Honor and Glory Forever
December 9, 2018
...be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen —1 Timothy 1:17
With another New Year on the horizon, it is hard not to contemplate the steady tick of our biological clocks and the inevitable passage of time. The natural world around us is at the mercy of entropy as described in the second law of thermodynamics. Rivers alter their courses. Mountains erode. Galaxies collide, and stars collapse into black holes.
Our bodies are also running down. Although scientists are still trying to figure out a way to immortalize humanity, the human body is corruptible. Human beings grow old and die. Eventually, our chromosomes shorten beyond repair, like a shoelace that keeps breaking until there is not enough lace left to tie the shoe.
“Things fall apart,” writes William Butler Yeats in “The Second Coming,” his famous poem about the corruptibility of humanity. Persons, families, towns, cities, nations, empires, civilizations—they all fall down. But not God. God is not eroding. He is not falling apart.
Unlike everything else he has made, God is immortal. Not only will he live forever, but every one of his divine attributes will remain undiminished throughout all eternity. God does not become less powerful, less loving, less just, or less holy with the passage of time. He is every bit as powerful, loving, just, and holy as he has ever been and always will be.
King David made an important prediction about the destiny of the Messiah, the Blessed Son of God: “You will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption” (Ps. 16:10). The second half of this verse was a prophecy about Jesus of Nazareth. He was born, killed, and buried. But he did not perish in the grave. He was raised on the third day in an incorruptible body.
By raising Jesus from the dead, God gave immortality to mortals. Jesus Christ, God’s Blessed Son, was the first to be raised with an everlasting body, but only the first. Part of his work is to give his people immortal, incorruptible bodies. As 1 Timothy 1:16 says—because God himself is immortal, he can guarantee eternal life to mortal flesh.
How would you live differently if you were focused more on your incorruptible, eternal life and less on this corruptible, human life?
Let Us Pray
Immortal God, you did not perish in the grave but were raised incorruptible. We praise you for your promise to give everlasting eternal life to your mortal sons and daughters. Amen.
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