“…and I assure you that everyone who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or property, for My sake and for the Good News, will receive now in return a hundred times as many houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and property–along with persecution. And in the world to come that person will have eternal life.” ~Jesus
Mark 10:29-30
Presently, on earth, we experience blessings along with or amid trials and trouble and persecution (without and within). And this balance is a grace for our good. How gracious our Father is to provide us with blessing (it’s always there!) even amidst great persecution and trials. However, in the world to come, we will experience eternal Life! The word eternal in the Greek is aionios. It means without beginning or end, that which always has been and always will be; everlasting.
I want to highlight the fact that “eternal” doesn’t only project forward or into the future, it projects “backwards” as well, into the “without beginning” past. This Life that we will one day possess (indeed, do already possess) is all encompassing–it extends into eternity past as well as eternity future! We are swallowed up in it so that EVERYTHING touching us is redeemed! And so the promise of God to restore the years that the locusts have eaten is proved true. The Life that we will come to know (even as we are fully known) redeems every single thing about every single person it is possessed by. And it does this in such a way that while at present it appears that we are waiting for it (it’s “in the world to come”), eventually, a greater Reality will reveal that it has been ours the whole time.
2 Corinthians 5:4; Joel 2:25; 1 Corinthians 13:12