If we have spent our days in the appetites and passions of the flesh, doing what Christ and His Apostles have commanded us not to do, then the results will be visible for all to see in the robe handed to us after our flesh and bones have been raised to stand on the earth. We may then be permitted to enter the new world of righteousness. But think how we will feel as we consider the way we appear to those around us—especially in the sight of our disappointed Lord!

Believers sometimes maintain they are "eternally secure" because the Bible says some will be saved as by fire.

First of all, we do not know how hot that fire will be or how long it will burn us.

Second, we are not considering that we will be entering the new world of righteousness with no reward, no glorious body of eternal life, possibly with a stunted appearance or as a child who is beginning life once again. When we see those who have lived a victorious life in Christ and now are great mountains of fire and glory, realizing that such a state could have been true of us, we will understand being saved as by fire was not the best route to take into the Kingdom of God.

Every person will reap what he or she has sown in this present world. There is no grace, no mercy, that will change this Kingdom law. Where we will be placed is another matter. But what we are in personality, our state of being, will reflect what we became during the present life.

The Struggle To Attain Eternal Life

Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. (I Timothy 6:12—NIV)

The Christian faith is a fight until the day we die. The purpose of the fight is to gain eternal life, to lay hold of eternal life. Eternal life is the prize, the goal.

The following verse often is misunderstood.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23—NIV)

This verse is sometimes preached to the unsaved. Paul was not writing to the unsaved but to the Christian church in Rome.

The gift of eternal life is not a gift that is handed to us. This is not what Paul is saying. The context will reveal that Paul was speaking to people who had been baptized in water. Paul was warning them that if they, having received Christ, then choose to be the slave of righteousness and of God, the result will be eternal life. But if they choose instead to be the slave of unrighteousness, the result will be spiritual death.

Consider the verse just prior:

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. (Romans 6:22—NIV)

Being set free from sin and slavery to God leads to holiness. The result of freedom from sin, slavery to God, and holiness is eternal life.

Eternal life is a result of choosing to be the slave of righteousness.

To be continued.