PERHAPS WE’VE IDLY WONDERED if a fish knows that its entire existence is lived out in water. And, maybe that thought has led us beyond the fact that we breathe in and exhale out air bounded by the realm of physics in which we exist, to wonder if there is something we’re not seeing. We’re not the first to think such things. In fact, we’re hard-wired for this kind of metaphysical thought, and not from an overriding philosophical quest—it comes from an internally embedded DNA code in our spirit, and that as a purpose of God. He speaks through Solomon, to those who wonder such things, the following: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (Ecc. 3:11)
This scripture juxtaposes time and eternity. The first, if we are optimistic, is displayed encased in the beauty of a flower seen at a moment of full bloom. The second is shrouded in mystery, and is all-too-often only examined after the bloom has faded. It need not nor should it be so fatalistic. A life lived in linear time is bound by the constraints of what is possible in that brief span. A life lived with a view beyond time is unbound, and all things become possible.
Paul reveals compelling insight to this issue. “We speak a message of wisdom among the mature.” (1 Cor. 2:6a) Paul is directly referring to the making-all-things-new alteration to the cosmos that is both being rendered by and completed in the birth, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of Jesus Christ. He speaks of this earlier in this same Corinthians letter. “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Cor. 1:18) There is a reason for this, he says. “It is not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age.” (1 Cor. 2:6b) Further in this letter, he explains “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” (1 Cor. 2:14)
This is the lamentable condition of all the generations, in every age, that do not seek God. The Greek word “aion” that Paul uses regarding “the wisdom of this age” (1 Cor. 2:6b), speaks of *“a perpetuity of time,” but within the context of **“a system of practices and standards associated with secular society devoid of any demands or requirements of God.” Paul says elsewhere that, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” (2 Cor. 4:4) This is true of individuals, and it is true of nations. To this, Paul adds, “None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” (1 Cor. 2:8)
The cosmos was incipiently shifted towards a new axis, realigned with both the original and the new heavens, by the incarnation of Jesus; it is violently shifted further in this direction by his death, and further yet by his resurrection. It is Paul, again, who tells us of the beginning of this process. “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.” (Gal. 4:4-5)
This is the great revelation of the purpose of God in his creation of mankind. We are made in his image (cf. Gen. 1:27), and we are being shaped in linear time during our lives in this world, in order to fit perfectly into an eternity in a realm unbound by the current physical laws of matter, space, and time. We only glimpse this now. As Paul says, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.” (1 Cor. 13:12) But Paul affirms, from his own life experience and by revelation from the Holy Spirit, “We declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.” (1 Cor. 2:7)
This world is a confusing mess, and can easily entangle our minds, emotions, and spiritual well-being in its chaotic disorder. Peter warns, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” (1 Pet. 5:8) If we allow ourselves to be trapped in time and space, we will be fully subject to the forces that permeate the entire extent of these boundaries. The bondage is Lilliputian in its forces. There are innumerable threads of relationships, sins, wounds, and circumstances that are woven into cords, and then braided into ropes, that hold us staked down in thrall to the dense dark gravity of the god of this age. Just as the destiny of a fish out of water is the frying pan, so the destiny of mankind out of the will of God is hell.
You and I, however, have a destiny above and beyond. Jesus has firmly established a work in us that has fully brought us to “see with our eyes, hear with our ears, understand with our hearts, and turn.” (Matt. 13:15) In God’s love for us, on full display in Jesus, we have been set free from the cords of death binding us to this realm’s perpetuity of time. We’ve received a great gift, and what has been “loosed on earth” is already “loosed in heaven . ” (Matt. 16:17)
Q. Do I exist in the source of Life?
*Strong’s 165.
**Louw-Nida 41.38.
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