Titus 3:4-7 But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
There is a wonderful aspect given in this verse as to what is true of us as God’s Beloved, both corporately, as His Church and individually, as His children. We are saved, only because of the grace of God which He poured out upon us in His kindness through Jesus Christ, His Son. In that tremendous grace, we have been made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This is the point in which we want to seek His discernment this morning. What does it mean to be heirs of the hope of eternal life? We often use this terminology, but I am afraid that it is seen as an ambiguous statement that is simply taken to refer to the great by and by. We know that at some point, we will die an earthly death and will then be taken up into heaven to live eternally in the presence of God. It is the generally accepted consideration of the here-after, so to speak. 
But that is not the complete picture as described in scripture. I pray that it is to the glory of God to consider the scriptural reality of eternal life. That we can consider what it is and what part it has now in the lives of redeemed of God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior. This will not be an all-encompassing study, but rather an overview with the prayer that it will stimulate each of us to seek out the Lord into the greater depth of His heart in these lives that we live today.  
With regard to eternal life, we are directly told what it is by Our Lord, Himself in John 17:1-3. These things Jesus spoke; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee, even as Thou gavest Him authority over all mankind, that to all whom Thou hast given Him, He may give eternal life. "And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. 
What does it mean to know God? The key to this is the fact that we are not talking about an intellectual awareness of God. We are talking about that deep, personal, living relationship with God that is only possible through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is an intimate relationship, paralleled very imperfectly by our earthly type of marriage. It contains the essence of a husband and wife knowing each other in such intimate and personal depth, that nothing is hidden. There is a complete openness of being into a true oneness that transcends any understanding. The two become, almost literally, one in thought and heart and spirit and being. This is utterly indescribable as human language is inadequate to even begin to develop the sense of what a true husband and wife share in their intimacy. Even more glorious, then, is this relationship of eternal life that is our union with God in Jesus Christ.
While it is utterly incomprehensible and unfathomable, there are aspects of it that we can glimpse as we focus our attention upon it. The first is that this eternal life is sustained by the Word of God.     
Deut 8:1-3 "All the commandments that I am commanding you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your forefathers. And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. And He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. It is His Word that works to nourish and to cause eternal life to flow forth through the course of our beings. Much like blood sustains the body, His Word is our substance and sustenance of life.
	Next, eternal life is secured through faith. John 5:24+25 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. "Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear shall live. As we hear the Word of God, Jesus Christ, and as we believe into Him, we begin to learn what it means to have eternal life. This is not for the future; His work is not a delayed victory. It is now and it is today. The eternal life that we live in Him is this very day and forever. 
	As we read in John 20:30+31, concerning our Lord, Many other signs therefore Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name. 
	And the Apostle Paul emphasizes the reality of eternal life operating in us, in Christ, at this very instant in Rom 6:8-11. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin, once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 
Later in this letter he adds, in Rom 8:10, And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. So this is our second point, eternal life is secured by faith in Jesus Christ and it is in place today because it operates as we believe in Christ. Day by day, week after week, we now live in the eternal life of Jesus Christ. This is so because we believe and know that He is alive and lives in us. 
	This eternal life, secured by faith, then, necessitates death to sin and self. Because we are now spiritually alive to God, in Christ Jesus; because the Holy Spirit dwells within us; because our lives are no longer our own; His life should be evidenced in us. There should be a corresponding reflection of the truth of His eternal life in our behavior and our attitude and our demeanor and our testimony of Him on this earth. 2 Cor 4:7-12, But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you. 
	In the reality that we are no longer slaves to the natural man, now dead by virtue of Christ’s redemptive work, we hold onto the life that is manifested in Him. 2 Cor 5:14+15 For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf. We live eternally unto Him. As we so often relate, as we encourage those who join us in going through the process of reckoning ourselves dead indeed to sin, Gal 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me. 
	This correspondingly brings us to the next certainty of eternal life. The fact is that Jesus Christ is the supreme object of eternal life, not us. We are partakers of it only because we are now joined to Him. This is so aptly declared in Phil 1:21, For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. The Apostle Peter takes it a bit farther as he relates the following in 1 Peter 4:6 For the gospel has for this purpose been preached even to those who are dead, that though they are judged in the flesh as men, they may live in the spirit according to the will of God. 
