‘Behold, the Lamb of God’s
ide o amnos tou
theou
College Study
29th teaching
3.18.2013
The ‘Negative’ Doctrines:
“God’s Immortality”
Turn to I Kings
18:16-40.
I love this story. It’s so dramatic. It’s so radical. Would
you have the faith to stand in front of thousands and allow the Lord to prove
Himself? Elijah was an interesting guy. He sets up this whole showdown, this
whole challenge: Baal vs. God. And of course the true Deity won.
Why? Why did God win? What was the difference between
Jehovah and Baal? Why did the 400 plus prophets of Baal not succeed when the
one prophet of God, all alone, did?
May I suggest to you that it was because God was real. God
was alive. He could hear Elijah’s plea. He could send down the fire. Baal maybe
might have been a demon, but he very well might have been nothing at all. While
demons act, Baal did not. And God, the real God, showed Himself active,
dynamic, alive.
This brings us around to our subject tonight. The study is
entitled: “God’s Immortality”. God is alive and the character of His life is
immortality.
Immortality.
Our subject tonight is one which has always fascinated
mankind. The draw and the lust of the idea of living forever has occupied our
poetry, our aspirations, our religions and our storytelling since the dawn of
our race.
If we were to take a brief survey of our ideas of
immortality, we might begin with human fiction. Our fiction throughout the ages
has been full of concepts like eternal life, eternal youth and immortality.
Take for example one of the earliest surviving works of literature: the Epic of
Gilgamesh. The Epic is a combination of ancient Sumerian poems, written in
Mesopotamia around 2000 BC, some 4000 plus years ago. And guess what? In the Epic,
a king named Gilgamesh, becomes fearful for his life and decides to undertake a
quest for eternal life. Gilgamesh seeks out an immortal man known as
Utnapishtim (who survived a flood by building an ark for he and his family and
animals???). Gilgamesh is directed to find a plant that grows underwater, but
when he discovers it, it’s stolen by a serpent (interesting?!). But even this
super-old story is concerned with immortality.
Take also an example more familiar to us: the legendary
Foundation of Youth. This was a fabled spring which could restore life and
youth to anyone who drank from it or bathed in it. Stories about the foundation
of youth have circulated the globe since the time of the Greeks and Alexander
the Great.
In our more modern time, you have the example of science
fiction. Sci-fi is overflowing with examples of fictional immortality. One
particularly favorite example of mine comes from 2001: A Space Odyssey, in
which a theoretical alien species, known as the Firstborn, use artifacts known
as Monoliths to encourage intelligence and evolution in lesser life-forms
throughout the galaxy. In the novel, 2001, it is postulated that the aliens had
long ago achieved immortality by translating their corruptible bodies of flesh
into imperishable bodies of plastic and metals, before translating their
incorporeal consciousnesses into pure energy and thereby guaranteeing safety
from injury and perfect immortality.
Even more familiar to us: the Elves of High Fantasy
literature. Elves are often pictured as graceful and beautiful and admirable,
following JRR Tolkien, with traits such as immortality and longevity. Elves
represent a kind of ideal of humanity, like humanity perfected. Thus of course,
the great desire of humanity, namely immortality, is not absent.
*There you have fiction. But fiction involves fantasy. What
about hard facts? What about technology and science?
Well, allow me to introduce to you Aubrey David Nicholas
Jasper de Grey, a theoretical gerontologist. As the Chief Science Officer of the
SENS Research Foundation, De Grey researches regenerative medicine. He believes
that humans could live to lifespans that greatly exceed our lifespans today. He
has identified seven types of molecular and cellular damage related to human
aging and proposes therapies designed to repair this damage. All this boils
down to theoretical medicine which could increase human longevity, possibly to
the point of immortality. It’s crazy that this is currently being researched.
