Life-Before-Death

 Someone came to Jesus with this question:  "Teacher, what must I do, what good thing must I do, to have and hold eternal life."  Matthew 19:16

We are looking for that "eternal life" and I think most of us don't even know what we are looking for.  Eternity is often explained and thought of as something in the future, but according to the Greek, it is more.  The implications of the language make it clear that this life is current.  It is life now.  It is life for now as much as in the future, which I like to call "life-before-death" because too many times we think this culminated life is only futuristic - after our death.

        "Eternal" - aionios - with no beginning and no end. So, this timeline doesn't start in the future, but has been ongoing.  This fulness has been possible all the time, the future only being an extension of what we have gained now.

        "Life" - Zoe - being in the state of vital living - in absolute fulness.  It is life active and vigorous: blessed and animated for the causes of community and God.  It is sometimes translated as "lifetime."  

        "What must I do" - agathos - sometimes translated as "good deed," but not really.  It's more positional - having a good constitution or nature; being good, pleasant, agreeable, joyful;  upright or honorable.

What if salvation, resurrection and eternal life is in the present:  us living our fullest life of goodness within our beings and within our surroundings....as God intended.  That is righteousness - literally "rightness" - to be as God intended, as he created us to be.  Jesus loves me just as he created me and then died to bring me closer to the divine.  He likes what I am.  He enjoys my presence, guards my journey.

Psalm 37:3-4 Trust and do the good* thing (for yourself) and live into what God provides and rest/keep company in his faithfulness.  Take joy in the Eternal.  His gifts are coming and they will meet your heart's needs.

        * good - tob - pleasant, better, well, merry, prosperous, precious, beautiful, glad; of rich moral character.

God wants the best for me now and into eternity.  I don't need to hit the wall of goodness after death, but live fully now in the life he has ushered in for me through the life and death of his Son.  

Make me ready to receive!