Showing posts with label Time and Eternity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Time and Eternity. Show all posts

Saturday, January 25, 2025

Christ and the Fullness of Time

By the Incarnation, Christ has united divinity with humanity, God with humankind, heaven with earth — and eternity with time, in such a way that time is transfigured. It is not so much what happens in time as it is what happens to time. 

Our Lord Jesus Christ did not merely come in the fullness of time. Rather, he is the fullness of time, the fulfillment of time. He is the end of time, the reason for which time was created. All of creation, including time, consists and coheres in him.

When the fullness of time had come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons. (Galatians 4:4-5)

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end! (Revelation 22:13).

Christ is the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8), and we are chosen in him from before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4). He is the starting point and the ending point. He is at once the Origination and the Conclusion, the Purpose and the Fulfillment of time, and of all things.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will — to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. (Ephesians 1:3-6)

God made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment — to bring unity to all in heaven and on earth under Christ. (Ephesians 1:9-10)

He has saved us and called us to a holy life — not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. (2 Timothy 1:9-10)

Christ is the singularity of time and space and all creation. Though we experience time in linear fashion, there is no temporal sequence in eternity, no before or after. There is, then, no pre-Incarnate Christ; there is simply Christ the Eternally Incarnate One. 

The First and the Last,
The Beginning and the End,
The Fullness of All,
Ever the Same.

Monday, April 29, 2024

The Fall and Transfiguration of Time

The Biblical Fall
is not an event in time.
Time itself is a fallen state,
in which everything tends
toward decay and death.
But in the Incarnation,
divinity is united with humanity,
God with humankind,
and eternity is united with time,
so that time itself is transfigured
and the world is healed.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” as the book Revelation tells us. He is at once the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last (Revelation 1). He who is the firstborn from the dead is the firstborn of creation (Colossians 1). Indeed, Christ Crucified and Risen is the foundation of the world, the beginning and completion of all creation. Lord Jesus, seated on the Throne of Heaven and Earth, declares, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5). And that includes us.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

The transfiguration of time takes place within time, from the inside out, through the mutual indwelling of time in eternity and eternity in time. John the Elder tells us, “The darkness is passing and the true light is already shining” (1 John 2:8). 

We presently find ourselves in that curious transition of what is coming to pass into what is eternally so, and all of creation waits in eager anticipation together with us.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Romans 8:18-22)