It is the will of God that has placed us into His Only Begotten Son. The entire focus of the Gospel is Jesus Christ. He is the Good News. We so often, in our selfishness, consider merely the fact that God so loved us that He gave His Son to die for us, which is absolutely true. But the fact, the truth, when carried to its absolute conclusion, is that we are so loved because God knew that in our salvation, by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, all of creation will be forced to acknowledge the supremacy and the Lordship of The Son. Every knee will have no choice but to bow down before Him and every tongue will be thoroughly compelled, because of His sacrifice, to honor Him as Lord of all creation. 
In the salvation of man, whom He so fully loves, Jesus Christ is glorified and will be so fully glorified for all of eternity. We are the benefactors of the eternal life by which His honor and His adoration and His magnificence and His majesty and His praise and His adulation are eternally to be manifested. God’s love for His Son is established and comprehensible by its perfect demonstration in our salvation and glorification in Him.
	In that truth is made manifest the fact that God’s love in our lives is the living demonstration of the fullness of Jesus Christ’s eternal life. 1 John 3:14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. Eternal life, since it springs forth from our living relationship with God, since it is fully focused on Jesus Christ, must have at its very core, the expressed love of God. We can not possibly know God without knowing, in a very deep and personal and living manner, His love. He is the essence and the Being of Love. Eternal life then flows from love unto love and must evoke that very heart within all in whom it so fully and richly courses. We love because He first loved us.
	Additionally, eternal life is the product and the result of the fact that in our belief in Jesus Christ, we are now indwelled and made spiritually alive by the Holy Spirit. This brings great transformation into our lives. We experience the birth of a new spirit which now operates freely in us, changing us from glory to glory, as we occasionally sing. Ezek 36:26+27 "Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. "And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. Our entire focus of attention is changed. Rather than viewing God as restrictive and detrimental to our desires and cravings, we rejoice in His Holiness and we learn to desire to please Him. The Apostle Paul takes this new heart into the greater depths of the work of the Holy Spirit in eternal life in 2 Cor 3:2+3. You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. We are the living product of the Creative and Majestic Hand of God in operation for all to see.
This is the result of the fact that eternal life springs from His Divine Nature. It is divine in origin. John 1:12+13 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 
The Apostle John emphasizes over and over again the fact that we are born of God, issuing forth from His heart of Love in Jesus Christ. 1 John 2:29, If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him. 1 John 3:9, No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. And, 1 John 4:7, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 
	It is in our new birth in Christ, in our now living in the eternal life of knowing God in such intimacy, that our eyes are opened to look beyond the circumstances of daily life. We see the supremacy and the Lordship of Christ as He rules and overrules in the course of our moment by moment walk on this earth. 
This is why we find it absolutely impossible to live without Him any longer. We recognize His handiwork. We begin to see ever more clearly all the details as they are ordered by Him. Eternal life is absolutely essential to spiritual vision, as Christ tells us in John 3:3, Jesus answered and said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." 
We see the kingdom of God now because we can see, albeit sometimes dimly, with spiritual eyes and hearts that are the outflow of our being a brand new creation in Christ Jesus. 2 Cor 5:17, Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 
	In summary, therefore, we are now the recipients of eternal life at work today because we are now able to know, in ever increasing measures, God seen in increasing aspects of His Character and Attributes and Nature. Will we ever fully know God?  Not in all the eternal ages to come!  We will, however, be ever and eternally learning of Him as He lovingly reveals His fullness into us through Jesus Christ. It is by the Word made flesh that our eternal life operates fully and completely to His glory in us. 1 Peter 1:23-25, for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God. For, "All flesh is like grass, And all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, And the flower falls off, But the word of the Lord abides forever. " And this is the word which was preached to you. As John writes in 1 John 5:1, Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God; and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. 
Relish the eternal life that is now ours, in Him, at this very moment. Seek after God to reveal Himself in ever increasing clarity in us, individually and corporately, as His eternal life now courses through the veins of our newly and heavenly born spiritual life. So be it!
But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Amen.

	This morning’s benediction is Ps 92:1-8 It is good to give thanks to the Lord, And to sing praises to Thy name, O Most High; To declare Thy lovingkindness in the morning, And Thy faithfulness by night, With the ten-stringed lute, and with the harp; With resounding music upon the lyre. For Thou, O Lord, hast made me glad by what Thou hast done, I will sing for joy at the works of Thy hands. How great are Thy works, O Lord! Thy thoughts are very deep. A senseless man has no knowledge; Nor does a stupid man understand this: That when the wicked sprouted up like grass, And all who did iniquity flourished, It was only that they might be destroyed forevermore. But Thou, O Lord, art on high forever. Amen.