Oh, to be in a place of perfect purity and righteousness! At conversion we were given new hearts, but as we battle against our sins we often fail the Lord, and we sink down and hate ourselves, and we long to advance and to be pure. The prospect of going into a perfect place where there is no more temptation, no more sin, no more corruption rising up within us, is wonderful. When the apostle Paul spoke of how he was given great revelations, he spoke of it in terms of a special experience. He was caught up into the third heaven, and he was shown things and he was taught things that are unspeakable, unutterable. That does not mean simply that he was not allowed to repeat some of the things he saw of God and of heaven by revelation. It means it was impossible for him to teach or repeat these things, some of the things he had taught. There were no words to describe them. There were no words adequate to set them forth.
‘To whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.’ If you are a converted Christian, if you are truly saved, if you have been brought to Christ, you understand this. And in your blessed moments, this is what you really want. Of course, our immersion in this world can steal away from us our desire for heaven and for glory and for Christ. It can erode it away, and we can allow it to happen. You must not let it happen, friends. You must give time and thought and contemplation to the glories that await us. Not in a selfish spirit, but in the spirit that God has given you to desire holiness, to desire to see your Saviour, and to know his perfect love and his hold upon you, and worship him with hosts of others.
What are the elements of eternal life? We could list firstly, communion with God. God is to us on earth invisible: the eternal infinite Spirit being. But in eternal glory we shall see our Saviour who has adopted a human body in glorified form and we shall see our God. He will be the visible God to us eternally. And we shall see in some sense – but not a complete sense – the whole Godhead. We shall have capacity to perceive in some amazing and astonishing sense, even a degree of the invisible, omnipotent God on high, Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Secondly, we will worship him with millions upon millions of others. And what worship! Never again in glory will a preacher give out a hymn for the preacher is now in the congregation and we shall spontaneously and instinctively know exactly what it is we have to sing and to say. Before we are converted, we would listen to such things with, well, almost alarm. It has no interest to us; it has no power over us; it is not something we desire. Thirdly, there is the happiness of heaven, where there is communion with God and the rediscovery of all those who love the Lord, who we have known on earth. Fourthly, heaven is saturated with love and with glory and with the wonder of God. Have we no taste for it? The fact that it is eternal and secure just makes it all the more wonderful.
What are the words of eternal life? They are first and foremost words of information. We have to hear the Gospel, we have to understand it, and we have to see our need. We have to grasp what Christ has done on Calvary’s cross to pay the price of sin for us to make atonement. But they are more than information; they are the means of salvation, because when those words are eaten, that is to say, when they are believed with the whole heart and depended upon and made the basis of your prayer – Lord, save me. I believe in Christ and his atoning death. Save me and come to me and take me and make me thy child – they are words that have saving power. They are the means of salvation, the authority of salvation.