“God cannot lie.” Every promise of His shall be fulfilled, not a word of His shall fail. And He has promised eternal life and He did it before the ages of time. The promise was made before time began, but it had to be brought into and manifested in time, and when the ages of time have passed away and ceased, full blessedness will abide in glory and love for ever. But this fulfilment of the promise depended entirely upon the coming of the Son out of eternity into time.
The Son has come. “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him” (1 John 4:9). In a rejoicing and reconciled creation the Son of the Father’s love will be pre-eminent in all things. He will annul “all rule and all authority and power,” and in Him the good pleasure of the Fullness will dwell and find unalloyed satisfaction in the glorious result. And resting on the immoveable foundation of the peace made by the blood of His cross, all the reconciled shall rejoice and glory in the great Reconciler, by whom and for whom all things were created. The Son, the Revealer of the Father will be, as He is now, the everlasting delight of His holy love; and the eternal Spirit will blessedly pervade all that living realm of glad reconciliation; and unfading beauty, order, liberty, light and joy, holiness and glory, life and love will display the wise designs of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in their vital wealth in full fruition.
What was created by the Son of the Father’s love will be reconciled by Him eventually in full, glorious splendour! He has, however, already reconciled the assembly in the body of His flesh through death. He is now the exalted Head of that assembly, and the promise of life in the Son is finally secured. We have good reason to rejoice and to respond to the word, “Giving thanks to the Father, who has made us fit for sharing the portion of the saints in light, who has delivered us from the authority of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of THE SON OF HIS LOVE” (Col. 1:12-13). The sovereign sway of divine love in light and life has prevailed, and freedom from the authority of darkness has been made ours by the Father. Thanksgiving and praise be His.
The Holy Spirit shows that eternal life is connected with the Father and the Son. The assembly, called out from the nations, partakes in the before-time promise. For Israel, the favoured nation, the outlook is the earthly and the promises have to do with time. The Son of God spoke to Nicodemus, a teacher in Israel, of both the earthly and the heavenly. He could do so, for in His “wonderful” Person both are secured. He said, “If I have said the earthly things to you, and ye believe not, how, if I say the heavenly things to you, will ye believe?” Life eternal in divine blessedness was involved in the latter. And the Son from heaven is the bringer of it. Therefore those golden words graced His holy lips, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son; that whosoever believes on Him may not perish, but have life eternal.” Also we read, “He that believes on the Son has life eternal.” Life eternal was brought here by the Son; He became Man and gave His flesh for the life of the world, and those who are taught of God believe on Him, and have life. It was His Father’s will, as He said, “Everyone who sees the Son, and believes on Him, should have life eternal.” “He that has the Son has life.”
When Israel repent of their rejection of Him, and are received according to promise, it will be “life from among the dead.” From their sleep in earth’s dust such will awake to life; and then those in earthly Zion will be specially favoured with the blessing, which is characterized by “life for evermore.” They will be in priestly nearness before Jehovah, and from that good and pleasant unity, of which Psalm 133 speaks, will flow exceptional blessing, while great earthly benefits will spread. All Israel will be saved. The Lord shall be King over all the earth. All the nations shall call Him blessed. Tribes, tongues and peoples shall be blessed in Him. He will fill “the throne of His father David”; and the glorious throne on which He sits will spread far its glad benefits. Those who dwell with Him above in His Father’s house, will reap the ineffable fullness of life eternal in the adorable presence of the Father and the Son.
His loved ones shall also reign with Him, for this is His promise, but they shall dwell with Him too! His royal glory in “the earthly things” is of momentous and deep interest to them, but His eternal glory in the dwelling of eternal love, the dwelling of the Father and the Son, surpasses all else, and the eternal Spirit even now guides those who share “the heavenly things’ to anticipate in faith, affection and deepening understanding, the things that belong to that glory, as His coming draws nigh (John 16). It was as the Son of the Father, He said, “I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” With Himself in His Father’s dwelling of many mansions and of living splendour and love! What more can be desired by those who know the Father’s eternal love through the Son by the Comforter’s teaching?
He is THE ETERNAL WORD also, and the Holy Spirit tells us, “All things received being through Him” (John 1:3). By and for the Son of the Father’s love all were created (Col. 1:16). “By me kings reign, and rulers make just decrees; by me princes rule, and nobles, all the judges of the earth,” says WISDOM regarding her administration of glory and power; while in pleading grace her voice is heard without in “the chief place of concourse”; and within is the house building. The glorious Speaker in whom Jehovah delighted (Prov. 8:30), says, “I was set up (anointed) from eternity!” before creation and kings appeared. The same Person is afterwards set (or anointed: same as Psalm 2:6) in Zion; and Jehovah decrees, “Thou art My Son; I this day have begotten Thee.” The anointed Speaker in Proverbs 5 says, “Whoso findeth Me findeth life” (v. 35); and, “He that sinneth against Me wrongeth his own soul” (v. 36). Anointed from eternity! Anointed as of Jehovah in time! He “came forth from the Father” to bring life eternal to perishing sinners. “He that has THE SON has life.”