Even crazier: Whole Brain Emulation is a hypothetical
process in which a conscious mind could be transferred from a brain to a
non-biological computer system. As science-fictiony as that sounds, brain
emulation and preserving personality and memories inside of a computer as data
is considered by some scientists as a possible technology. Dmitry Itskov is
head of the 2045 Initiative, an international project attempting to reach
technological immortality through brain emulation by the year 2045.
*In another branch of science altogether, in biology, there
exists a term called biological immortality. There are a few animal and
vegetable life forms which theoretically have traits which could render them
immortal. Now these creatures can suffer injuries and predation, but in a safe
environment, they could flourish forever.
One of the oldest living things in the world lives in our
own state of California: known as the Methuselah tree. It is estimated to be
4844 years old. It is a bristlecone pine. They also discovered even older
specimens in the same area, even older than Methuselah. One such tree has an
estimated age of 5063 years old.
Or there’s the turritopsis
nutricula, the aptly named Immortal Jellyfish. This creature has the
remarkable ability to revert to its adolescent stage after becoming mature.
This transformation can repeat endlessly, and so while other jellyfish species
have a fixed lifespan, the Immortal Jellyfish could constantly revert to a
younger form indefinitely.
*Or forget fantasy and forget science. What about fame?
Surely if you’re famous enough, you will live forever… well, not literally but
in the hearts and minds and memories of thousands who have read your work,
heard you sing, seen your picture, discovered the feats of your life. Is not
Shakespeare immortal? Is not Augustine and Paul and Milton and Dickens?
Someone once said: “Immortality is the genius to move
others long after you yourself have stopped moving”.
Fame, then, is considered to be a kind of immortality, an
achievement of those who have gained success. And therefore no wonder millions
are always striving for success, selling their happiness for success,
sacrificing everything for the sake of fame and the kind of immortality it
brings. The American poet Edgar Lee Masters said: “Immortality is not a gift,
Immortality is an achievement; And only those who strive mightily Shall possess
it”.
*But there is perhaps no greater example of man’s obsession
with immortality, than in the many, many thousands of man’s religions. The
world’s major religions each have a variety of perspectives on the afterlife
and spiritual immortality. Maybe that’s the draw of all these religions: the
draw that you can live forever. Interesting then, that all the religions of the
world, except for Christianity, are do-it-yourself religions: you must earn
your way into heaven, or nirvana, or the afterlife or whatever; you must earn
your immortality as an achievement, and that is just as powerful of an
attraction as fame itself.
*In reality, despite the research and the religions of
mankind, immortality and life exist in God.
Turn to Deuteronomy
5:22-26.
This is the first time, so far as I know, that God was
uniquely identified as the Living God. The title “Living God” is one which is
repeated throughout the Old and New Testaments. It becomes one of the basic
fundamental descriptions of who and what God is, and it differentiates God from
all other deities of man’s religions.
To call the Lord the Living God is to say that He is Life,
that He is active and dynamic, that He moves, hears, speaks, thinks.
In II Kings 19:16,
it is precisely this attribute of the Living God which Hezekiah pleads on. When
Hezekiah prays before the Lord, he says “Incline
Your ear, O LORD, and hear; open Your eyes, O LORD, and see; and hear the words
of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God.”
If God were not alive, it would be senseless to pray to
Him. It would be senseless to ask Him to see and to hear. God is a God of
action. No Being has so marked human history other than the God of the Bible.
In stark contrast to the Living God, the false gods of man
do not see and do not hear. Idols, with which the ancient world was so
familiar, were objects of wood and stone and metal, which were no more alive
than the rocks they had been cut from.
Look at Daniel 5.
The prophet Daniel lived in the Babylonian empire, a country that knew all
about idolatry. You remember the familiar story of the writing on the wall in
the book of Daniel? Check out Daniel’s words in response to the writing on the
wall: Daniel 5:13-23.
