Living the Forever Life

“When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:4, ESV).

The Christian lives between two worlds. He is, in fact, a little bit of heaven nestled amidst this present passing age. Alive in Christ and dead to sin, he is like a man who is in between moving houses. We have all been there, haven't we? Our old house is sold, everything is in boxes, the furniture is all gone, and the rooms are empty, but we haven't yet moved into our new home. We are betwixt and between, living in the great space separating whence from whither. Granted, this dynamic is easier to perceive in the less-real world down here. We can see the empty rooms, we can hear the echo of voices in the old house which is all packed up, so it all seems much more tangible. However for the Christian in Christ, although less perceptible, the change is no less real. In fact, it is even more so. The world that we have left, though still front and center in our mind's eye, is but for a moment. Where we are going, however, though still unseen to the eye of flesh, is forever.

Paul's point in Colossians chapter 3 is that it takes a certain deliberate intention of mind to live in this in between place, a bold willingness to let go, and a childlike faith to look forward to the place where eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man what things God has prepared for those who love Him. "We must," says the apostle, "set our minds above where Christ is."

The beginning of yet another new year is an excellent time to stop and take stock of our lives, our souls, and our willingness to move on to the everlasting glory which awaits those who trust in Jesus. How much of your current life (your thoughts, desires, hopes, dreams, and relationships) are destined to outlive life in this world? Are you investing in time or eternity? When you think of the day that God will remove you from this world to the next, do you think of all the things that you will lose or of all the things that you will gain? How much of your current life is about you and how much of it is about Christ? More than any other question, this last one tells the story of a soul yearning to live forever or of one trapped amidst the passing moments of time. The more we center our "life" on ourselves, the more we will strive to hold on to life here and now in this brief and fleeting moment on earth. However, the more we center our "life" in Christ, the more that we will find ourselves wanting to let go and to reach forward.

With this encouragement to yearn for eternity in heaven, it might sound as though Christians don’t know how to have a good time living in the present on earth. But, of course, nothing could (or should) be further from the truth. Every true, earthly pleasure is a foretaste of better things to come, a reminder to look forward to the fullness yet to be revealed. We can and should enjoy the good things of life in Christ, but we should relish them with a certain holy dissatisfaction knowing that the best is still ahead.

Now life on earth is wonderful, but it has not yet been fully revealed what eternal life shall be like. We do know, however, that when He appears, we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is. Then, as never before, we shall see Him as our Life - not just a part of our life. Our lives will be caught up with knowing Him forever, knowing Him in the joy of exploring the New Heavens and New Earth in which righteousness dwells, and knowing Him in the happy new community where everyone knows our name and delights in the unique wonderfulness that we bring to that happy celestial throng. Gone will be all sense of misfit, insecurity, and regret. Glory will have come in full measure, pressed down, and overflowing forever.

I think it will be very much like that glorious scene at the end of the Lewis' The Last Battle in which the new heavens and earth do not represent Narnia destroyed, but Narnia fulfilled, restored to what it could have been and should have been had evil never overshadowed it with a stain.

As Lucy remarked to her brothers,

“This is still Narnia, and more real and more beautiful than the Narnia down below, just as it was more real and more beautiful than the Narnia outside the stable door! I see . . . world within world, Narnia within Narnia . . .”

“Yes,” said Mr. Tumnus, “like an onion: except that as you continue to go in and in, each circle is larger than the last.”

And Lucy looked this way and that and soon found that a new and beautiful thing had happened to her. Whatever she looked at, however far away it might be, once she had fixed her eyes steadily on it, became quite clear and close as if she were looking through a telescope. She could see the whole Southern desert and beyond it the great city of Tashbaan: to Eastward she could see Cair Paravel on the edge of the sea and the very window of the room that had once been her own. And far out to sea she could discover the islands, islands after islands to the end of the world, and, beyond the end, the huge mountain which they had called Aslan’s country. But now she saw that it was part of a great chain of mountains which ringed round the whole world. In front of her it seemed to come quite close. Then she looked to her left and saw what she took to be a great bank of brightly colored cloud, cut off from them by a gap. But she looked harder and saw that it was not a cloud at all but a real land. And when she had fixed her eyes on one particular spot of it, she at once cried out, “Peter! Edmund! Come and look! Come quickly.” And they came and looked, for their eyes also had become like hers.

“Why!” exclaimed Peter. “It’s England. And that’s the house itself—Professor Kirk’s old home in the country where all our adventures began!”

“I thought that house had been destroyed,” said Edmund.

“So it was,” said the Faun. “But you are now looking at the England within England, the real England just as this is the real Narnia. And in that inner England no good thing is destroyed.”

Seeing this reality now by faith is the way to live between whence and whither. From this perspective, a wonderful clarity comes upon the soul, a clarity that helps us see the things that we must let go, sinful things that can have no part in the New Heavens and the New Earth, and things that we are destined to hold on to forever. With this understanding, rather than denying himself earthly delights, the Christian becomes the only person fully alive to enjoy the best things of this current age as they point forward to days deeper, better, and brighter yet to dawn. As the hymn writer put it:

Heaven above is softer blue,
Earth around is sweeter green;
Something lives in every hue
Christless eyes have never seen:
Birds with gladder songs o’erflow,
Flow’rs with deeper beauties shine,
Since I know, as now I know,
I am His, and He is mine.

May God give all this perspective, and with it a Happy and a Holy New Year!