Life In Our Eternity {Part 2}
This article is a continuation of a previous post. You can read Life In Our Eternity {Part 1} here.
Clue 3 – Our Moral Capacity
The third clue about what our eternal state will contain is demonstrated in man’s moral capacity. In our eternal state, man’s moral capacity will be only pure and good. While we work and live out of our cultural and relational capacities too, our moral capacity is the dominant theme of the rest of Scripture after Adam’s disobedience. Man’s moral capacity is of utter importance because our cultural and relational capacities do not function as God intends when the moral capacity is depraved due to disobedience. We have to be redeemed in order to be wholly restored.
Our relationship with God will always center around commands that we are called to obey. Within the very good, Edenic context, God gave commands (Genesis 2:16-17). God gave man a very good life while defining the God-to-man relationship with the necessity of obedience. Therefore, God’s commands are very good. They tell us that, while we are created in God’s image, we are not God. The knowledge that we are not God is essential to who we are meant to be, and its denial is essential to understanding what made Adam and Eve sin. It is what makes us sin: we want to be gods of our own lives.
So, from before the world began, God intended and planned that He would send His Son to save us (Acts 2:22-23). He intended that we would be a people proclaiming Christ’s redemption forever. Drawing this praise from His people is not an afterthought or the plan He was forced to devise after learning that we sinned. He knew we would sin. Before the world began, He decided that He would redeem us who believe for Himself so that we will be a people who forever praise Him as our Redeemer.
Summary – Our Eternal State
Our cultural, relational, and moral capacities come from the incredible gift of the image of God in man. This image of God will be restored from its depraved state in the new heavens and new earth. Praise God! We will fully know, love, and live the reality that He alone is God—and that we are surely not.
God will complete His creation plan so that we together cultivate His holy dwelling place as His image-bearers. In the new heavens and new earth, we will tend, govern, and compose—together using our capabilities to glorify Him. We will enjoy fully God-centered fellowship. We will have good work to do for His glory with capabilities redeemed and restored from any degree of depravity; we will have very good relationships that reflect Him and are redeemed and restored from any degree of separation or distance. As T. D. Alexander notes, “the biblical description of our future existence has more in common with our present life than most people assume.” With redemption and restoration complete, our future existence will be holy and glorious in culture-making and relating with each other.
The Bible starts in a garden and ends in a garden-city, New Jerusalem, reintroducing to mankind’s existence an Edenic-type glory of God’s manifest presence. The whole earth will be His holy sanctuary. All peoples of the earth will be healed (Revelation 22:2) and all culture-making restored (Isaiah 60). This exceedingly rich, restored, and redeemed heavenly kingdom will all be our incredible inheritance through Christ, the King of all (Revelation 21:7). To Him and for Him, we have been redeemed and restored. One day, we will dwell in close fellowship with God Himself and everything we are and do will purely be to and for Him. All praise to the Lamb who was slain; He is worthy to receive all glory and honor both now and forever!
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross.” -Colossians 1:15-20
Much of the thought in this article is indebted to Plowing in Hope, by David Bruce Hegeman, When the King Comes Marching In, by Richard Mouw, From Eden to the New Jerusalem, by T. D. Alexander. I most highly recommend Alexander’s work for a Biblical overview of God’s creation plan.
- Lianna
Hope Mom to Noelle
Lianna (@liannadavis) is wed to Tyler and mom of two dear daughters. She is author of Made for a Different Land: Eternal Hope for Baby Loss (Hope Mommies, 2019). More of her writing can be found at her website.
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