Response and Eternal Destiny

We believe that God commands everyone everywhere to believe the gospel by turning to Him in repentance and receiving the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that God will raise the dead bodily and judge the world, assigning the unbeliever to condemnation and eternal conscious punishment and the believer to eternal blessedness and joy with the Lord in the new heaven and the new earth, to the praise of His glorious grace. Amen.

God’s gospel requires a response that has eternal consequences.

The response required is obedience. “The gospel message comes to us as a declaration of fact—God has acted to save us through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. But that declaration also issues in a command—we must repent and believe that good news. The New Testament presents the gospel not simply as a helpful suggestion to implement or even an invitation to accept, but as a command to ‘obey’ (cf. 2 Thess. 1:8; Rom. 10:16-21; also Acts 5:32; Acts 6:7; Acts 17:30; Rom. 6:17; Heb. 5:9; 1 Pet. 1:22; 4:17). The proper response to this command, however, is faith, the sole means of receiving God’s saving grace (cf. John 6:29).” [from Evangelical Convictions]

And the eternal consequences that hang upon our response are the enjoyment of the presence of God. If “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18),” then to disobey the gospel is to refuse and reject what Christ suffered and died for. Paul describes it as “suffering the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might (2 Thessalonians 1:9).”

Are we sufficiently sobered and gripped by the weight and urgency of this?

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” (C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory)

This Sunday, Junior Jamreonvit will be preaching on our tenth statement of faith, Response and Eternal Destiny and Caleb Bilti will lead our sung worship. Would you pray for each as they prepare this week?

See you Sunday, Grace. Come hungry!