Series: N/A
Service: Lord’s Supper Service
Type: Lord's Supper Talk
Speaker: Brian Messerli
Genesis 1:26; 2:8-9, 15-17 - It’s clear God created us with the intention that we would live with Him for all eternity. However, it is crucial to realize that we humans are not inherently eternal or immortal beings.
Paul writes in 1 Timothy 6:16 that God alone possesses immortality. So we might wonder, “How is it possible for us to live with God for all eternity if we don’t possess immortality?” It’s because when Paul says God possesses immortality, he’s saying God is inherently immortal. He possesses immortality as part of His nature. His immortality is rooted in Himself, He is eternal, it’s just part of who He is.
But these verses in Genesis show us human beings are not inherently immortal; we do not possess immortality as part of our nature like God does. No, the only way it’s possible for us to live forever with God is if He shares His immortality with us! Eternal life is not inherent within ourselves; it’s something that must be received from a source outside of ourselves, which is God. This is what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 15 when he says, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of Heaven.” Human beings by themselves cannot enter eternal life because our sin has cut us off from the true source of our immortality and Paul says the only way to enter that eternal kingdom is for “this mortal body to put on immortality.” And this is the major point of the tree of life in the Garden. It is a tangible way to demonstrate how God is the one who gives us eternal life.
The implication in v. 16-17 is that as long as Adam and Eve eat from the tree of life, they would live forever and never die! But if they ate from the wrong tree, they would die. Which means their eternal life was not inherent in themselves; it was conditioned upon obedience to God! God was the one sustaining them for all eternity by His grace and power. In other words, eternal life is a gift from God who is willingly and lovingly sharing His immortality with them so they can live forever in His presence! So when Adam and Eve reject God’s gift of eternal life, now they are cast out from His presence, eternal life is removed from them and they are now cursed with death and that’s demonstrated vividly in…
Genesis 3:24 - They are cut off from the tree of life, which means they no longer have access to God’s immortality, and now their bodies are subject to decay and death. Now, you may be wondering, “But Brian people who reject God don’t really lose their immortality because they still live forever in Hell, right?” Hold that thought because the answer to that is crucial to this discussion. For now, I want us to ask ourselves, why is it that God would no longer allow Adam and Eve to share in His immortality after they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Why did they have to die for that? Now there are several answers. 1) God is holy and can’t live in the presence of sin. 2) God is just and can’t allow sin to go unpunished. But I want to focus on another answer this morning.
It’s because to God, immortality and eternal life is more than just living forever. The phrase “eternal life” does not just mean existing forever, because there’s a difference between existing and living isn’t there? Sometimes people get in tragic accidents and they have to be hooked up to machines just to stay alive, and we might say, “That person is alive, they exist, but they aren’t living.” There may be others who are terribly addicted to drugs or alcohol and they lose their jobs, their friends, their family, their money, they’re living on the street, and again we would say, “They’re alive yes, they exist, but they aren’t really living.” Why? Because life isn’t just about existing, it’s about carrying out our purpose as human beings that we read about here in Genesis 1-2; our purpose to love, to work, to serve, to cultivate and contribute to society through our gifts and talents, to build relationships in community with friends and family, to rule over the earth the way God rules, and most importantly to be at peace with God.
But when Adam and Eve sinned by eating from the forbidden tree, they were saying to God, “We don’t want to live your way and serve your purposes, we want to live our own way and trust in our own understanding!”
Proverbs 1:29-32 [Here wisdom is personified as a woman, as Lady Wisdom, and she is speaking to fools who refused to listen to her counsel. And in this section, as she describes our sinful and foolish choices, it sounds a lot like the original sinful foolish choice of Adam and Eve] - Think of the irony here: Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and by doing so they were actually hating knowledge. How?
Proverbs 1:7 - True knowledge and wisdom about how discern between good and evil so we can live fully comes from God. But they rejected the fear of God and decided that they could discern between good and evil for themselves, they could chart their own course in life and determine what was best for themselves apart from God’s wisdom. And when they ate the fruit of the forbidden tree, v. 31 shows us they were really eating the fruit of their own way, and they lost their eternal life because of it and could no longer be at ease from the dread of evil.
