We have seen that there are two kinds of life in the Bible–temporal life, as denoted by the Greek word, bios, and eternal life, Zoe. Zoe is life as God has it, life in fellowship and peace with Almighty Creator God. This is the life that Jehovah desires for all people, but can only provide for His adopted children who receive salvation through His earthly Son, Jesus Christ. Now let us look more closely at humankind’s pilgrimage in eternity, as discovered in the Bible.
Eternity is the home of living spirits in living bodies.
The first man and woman were initially created as the image bearers of God, and as such they were in perfect relationship and fellowship with their creator as living spirits in living bodies. When they chose self over God, when they chose to be as God, which was the lie of the Tempter, they divorced themselves from God, who is life Himself–Zoe life. Separating themselves from Him Who Is Life, they became dead spirits in living bodies. This changed condition, dead spirits in living bodies, is evidenced by their fear and hiding in shame from their Lord in the Garden of Eden or Paradise (Genesis 3:7-8).
Time is the prison of dead spirits in living bodies.
When the first couple chose to trust themselves rather than God, who is Living Spirit, they walked away from God and thereby “unlifed” themselves spiritually. Because God would not permit them to eat of the Tree of Life in His Garden Paradise, they were ejected from Paradise (The Garden of Eden) into the world of death provided for those who are disobedient. They subsequently bore children in their “own image and likeness,” (Genesis 5:3) who were also dead spirits in living bodies. This temporal realm of death thus became the real estate into which all generations of people have been born as dead spirits in living bodies. Deadness of spirit denotes separation from God, who is life-giving Spirit. Deadness of spirit is inherited by every man born of woman.
Job 15:14 “What is man, that he should be pure, Or he who is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?
Job 25:4 “How then can a man be just with God? Or how can he be clean who is born of woman?
Deadness of spirit is evidenced by every person’s personal choices.
Rom 5:12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned . . .
But God, in his mercy and covenant love, is not content to leave his created people within the prison of time and death. He has put them in this temporal quarantine facility, so that their sin will not contaminate his eternal real estate.
This temporary estate is enforced until such time as their dead spirits are either born again by choosing to trust God, or sealed forever in spiritual death by their rejection of Jesus unto their physical deaths. This temporal earthly quarantine is a probationary estate designed to prove the real and durable object of human desire—God, or self!
In enforcing the promised death penalty, God simultaneously renews his primary covenant (Genesis 1:26-28) with the man and woman, which was that they become His co-equal vice-regents over his eternal Paradise. He promises a redeemer from the seed of the woman (Genesis 3:15), who will bring an end to the curse of time, which brings death, and He restores the eternal Zoe life that the man and woman had lost. This embryonic covenant of redemption is enlarged and elaborated by God throughout Biblical history until it culminates in the New Covenant in Jesus Christ.
The ultimate outcome of God’s covenant renewal, through His promised Redeemer through the woman, is that all people since Adam and Eve are given the same choice that the first human couple had in the Garden of Eden. But the descendants of the first couple have that choice from the downside of the Fall into sin, rather than the upside of the Fall as the first couple had. The choice that all of us make in time is to trust and obey God, seeking first His Kingdom (Matthew 6:33), or to trust only self and seek first personal satisfaction. The good news is that those who accept Christ as the reigning Spirit in their lives are gloriously permitted to dwell with God in perfect eternal communion. In this blessed estate they rule over the heaven and earth of Paradise as God’s vice-regents, not only in time now but forever in God’s original and eternal very good realm of Paradise (Eden). This “new” eternal reality begins the moment a person’s spirit is reborn in Christ and continues through time and eternity. Time is transformed and serves only to separate the two bodies of every Christian life—the sinful one and the glorified one (2 Corinthians 5:1-9).
