were to ask the question, “What if you knew you were going to live tomorrow?”
The problem with focusing on the first question is that it often has the tendency of making it seem like this life (this life that God gave us, by the way) doesn't really matter all that much; that as long as we believe—or say that we believe—we can live however we want. But most of us will, in fact, live tomorrow … and hopefully for many more tomorrows.
How we live actually matters. It matters, in great part, because how we live—what we do with our lives—reveals what we truly believe. In Christianity Beyond Belief: Following Jesus for the Sake of Others, Todd Hunter writes, "I used to think that eternal life was what we got after we died. (Today, I know better—new life, a different kind of life, starts at conversion and it never ends.)"
He goes on to write, "As 1 Peter 1 says, Christianity is about a 'brand-new life.' This new life does indeed have an unspeakably marvelous future. But that future starts now. ... that is exactly what Christianity is about: a certain kind of life—eternal life. It is about living in alliance with the gospel Jesus announced concerning the kingdom of God. Or as Peter says, it is a 'way of life shaped by God's life.' Christianity is a journey: following Jesus' model of life in the kingdom through the power of the Holy Spirit in the actual events of our lives."
According to Hunter, "The clearest statement in the Scripture regarding eternal life shows it is fundamentally about a type of life. In John 17:3, Jesus says that eternal life is knowledge of God and his Son. As important as good thinking is, the knowledge Jesus refers to is not merely thinking about or mental agreement with a certain set of doctrines. Eternal life is the quality life derived from and lived within the kingdom of God. It is personal, intimate community with the Trinity. It is the kind of life, which was lost due to sin, that God always intended for humanity. In fact, sin is the counterintention of humans to live outside of God's story, outside of a new kind of life."
The author of 1 John, for example, makes it clear that both orthodoxy (right doctrine: what we believe) and orthopraxy (right practice: how we live) matter. And they aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, they depend upon one another. How we live—how we put our belief into practice—demonstrates what we actually believe. And can we really believe something if we aren't living out that belief? The author of 1 John writes, "This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did." (1 John 2:5b-6)