The false gods of Babylon stand in stark contrast to the
Living God: they do not see or hear or know. But lest we think that we live in
an age too civilized for the old-fashioned idolatry of the ancient world,
realize that even in the future time envisioned in Revelation 9:20, there will be an unrepentant mankind, those that
survive the plagues of God’s wrath, which do not repent of the works of their
hands “that they should not worship
demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone and wood, which can neither see
nor hear nor walk.”
*Before we go on, let’s have our Project Scriptura verses…
There are two attributes of God which are connected to our
subject
1. God’s Life
2. God’s Immortality
These two are kindred-doctrines.
Life describes the metaphysical Being of God. The Greek
word for life is zoe,
from which we get our English words Zoo and Zoology. Zoe means something not subject to death, or pure life: a perfect
definition of the nature of God.
He is Life, pure and unending, whereas everything gets life
or receives life. Not to talk about the birds and the bees, but when you were
conceived, you got life. God does not
get life. Life already exists in
Himself. God has life intrinsically, within Himself. He needs nothing to
sustain His life. God does not need to eat or sleep or take in sunshine. He is
Life. And He is the Source and Origin of all life.
Immortality, though, is an attribute which describes the
quality of God’s Life. Immortality we understand of course to mean unending. Once again, the Greek language
sheds additional light on the subject. The Greek word for immortal, athanasia, does mean without death, but it also carries the
meaning of something incorruptible and undecaying. That speaks of purity.
So God is Life, but pure, undecaying, incorruptible life.
Rightly does the Bible say God “alone is
immortal” (I Tim 6:16). God
alone possesses this kind of perfect Life as a result of His own Being.
Everything else, even immortal angels and immortal believers in heaven have
received immortality and life from the One who possesses Life intrinsically.
The apologist Norman Geisler puts it that “All creatures came to be by God, and all creatures continue to be by God… Further,
creatures will have continued life forever only as a gift of God.”
Now this points out some differences between our mortal
lives and God’s immortal life. Remember that attributes of God are not univocal
or equivocal, not totally the same or totally different, but analogical,
similar to. God’s Life is not totally like our life, nor is it totally
different from our life, since that would mean God’s Life is actually death.
No, God’s life is analogically similar to our lives. His Life is like our lives but different.
And the pure Life of God does show some differences to our lives.
As we’ve seen God’s life is immortal, ours at the time being is not, at least
physically. Someday, should the Lord delay His return, you and I will lie down
in our graves.
Think about some of these differences. Our lives are
characterized by growth and by learning, by becoming adults and aging. God
experiences none of these things. God, in His immaterial essence, has never
grown or learned, being already perfect. Similarly, God does not age. He does
not become anything other than what He already is. He is already perfect, and
there is nothing more than perfect. There is nothing more than infinity. We can
hardly imagine a life like that.
It is an awe-inspiring thought to realize that divinely God
was never once surprised, God never once went to school, never once learned
anything, never once had growing pains or went through puberty, never once was
shocked or had any realizations. He has always had perfect, incorruptible Life.
Does that not make God unique, the most unique Being in existence? He is the
One who alone is truly immortal. And
it is for an attribute like this that He deserves to be praised and adored.
*So we know then that God is Life in Himself, and His life is pure and incorruptible. All
life, whether spiritual or physical, comes from God. He is the Source of Life.
This brings up our lives, namely, our future immortal
lives.
“Surely God would not have created such a being as man,
with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was
made for immortality” - Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United
States.
God has given life to human beings and that life will
continue, that consciousness will continue, either into eternal bliss in Heaven
or eternal punishment in Hell. The question isn’t so much whether humans will
be immortal, but the question is: wherein will you spend your immortality?
For those who have decided, let me pose to you another
question. Do you ever envision heaven as boring?
For some thinkers, immortality is undesirable. We have
maybe come across stories in which someone blessed with long-life outlives
everyone and everything they have come to love, living out a kind of immortal
sadness.
Isaac Asimov, considered by some to be the grand-father of
modern science fiction, once wrote: “There is nothing frightening about an
eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and
eternal boredom in Heaven.”
