Christian Living

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In The Pursuit of Eternal Life!!

The continuity of eternal life is a process and not a quick fix. Pursuing eternal life is a sequence of development in order to reach our goal. It takes time, effort and sacrifice to get to know God and His Son to arrive at our destination.

Throughout 2007 to the final day - 31st December 2007 God has gave me snippets from His Word, which I had written on paper and in note books, during the time spent in His presence. These snippets are either word processed immediately, or intermittently drawn to them and put them on word processor; today is one of those times a snippet taken from John 17:3 written a few weeks ago. The hand written document was hidden and forgotten between pages of another version of a Bible not frequently used except for research purposes; the first heading ’Eternal Life’ suddenly ignited a fire and as the context of the draft was obsorb; a realisation came that to know God is real life and a new title emerged - ‘In The Pursuit Of Eternal Life!!’
Jesus said, “Eternal life is to know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent” and that statement is profound. The pursuit of eternal life is entwined in knowing God and knowing Jesus Whom was sent; so it is very difficult to separate the discussion by a point by point system, it would not be adequate for such a short article. However, three points will be evident throughout the text (a) the pursuit of eternal life, (b) how to know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, (c) and it is man’s responsibility including Christian, to pursue eternal life.
This document is a condensed version of its original (only few Scripture references are included); added to it are fresh thoughts. May the God of new beginnings use this piece to enthuse us with fervour to know Him.
All Scriptures text used are from the New Kings James Version, other translations will be listed.