God gives Himself as the promised Redeemer in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ, who lives the ideal sinless human life according to God’s original and eternal intention. Thus Christ becomes the only acceptable sacrifice for the sins of all people. Because Jesus a man, He could die. Because He was without sin, He was a worthy sacrifice for the sins of all men. Because Jesus is God, death cannot keep Him, and He rises to eternal Heaven bringing many in His train who have repented of their sins and trusted Him.
On the cross God directs His wrath at human sin against Himself in the sinless person of his Son. God’s wrath against Himself is seen after Noah’s flood, by the bow in the clouds that is pointed upward at heaven, not downward at man. God takes his own penalty of death so that those who justly deserve that penalty may be set free from the fear and power of death (Hebrews 2:14-15). That depth of Jehovah’s eternal love cannot be plumbed by the temporal human mind! God’s great love, and nothing else, can redeem human beings from their inherited sin nature and death.
The significance of this event is beyond the scope of discussion in this essay, but the outcome is that people may return to perfect eternal communion with God through trusting him in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ. In the eternal Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, the Holy Spirit (God Himself) reigns supreme in living human spirits who are born again, as Jesus explained to Nicodemus,
John 3:3 Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
The return to perfect communion is being born again as living spirits in living glorified bodies (2 Corinthians 5:1). The Greek text literally says born above as living spirits, who have bodies prepared for life in eternity (2 Corinthians 5:1).
Back to Eternity – Born Again (Above).
The ultimate outcome of being born again is restoration to the magnified Edenic real estate, the New Jerusalem, Paradise, as promised by Jesus (Revelation 2:7) and shown by God to the apostle John (Revelation 21:1-22:21). According to this proposal, what finishes in eternity also began in eternity. This biblical historical-theological picture is pictured in the following diagram.
The first human couple is created by God to be living spirits in living bodies and to reign forever over God’s eternal creation in which there is no death. But by trusting self rather than God, they are broken in the Fall and separated from God as dead spirits in living physical bodies. That image–deadness of spirit–and likeness–living physical bodies–is passed on to their descendants, who are all people down to the present day in this time-cursed world of death that is viewed as natural. But humanity was created not for natural death but supernatural life (Zoe), which explains why death is so greatly feared by all people. And real life, Zoe life, is what Jesus came to give to men (John 10:10).
In order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, which is God’s original good and sinless creation, all people must receive the living Spirit of God into their living bodies and thus be reborn spiritually. It is this spiritual rebirth that Christians refer to as being “born again,” and that people who are dead spirits, shackled by the temporal perspective, deride. Even Nicodemus initially scoffed at the idea when Jesus first presented it to him (John 3:3-4).
(John 3:1-10) Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; {2} this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” {3} Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” {4} Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?” {5} Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. {6} “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. {7} “Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ {8} “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” {9} Nicodemus said to Him, “How can these things be?” {10} Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?
The temporal and eternal perspectives are clearly interwoven throughout chapter 3 of John’s gospel. Nicodemus is speaking from the temporal perspective when he asks, probably sarcastically, how a man can enter again into his mother’s womb. Jesus admonishes him in verse 10 for not recognizing the eternal perspective, since he was an educated and trained religious leader of the Jewish people and familiar with the prophecies of the Old Testament. Thus the religious man, bound in the temporal perspective, did not comprehend the eternal perspective, and its requirement for spiritual rebirth.
But understanding the eternal perspective, and receiving the Messiah (Christ) by faith, results in being spiritually reborn by the power of Christ and his Zoe life in his Holy Spirit. In this regard, faith usually precedes understanding the eternal perspective. But believers are graciously translated into the eternal kingdom—back into the eternal paradise of God—as living transformations by God even while still confined in this temporal earthly environment in their sinful physical bodies (Romans 12:1-2).
Rom 12:1-2 Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. (2) And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
At the point of death in time there is a translation of these transformed living spirits into glorified living bodies who have access to the Tree of Life, and thereby live and reign forever as vice-regents of the Lord God Almighty (Jehovah), according to His perfect, unchanging, and eternal purpose in the covenant of life (Genesis 1:26-28).
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