Aha! That is the final point I’d like to dwell on.
Look at Philippians
1:21-24.
How much do you love this world? How much do you love this
life? Can you say as the Apostle did: it is far better to depart and be with
Christ, than to live in this world?
I have asked myself this question before, and I still find
it immensely challenging. And I think your immediate subconscious answer will
gauge where your heart is. Are you excited for heaven or are you more excited
for this world? Does heaven to you sound like a great big boring church service
for all of eternity? Or are you simply ecstatic to see the One who formed you,
who died for you, to see the Glory that men have barely dreamed of, to witness
infinity, to speak with the One who has all knowledge and all wisdom, to
worship at His worthy feet?
You will be immortal yes, either in heaven or in hell, but
if in heaven: are you looking forward to it?
It is incredibly interesting to me that growing up somehow
involves the loss of child-like wonder.
You may think me arrogant in quoting myself, but I once
wrote on a blog article: Christian Thoughts on Calvin and Hobbes, in which I
talked about Calvin’s sense of magicality and wonder about the world, always
using his imagination. I wrote in that article: “But what is childlike wonder?
Why do we never say adult-like wonder? Doesn't that even sound a little
droll--maybe a little raunchy--saying that: adult-like wonder? There's a reason
we don't associate wonder with adults. It is a skill they no longer possess,
except probably in rare exceptions.
“Wonder about the world, the feeling within oneself that
everything is magical and special and new, is something that an adult somewhere
drops along the path of growing-up, somewhere along a path strewn with college
papers, taxes, job hunting, finance managing, work and family and standing in
line at the DMV.
“We never say adult-like wonder because adults have lost
their sense of wonder about the world. To the grown-up, things are no longer
new and exciting. We've been there. We've done that. We've seen it before.”
Ah, but heaven is exactly the place we’ve never seen and it
will be infinitely full of things we’ve never done before. If you talk to a
child about heaven, they can’t wait for it. Yet you read passages like
Revelation 21, about a cubical city made of transparent crystals and glass
descending from God out of the heavens, and adults hardly even bat an eye.
Where is your wonder? Where is your hope? Are you more
concerned with doing and accomplishing before you die, or are you concerned
more about where you go after you die, where so many of the things we worshiped
in this life will seem utterly meaningless in the radiance of God’s majesty?
Mankind is fascinated with immortality, as we’ve seen. Why
aren’t we fascinated with our immortal reality to come? Where is our longing
for heaven?
I was listening recently to a sermon by the preacher
Alistair Begg. He was addressing this very question of longing for heaven. Why
do we not long for heaven? How do you get to longing for it?
And he compared it to this: when you were a little boy or a
little girl, and you came into the kitchen when your mother was preparing
dinner, and you were hungry, you might’ve asked your mom for a bit of whatever
it was she was making. And that was the worst thing you could do, because then
there would still be the fact that you’d have to wait for dinner, but the
flavor of dinner would be in your mouth from that little sample you had. It
made the longing for it more intense. You could hardly wait for dinner!
I know I did that all the time.
Might I suggest to you that the same thing can be true of
longing for heaven? Where is our longing? Well, it may be that you have to get
a glimpse of it, taste of sample of it. Well, where?
In such places as heaven is brought up: in the study of
God’s Word, in the worship of the Lord, in godly conversation with fellow
believers, in personal reflection upon these things of God, in thanksgiving for
the beautiful things in life, in prayer both corporate and private. Maybe we do
not have a longing for heaven because we do not get enough samples of it. Are
you studying God’s Word? Do you worship Him? Do you have godly conversation? Do
you sit in the quietness of your heart, alone, and reflect?
Immortality awaits us. Heaven awaits us. The Lord of lords
awaits us. The reunion with those who have gone on before awaits us. Are you
excited for it?
Do you love this
world? Or is it better for you to depart and be with Christ?
A good question for each of us to address.
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