The Pursuit Begins
The pursuit of eternal begins from this point onward. In John 17, Jesus’ priestly prayer, He dealt mostly with relationship; relationship with the Father, relationship with His disciples, relationship with the world and those who would come to know Him later. He also sets guidelines on how man should relate to each other. Jesus knew that eternal life was a very important topic on man’s mind, everyone wants to know how to inherit eternal life; ‘the disciples wanted to know, the rich young man wanted to know and the rulers in Jesus’ day had an issue too with eternal life. Jesus did not only address the question in His day (He had a world perspective), He made provision for all those who would come to know Him in the future, and also those who would have a personal relationship with Him throughout the centuries. He gave us His Word.
“And this is eternal life [it means] to know (to perceive, recognised, become acquainted with and understand) You, the only true God, and [likewise] to know Him, Jesus [as the] Christ (the Anointed One the Messiah), whom You have sent,” John 17:3 AMP.
This is the crux of living a victorious life in Christ; we must be in pursuit of knowing God and His Son. We must keep our focus on the mandate which we have received and set our sight continually on the goal ahead of us by getting to know the giver of eternal life.
When the world thinks of eternal life it conjures in its mind escaping from hell to live in heaven forever, and as they say “everybody wants to go to heaven by nobody wants to die”, this statement somehow is partially true. Because eternal life is much more than escaping hell and has utopia in heaven; it is about living while here on earth and having a relationship with a person – the person of God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. This is like an addendum to the topic inserting these references.
Jesus in John 17:3 has already addressed eternal life because Jesus had already paid the price for us to attain eternal life; He knew Himself and His purpose on earth, which He had imparted to others. But let’s briefly look at the cost and quality we need to be acquainted with through the (paraphrased) references below:
He was the Righteous One and lived in partnership with His Father, and
o He bore our iniquity and our guilt (Isaiah 53:11 AMP),
o Knowing His Father enables Him to do the things which His Father assigned to Him to do; and He could demonstrate to the people that He understood and knew God.
o That God practices loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth and delights that His people possess His characteristics (Jeremiah 9:23-24).Our own works can not bring us closer to God i.e. worshipping of idols, but only knowing that there is only One true God to be worshipped (1Corinthians 8:4 AMP).
o Turning from idols to serve God who is alive and true and genuine
1Thessaloninas 1:9 AMP).
We are assigned a task and that is to get to know God, and know Jesus in
a personal way. The question is, how well do we get to know someone? Is it possible? The word that springs to mind is relationship (ongoing fellowship) that is affiliation, like-mindedness, forming a bond or closeness etc. - to sum up these words in two words – get connected.
The above paragraph dealt with human relationship. When we know someone there are unique things we know about them, which someone else could not identify – we can recognise or identify certain characteristics even before they are in close proximity, for example, their footsteps, laughter, the sound of their voice, their perfume or aftershave, also in front of us we can know what they are thinking by their non-verbal communication so that it becomes difficult for them to hide their feelings from us. How could we know so much about a person? It is because we spend time with them.
It is exactly the same way we get to know the Source of Life, by experiencing Him in fellowship with God the Father and Jesus His Son. This requires spending special carved out time alone in the secret place time with Him; through prayer, reading His Word, listening and documenting what He has to say; and also very important is having fellowship with His people in and outside the local Church. We are not impoverished, or left in darkness to do God’s bidding. He has left us His Word.
He loves us so much that He works alongside us to fulfil His will which must be adhered. So examine a few reasons we are given in the Scriptures: to be acquainted with Christ’s sacrifice, although He was God He became obedient on to death; we are exposed to the benefit of Christ’s characteristics; become accustomed to God’s requirement; and to keep us walking into the footsteps of Jesus. In the Epistles of John, he reinforces the purpose of the Word of God and that is to keep us from sin; also he states that no murderers has eternal life - 1John 3:15. He concluded by giving us a remedy for sin, he shows that we have an advocate – Christ Jesus the Righteous One - 1John 2:1. Again in other Scriptures we see Jesus as the only mediator between God and man (see 1Timothy 2:5; Hebrews 7:25 & 9:24); it is only by the Scriptures we can know these things.
The Word of God according to 1John 5:13 states, “we should know that we have eternal life; and we should continue to believe in the name of the Son of God”. It is clear that knowing and believing is wrapped up in one package and within that package we are given sets of instructions. The instructions are how to know God and His requirement; how to seek and find Him and how to pursue eternal life; and it all comes down to making ourselves available, to the accessibility of the package presented to us.
So knowing God and knowing Jesus is our responsibility which is the criterion of eternal life. As we examined the life of Jesus and His spotless record while He was here on earth, we are given a full picture of God’s character, His love, holiness, mercy and grace. Jesus said that when we see Him we have seen the Father, by God extending His hands through Jesus to the poor as well as feeding the hungry, releasing mankind from bondage and captivity, healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, and raising the dead.
For Jesus to be Man yet God on earth, He had to be tempted in every possible way and yet not yield to these temptations, He overcame sin, death and He rose triumphantly from the dead. Jesus was the only door for us to enter eternal life; He was the exact representation of God on earth and so are we. Through this record Peter admonished us to follow in His steps. For us to know Him in a personal way; the One in whom all things exist; we must have an understanding that He is the source of all things and only through the Lord Jesus Christ by whom are all things (1 Cor 8:6 paraphrased).
Since the evidence presented above declares God is who He says He is demonstrated in Jesus; and Jesus fulfilled what the Scriptures says He was, it cannot be more stressed that it is our responsibility to acquaint ourselves with Him, and as children of God be reconciled to God by getting intimately acquainted with Him. We have been given the right to become the children of God, and with rights there are responsibilities so the onus is on us.
The Bible says we are to draw near to God and He will draw near to us. As stated earlier pursuing eternal life is a process distinguished by our walk, in the direction of heading towards another kingdom. We walk in patience and continuance in doing what is good, striving towards the glory and immortality, we seek to know the perfect will of God and walk in unity with Father, Son and Holy Spirit and in fellowship with the children of God. As we walk in obedience we are walking in eternal life and it’s a progressive walk. We can be assured that we are potentially possessors of eternal life because Jesus said I give to them eternal life; and the gift of God is eternal life; eternal life is in our grasp but we must lay hold on it (see 1John 3:15; 5:11-13).
So deliberately carve out time to get acquainted with every minute detail as we spend time with the people we love (and get to know), likewise let us carve out time to know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.

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