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Eternal Life

             Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. (John 17:3) 

            This seems like an odd thing to say at this point, but that may be because of our lack of understanding of Jewish poetry. I have heard it said that their poetry doesn’t work on rhyme or meter so much as in saying the same thing over again, perhaps in a different way. The Father glorifying the Son so the Son can glorify the Father may hold the same idea as eternal life being about knowing God and Jesus Christ. Glorifying the Father is glorifying the Son. Knowing the Father is knowing the Son, and eternity and everything contained within it (including the space-time continuum) is all about Them.

            Sometimes, people seem to think of heaven as a place and eternity as a time period. In a sense, they probably are, but eternal life is only eternal life in relation to God. Apart from Him, it’s eternal death – otherwise known as Hell. Heaven is only Heaven because God is manifestly there. It is worth considering whether God can be glorified if God is not involved the process any more than eternal life can be eternal life if God isn’t part of it. How much of the time do we spend doing things that we hope will glorify God (and  us) in which we don’t consciously invite God along? 

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