This life we live now is significant and important. But even it is ultimately a temporary expression of an ensuing, enduring reality that is best described as us, united to God in Christ, living a married life with Him forever. Indeed, this life will one day be seen as a brief and passing rest stop compared to the final destination of abundant life and blessing (see 2 Cor. 4:17).
The Eternal Journey: United to God in Christ
We begin married life with the Lord the moment we put our faith in Jesus. And that moment we begin a life together with Him, that new life only grows and deepens and expands. The end of all things is not “cold dark blank space,” as Ray Ortlund writes, but instead being with “a God above with love in his eyes for us and infinite joy to offer us.”
The Beginning of Our Married Life with Christ
We can’t now fully grasp all of what this will entail. Nevertheless, it is still quite significant to know that the best life the universe offers us feels like being married to someone who intimately, deeply, and fully loves us, and will love us like that forever.
Experiencing Divine Love Now and Forever
This is the life into which all believers are headed. But we can already experience some of this life now. For already, in this life, the church is the bride of Christ even as we look to and prepare for when we will officially be His bride forever . . . which means that already right now we have poured into us from God abundant love, enduring commitment, and full intimacy. Already right now we swim in God’s beloved love, flowing from God to us and eventually carrying all of us into eternity.
Love That Flows Among Believers
But now here is something to consider. This love, that flows from God to us, also flows among us. God’s beloved love for you connects you to God in His beloved love and it connects you to other believers in the same beloved love. We are carried together with other believers into eternity in God’s beloved love because God already today connects us together in His beloved love.
Our Spiritual Family: Connected by God’s Love
What makes us come together as the people of God and remain the people of God is what we have been given from God. We are family to one another because of God’s adopting us into His family. We are brother and sister not because we naturally have divine DNA within us but because of what has been done for us, namely God putting us in the Son. We relate to one another not through any natural blood relations but through the spiritual blood relation that we gained through the shed blood of Jesus. It is the blood of Jesus that gives us the same spiritual DNA that makes us family.
Reconciled and United Through Jesus
We are a reconciled community to one another because God reconciled us to Himself. We can speak of unity among us, of being “one new man,” because of what God has given us: the body and blood of Jesus (Eph. 2:13–16). This lasts into eternity even as it echoes back into the present, and in how we relate to one another today. All of how we interact with one another, all of how we relate to one another, comes out of how God first related to us. We see, feel, and relate to one another in and through and out of God, and specifically in and through and out of Jesus.
Implications for Loving One Another
This has implications for how we understand what it means to love one another within the church. We love one another from and out of God’s love for us.
Adapted from Dearly Beloved by Vermon Pierre (© 2024). Published by Moody
Publishers. Used by permission.
