Have you ever wondered why God’s forgiveness is precious or eternal life?Have you ever wondered why anyone wants to have eternal life?Why do we want to live forever? These questions are important because it is possible to desire forgiveness and eternal life for reasons that prove that we do not have them.
- For example.
- Consider the topic of forgiveness.
- Perhaps you want God’s forgiveness because you are so dissatisfied with your feelings of guilt.
- He wants relief.
- If you can believe that God forgives you.
- You will have some relief.
- But not necessarily salvation.
- If you want forgiveness just for emotional relief.
- You will not receive God’s forgiveness.
- He does not forgive those who use him only to have their gifts and not himself.
Or maybe you want to heal yourself from a disease or look for work and find a woman, then you hear that God can help you get these things, but that, first, your sins must be forgiven. Someone urges you to believe that Christ died, for your sins and tells you that if you believe this, your sins will be forgiven. So, believe me, to remove the barrier to your health and get a job or wife. Is it salvation for the gospel? I don’t think that’s the case.
In other words, what you expect to receive through forgiveness is important, the reason you want forgiveness is important, if you only want forgiveness because you want to enjoy creation, then the Creator is not honest and you are not saved. One reason: it allows you to enjoy communion with God. If that’s not why you want forgiveness, you won’t get it at all. God will not be used as a coin for the purchase of idols.
We also ask: why do we want eternal life?Someone can answer, “Why is hell the painful alternative?”Another may say, “Why will there be no sadness in heaven?Another can answer: “My loved ones have gone to heaven and I want to be with them. “I dream of endless sex and food, or something nobler. In all this, Someone is absent: God.
The saving reason for desireing eternal life is presented in John 17:3: “And eternal life is this: that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. If we want eternal life because it means something else, and we do not rejoice in God, we will not have this life. We are wrong to say that we are Christians if we use the glorious gospel of Christ to seek what we love more than we seek Christ Himself. Good news will not be good for those who do not have God as their main asset.
Jonathan Edwards presented this truth in sermon1 to his church in 1731. Read these words slowly and let them wake you up to real life and the true good of forgiveness.
The redeemed have their true good in God. He Himself is the great good that you possess and enjoy through redemption. God is the highest good, the sum of all the good that Christ has acquired. God is the inheritance of the saints; it is part of your soul. He is the wealth and the treasure, the food, the life, the abode, the adornment and the crown, the eternal and abiding glory of the saints. They have nothing in heaven except God. This is the great good for which believers are welcomed at death and for which they must rise to the end of the world. The Lord God, he is the light of the heavenly Jerusalem; it’s here? river of the water of life? run and there? tree of Life? that grows “in the paradise of God. ” The splendors and glorious beauties of God will always fascinate the minds of the saints, and the love of God will be their eternal pleasure. Surely the redeemed will enjoy other joys. They will rejoice with the angels and with each other. But what will you love about angels and others or anything else? what will give them pleasure and happiness will be what God can see in them.
Excerpt from the book: Penetrated by Palavra, by John Piper. Copyright: © FIEL Editor 2009 The reader is authorized to disseminate and distribute this text, provided that it does not change its format, content and / or translation and report the credits of authorship, translation and copyright. If in doubt, please contact Editora Fiel.