Well, you’ve said a lot about faith, but I’m still waiting for the answer to my question: Why faith in Jesus?
Sorry for being so long winded, but faith seems very arbitrary unless you understand what faith really is. I mean, if you think “faith” means “believe that Jesus exists” or something like that, then it’s not easy to see the connection with salvation.
Sure, I still don’t quite see it. I mean, you sound like salvation is a reward for faith in Jesus. It’s part of a reward and punishment system designed to coerce certain behaviors that God wants from us …
No, no, no! You’re still thinking in legal terms. You start by assuming that people only respond to rewards and punishments, and thereby conclude that God is acting that way. It’s circular.
But if you look at it relationally, you get very different results. Why does a child live with his parents? So they can threaten to kick him out of the house to coerce good behaviors? Would that even work? What parent would act that way?
Children live in their parents’ house for several reasons, but none are coercive. For example, when children are very young, they live in their parents’ house to be safe and so their parents can care for them. Young children so rely on their parents that being in a different location would literally mean death.
But in the ancient world, adult children lived with their parents — in a separate apartment called an insula.
For example, in First Century Capernaum,
A study of the district located between the synagogue and the octagonal church showed that several families lived together in the patriarchal style, communally using the same courtyards and doorless internal passages. The houses had no hygienic facilities or drainage; the rooms were narrow.
Families lived together, sharing a courtyard and other facilities, such as the outdoor oven. The children of siblings and cousins played together in a common courtyard. They lived in such proximity that they didn’t even have doors between the rooms!
Why? Because architecture wouldn’t allow it? No, because they were family, and they lived in a culture where family was far more important than economic success or independence. Family was everything.
And those who have faith in Jesus are added to God’s household. We are his new, adopted family. Of course, we’ll live with him forever! How could it be otherwise?
(John 14:2-3 ESV) 2 “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”
Jesus promises to bring his disciples into his father’s house — a house with many rooms but no doors between the rooms. We won’t have our own mansions. We’ll live in community as family.
We’ll sit in the courtyard with God, enjoying his sunlight, talking and singing and even dancing together while the Great Banquet is prepared for us to eat together.
Eternity with God in paradise is simply what it means to live with God, just as Adam and Eve lived with God in the Garden. Except the prophets often spoke of the afterlife as being in Jerusalem.
Picking up the theme, the New Testament writers envision the afterlife as the New Jerusalem — the city where God sits enthroned — brought down to earth so that God and man may live together.
(Rev 21:2-4 ESV) 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
Thus, the afterlife is a house and city. But it’s also where the Tree of Life will be, transplanted from the Garden —
(Rev 22:1-2 ESV) Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
It’s Jerusalem renewed, with a river and trees and fruit — Eden and the Promised Land combined — all prepared for God to live with his people just as he did before sin entered the world.
Why Jerusalem? Well, Jerusalem is the mountain where Abraham sacrificed Isaac — nearly. It’s the mountain where Jesus died. It’s where David’s throne sat. It’s where God dwelt among the people of his own choosing in the Holy of Holies. It’s where the Temple sat and thousands upon thousands of sacrifices were made to God. Where else? Jerusalem is the perfect place for a sacrificed people to live forever with their sacrificed Savior!
Why bring the elect to the New Jerusalem forever? Because that’s always been God’s plan for his people. Because that’s God’s desire for his children. He wants to be with them. It’s the love of a father.
Why do parents alway — ALWAYS — open their homes to their children? Because they’re their children.
Why eternity? Because God is eternal and because God loves his adopted children. What other result could there be?
That’s hope, but it’s also the “trust” part of faith.
