Immortality, Eternal Life
The two expressions are not synonymous, tho often so used. The life of God, it needs no argument to prove, must be eternal life. He is “the eternal God;” His life must be eternal; His eternal life is in harmony with His eternal law, for that eternal law is the law of righteousness, and “in the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death.” Prov. 12:28. When man was created, he received from his eternal Maker eternal life. He knew no other. His nature was in perfect harmony with his Creator. Life flowed in an uninterrupted stream from the great Fountain. Man received that spiritual life, which permeated his whole being. He possessed, too, the life of God in physical frame, and would have possessed it as the life of God to all eternity if he had never sinned; but when man sinned, he perverted the eternal law of righteousness, the channel through which life came to him, and through which it was also perpetuated. When the channel was perverted, the life was perverted; perverted righteousness is sin; perverted blessing is cursing; perverted life is death. While still all life flows out from the great eternal Fountain, it comes as God’s life to those only who are in harmony with God’s law. Just as soon as the carnal heart stretches its will across the channel of life, it perverts the life. We have a good illustration of the good perverted, in the law of gravitation. That law is a good law. It holds things in stable equilibrium upon the earth; yet if one should cast himself from the top of an eminence, from some great building or precipitous ledge of rock, he would be dashed to pieces below. The same law which is a blessing to all mankind in general, proves his destruction because he has perverted it. Take also a river rising in the great, everlasting fountains of the mountain springs; it flows through the land a blessing to vegetation and commerce. Dam up its channel, and it overflows its banks and causes devastation and destruction of property, homes, and lives. The blessing perverted becomes a curse. Electricity is a beneficent agent, capable of wonderful utility. Flowing on in a live wire overhead it drives machinery, lights and warms factories, carries messages, and is a good thing generally. Let some one pervert it, however, from that channel through which it flows, into a human body, and the human immediately dies. So it is with God’s life. God’s life perverted means death. God’s law perverted is sin. When the sinner returns to God through Jesus Christ, he comes again into harmony with the law of God’s life. He places himself by faith in that attitude where God can bestow again upon him the gift of eternal life. Then life again flows into his being as it did before sin entered. Here it is possible for faith so to receive it as to lift the soul above the power of sin, which dwells in perverted flesh. This is what true conversion means to the sinner. It does not mean that he has simply changed attitude. It means that he has actually partaken of the divine nature, the spirit of the eternal life has come into his own heart and soul. Therefore we read: “But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the SPIRIT IS LIFE BECAUSE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall GIVE LIFE ALSO TO YOUR MORTAL BODIES THROUGH HIS SPIRIT THAT DWELLETH IN YOU.” Rom. 8:9-11. There is life and power in that Spirit to lift us above all spiritual weaknesses; to cleanse away sin, inherited and inbred; to give us power over the temptations of the adversary; and to illumine our spiritual understanding that we may not be ignorant of the devices of the enemy or of the ways of God. There is healing and life for the physical frame to him who will appropriate it. It will bring the body into harmony with the mind, and will make all the fibers of his being open channels for the life of God to flow through, laden with health. That is the eternal life which God gives to His children of faith, which the world itself does not possess. We are expressly told by the apostle in Eph. 2:12 “that at that time [when unconverted] ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world.” The same truth is elsewhere declared, “being alienated from the life of God.” Eph. 4:18. Let us read again the text, more familiar perhaps than any other in the Word of God: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” John 3:36. Once again: “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him: he that believeth not God hath made Him a liar; because he hath not believed in the witness that God hath borne concerning His Son. And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.” 1 John 5:10-12. We know not how language could be clearer or stronger. We know not how it could be more forcibly taught that the poor human’s only hope of everlasting life is in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that apart from Him we are “without God,” “alienated” from His life. God gives to us this eternal life that we may have power to overcome. We hold that life by living, constant faith in Him. It is the power which He gives us by which we may overcome sin and develop characters worthy of a higher existence, but not until the character is developed do we receive the gift of immortality. That gift of immortality pertains not simply to the mind, but to the physical man. It changes this body of our humiliation, and fashions it after the body of His glory. It takes the poor mortal and invests him with incorruptibility. It is God’s stamp of an incorruptible character. The incorruptible character is worthy of an incorruptible, undying existence; and God gives to the incorruptible mind a body that will live forever, fed continually from the life of God. This will be given to His children at the second coming of Christ, when those who are alive will be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, from mortality to immortality, and when those who sleep in Christ shall be raised to immortality, and come up from the grave without one mark of death or sin upon them. This is the hope which we would set before our readers. This is the life which the Lord charged His disciples to proclaim. This is the power which Jesus Christ gives to all those who believe in Him. Truth is always better than error. The error into which the world has fallen, that man is immortal, that he goes to his reward at death, sets aside other great truths of the Bible; for if that be true, what need of a day of judgment, which is so strongly emphasized in both Old and New Testaments? what need is there of a resurrection, which is so clearly taught? what need is there of the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, with which the whole Scripture is permeated? Granting the great Bible truth that the soul is not immortal, then all these other things are plain and clear, each falls into its own place in the great divine scheme; otherwise there is confusion unutterable. How much better it is to accept the truth, that we are candidates for immortality, a gift which God will bestow upon every one who desires it, in harmony with the only conditions on which it can prevail, namely, righteousness.