Eternal God speaks into a world of time

Sometimes the Word of God speaks to us in parables, figures of speech, types and other literary devices to make His truth simple for us to understand. We readily understand most of them such as the verses that say God covers us with His wings. Few would assume that means God is a chicken.

However, there are places where He uses eternal language. This means terms that tell of His realm — where time is not an issue and everything is now. He knows about creation before He made it, how it exists, and what happens to it. Most of us struggle with eternal language because it speaks of what God did before it happened as if it already was true…

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4–7)

As for types or typology, this is seeing how a person or event, usually in the OT, foreshadows another person or event usually in the NT and the future. For example, Romans 5:14 compares Adam to Christ: “Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.”  Obviously Jesus is not like Adam in many ways. Types need careful interpretation and a good understanding of all the Bible. They can easily be given meanings not intended. For instance, the devotional for today was written by a person who ties an OT type too tightly to her Christian experience without realizing that a type is a term that illustrates but is not perfectly like what it typifies.

For instance, Joseph is an OT type of Christ yet Jesus did not get sold into slavery or interpret dreams. In thinking this way, she says that God promised His people that when they entered the Promised Land every place that they would tread had already been granted to them. He didn’t say that He would give it to them; He said that He had given it to them. This is eternal language.

The author of this reading didn’t get it that the land was theirs whether they took possession of it at that time or later. Those who didn’t get it missed out because they did not believe, not because they didn’t take it and enjoy it right away. God knew what would happen and He could say it was theirs even before they were born, never mind how long it took them to figure it out.

This is a type, but not the same as the gift of eternal life. That gift is given to those who Jesus chooses, not offered the gift of faith. Actually, the gift God offers is Jesus. When He gives us eternal life, He gives us the new life of Christ and He comes in, giving us His wisdom, righteousness, even His mind. We are given all that Christ is, including a revelation or a ‘knowing’ of what we have:

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him…. We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. (1 John 5:13–20)

PRAY: Jesus, I know also that none of my salvation from sin is up to me. You give me experiences, even wilderness wanderings, to teach me to listen to You and obey You, to love You with my whole heart. You use all things for my good, to make me more like You. And You know me so well than You offered me Yourself at a time when there was no thought of refusal. You do not throw Your pearls to swine, only to those You choose before the foundation of the world, before we were even born!