So Adam and Eve created a disastrous situation God never intended. They had the gift of immortality from God, but now they had chosen an eternity of doing things their own way instead of God’s way. They had chosen to be immortality immoral, which means they would have existed forever yes, but they would have existed forever suffering from the consequences of their foolish, sinful choices, which is not eternal life at all! That’s eternal existence yes, but it’s not eternal life! True life is only possible when we’re living God’s way, walking in His wisdom, looking to Him to give us the knowledge of good and evil so we can live the best, most fulfilling, purpose-driven lives instead of determining the best way to live for ourselves.
So when God exiled them from the garden and cut them off from the tree of life it was an act of judgment for their sin yes, but it was also an act of mercy because to live eternally suffering from the consequences of our foolish sinful choices is not eternal LIFE, that’s eternal judgment! You see, not only was immortality a gift from God and not something inherent in ourselves, the knowledge of how to live a rich, fulfilling life morally was a gift from God too! And we need both in order to have eternal life! If we have a morally fulfilling life lived in wisdom in line with our purpose, but that life is not eternal, it’s pointless. On the other hand, if our life is eternal, but it’s not lived in wisdom, morally in line with our purpose, it’s painful because now we’re just immortally immoral and it leads to eternal torment and judgment.
And when we understand these concepts, it makes Jesus’ ministry so much more powerful and meaningful.
John 1:1-4 - Doesn’t it make sense why John says, “in Him was life.” Unlike normal human beings, Jesus actually has life in Himself, He possesses immortality by His very nature because He is also God. In fact, eternal life is so inherent to who He is that later Jesus will say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” He IS eternal life incarnate! And since the only way we can have eternal life is if God shares His eternal life with us by His grace, John makes the incredibly bold claim that the way God is going to share His immortality with us is through our connection to His Son. And what’s more, by calling Him “the Word,” Jesus is the wisdom of God incarnate, because it’s not enough for God simply to give us enteral life in Jesus, but He gives us His wisdom so we can live according to our purpose in Genesis 1-2. Wisdom without eternal life is pointless. Eternal life without wisdom is torment and judgment. We need both to have true eternal life, and that’s what Jesus came to give us.
John 5:26, 28-29 - Jesus is saying everyone will be resurrected from the dead in the end, both the righteous and the wicked, and yet notice He says only the righteous will have life. So remember that earlier question we mentioned: “But Brian people who reject God don’t really lose their immortality because they still live forever in Hell, right?” Well, Jesus is saying the wicked may continue to EXIST forever in Hell, but that’s not true immortality the way God intends because eternal existence is not the same as eternal life in Scripture; even though they may live forever, Jesus does not call that life, because an eternal existence in which you experience the painful consequences of doing things your own way and eating of the fruit of your own devices apart from God’s wisdom is not eternal LIFE, that’s eternal judgment. Jesus’ goal is NOT simply to give us an eternal existence, but to give us an eternal LIFE of flourishing and deep spiritual fulfillment because we’re living morally in line with God’s wisdom according to His purposes.
John 10:10 - The abundant life Jesus comes to bring is twofold. 1) Immortality and 2) Full, wise living. This may be what Paul means later when he writes in 2 Timothy 1:10 that Jesus “Abolished death and brought LIFE and IMMORTALITY to light through the gospel.” Jesus not only revealed to us that HE is the source of our immortality, but also that HE is the source of true, fulfilling, purposeful, peaceful, wise, righteous living the way God intended us to live from the very beginning. This was actually the two purposes of the tree of life in the Garden. The tree of life represented, 1) Immortality and 2) Living by God’s wisdom instead of our own. In other words, it represented eternal life, and this is what Jesus came to restore for us, which is why He presents Himself as a life giving vine, and says apart from Him we can do nothing; it’s why He tells us to eat and drink from His flesh and blood, essentially to eat from the fruit of His sacrifice, and it’s why Peter said, “He bore our sins in his body on a tree, so that we might die to sin and LIVE to righteousness,” and every week it is a blessing to gather around Jesus and eat from the fruit of His sacrifice on our behalf, so that not only can we live forever, we can live forever fully and abundantly because He has not only cleansed us of our sins and re-opened access to the tree of life; He has restored us to our purpose, to love, to work, to serve, to cultivate and contribute to society through our gifts and talents, to build relationships in the community with friends, family, and spiritual family, to rule over creation the way God rules, and most importantly to be at peace with God forever.
Praise to be to the Father and to His Son Jesus Christ for not just wanting us to exist eternally, but to have eternal life.
