God, Time, and Eternity

Happy New Year! Another year has gone by very quickly. Mathematically, one year is 1.4% of a 70 year-old’s life. For a 10 year old, one year is 10%, so no wonder time seems to fly faster for seniors like me!

God is Eternal

Our God is eternal, outside of time. He does not limit himself by the timeline he has created in our world. Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning, God…”. He existed before he created us, our world, days and nights, weeks, months, and years. And he will continue to exist when this world ends. In Revelation 1:8 the Lord says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” God created us in time, but his perspective is much different.

The concept of eternity is a genuine divine mystery, impossible for us to understand completely at least in this life. But the scriptures do say or imply a few things about time.

Today, You Will Be With Me

One very well known verse that provokes my thinking about this topic is Luke 23:43. Jesus, from the cross, told the repentant thief, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
Jesus said “today”, when in our linear time, he would be in his grave that day and the following day, before his resurrection on Sunday morning. So how can we understand this?

Jesus is fully God and therefore outside of time. He is also fully man and subject to time. He willingly entered our time when he came to earth as a baby, and left it when he ascended.

But In eternity, God can be anywhere at any time (our time) he chooses. Jesus, dead in our time as a man, was still eternally alive with his Father, and therefore could be with the thief as soon as death occurred. In a sense, Jesus was outside of our time/space world after his death. He rose from the dead, passed through doors, suddenly appeared or disappeared in various places (e.g. the road to Emmaus episode). He passed into the heavenly realm 40 days later.

The thief was apparently outside of our time when he died, since Jesus said he would be in paradise that day. I believe that also applies to us: when we die we leave our time and enter into God’s world of eternity. In our time, we wait for the new heavens and the new earth. But in God’s eternity, I believe they already exist!

Intermediate State

However, there are scriptures that allude to an “intermediate” state, where we go when we die to await the final judgement, and the new worlds promised in Revelation. In 1 Corinthians 15:52, Paul wrote that “…at the last trumpet…the dead will be raised imperishable and we will be changed.” In 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul mentions that when Jesus returns, “God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus” (verse 14). In verse 16, he says, “the dead in Christ will rise first…”. (see my article, Jesus is Coming Back!). The Scripture often characterizes death as “falling asleep”.

The Mystery of Today and Forever

How can we reconcile these verses with “today you will be with me in Paradise”? I would can only say that it is part of the mystery of eternity. Because we live and think in linear time, we can’t fully understand eternity yet.

This is my simple scenario: when we die we will leave time as we know it, and we will enter paradise. This is another term for the new heavens and new earth. Like the thief, we are with Jesus in eternal paradise on the day we die! When Jesus returns, we will also be with him as that event happens in earth time. I don’t understand how both could be true, but that’s what the Scriptures seem to say.

Our Perspective

Thinking about the thief in his last day on earth causes me to consider our perspectives in this short life. 2 Peter 3:8 “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”

In God’s time, the life of this earth and the time constraints imposed on us, are a very temporary thing. Compared to the eternal new heavens and new earth, it’s not much.

A few verses later in 3:14, Peter wrote, “Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these (new heavens and new earth), be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace.” God calls us to live peacefully in His righteousness while we wait for the day we enter paradise forever.

Paul says similar things in 2 Corinthians 4:16. “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

We all have troubles and trials in our relatively short time on earth. In this new year of 2022 let’s seek God’s perspective in the midst of our various challenges (Paul calls them “light and momentary afflictions”), knowing that those of us who belong to him will have eternity in paradise!