When does everlasting life begin?

Everlasting life and God’s will are intertwined. We cannot understand the one without the other.

The day the Father gave His Son to the world was one of the defining times in eternity. That is why John 3:16 says

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.

John 3:16

Everlasting life starts here on earth when we accept Jesus Christ as our saviour.

His everlasting will starts today

Prophecies announced His birth and for many centuries mankind looked forward to the day that the Messiah would be born. By being human and God, Jesus knew exactly what it meant when He taught His disciples years later to ask that ‘it may be on earth as it is in heaven’ when they pray (Luke 11:2). Today we still ask God to let His kingdom come and His will be done.

We cannot always comprehend His will, just as many Jews could not comprehend that the Messiah came to serve and not rule, that He was a baby, lying in a manger and not found in an opulent palace and that His birth was announced to shepherds first.

That makes me wonder about today: Do we recognise it when His will is being done even though it does not fit our frame of reference? The key remains for His kingdom to come and His will be done ‘on earth as it is in heaven’. How do we know what His will is?

We look to Jesus, ask the Holy Spirit to lead us and trust Him to break His Word open so that we truly begin to grasp what it means to do His will on earth. To DO is a verb. It is not something that happens by itself. The Holy Spirit, the Comforter who will teach us all things (John 14:26) will also teach us what the Father’s will is, confirmed by the Word of God.

Our prayer for you is: May His kingdom come and His will be done in your life and in the lives of those around you, on earth as it is in heaven.

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