Eternal Life
God is life. God lives. He does not possess life as we do--- life that begain at some point in time. There never was a time when God did not live. He always existed; His life is called eternal life. Eternal life has no beginning and no end. In contrast, the eternal life given to the believer is technically called everlasting life; i.e., it has no end but began at the moment of salvation through faith alone in Christ alone.
Like the other divine attributes, eternal life applies to the being, the very essence of God. Eternal life means that He has always existed and will always exist; there never was a time when He did not exist. He never had a beginning; no one preceded Him; nothing caused God to come into existence. Time is merely His invention for the convenience of His creatures.
Because God is the cause and origin of time, He is not subject to time. He invented time so He could manifest His eternal life to us, and we adjust to eternal God by possessing His eternal life thorugh faith in Christ. Nonetheless, we continue to think in terms of time, and, in fact, we cannot live without time.
Time, although without substance, is an object of God's creation. Since God was gracious and thoughtful enough to give us time, we must give time back to Him. In other words, basic giving in the Christian way of life is giving of time. Whenever we worship God in any way under the filling of the Holy Spirit, we are giving to Him. All other forms of Christian service are secondary.
God is not in time, but time is in God.
God transcends all creation, including time. To Him, one day is as thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day.
God is logical and therefore does not need to be chronological, but He can be chronological if He so chooses. For example, time began with creation, and since the succession of history truly exists, God, who sees according to the truth, recognizes time. Furthermore, God always accomplishes in time what has to be done in time as part of His plan. Thus, the variations of blessing and adversity that come in our day-to-day lives are merely part of an overall plan to bless us in eternity, as well as to provide security and blessing for us in time.
Time, which is finite, has both succession and duration. The duration of time is measured by its succession; for example, the duration of a day is measured by the succession of minutes or hours.
In contrast, eternity, which is infinite, has duration only. Duration without succession is still duration, only immeasurable. Therefore, infinite, eternal God has duration only. In fact, eternity is infinity in its relation to time. Time is a line of succession as far as man's perspective is concerned, but eternity is beyond man's perception, reaching into infinity.
The eternal life of God is imputed to all who believe in Christ. Jesus Christ is "the way, and the truth, and the life." He is life; never was there a time when He, in His deity, did not exist. Eternal life has always resided in Him: "This is the record, God has given unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; He who has not the Son has not life." Furthermore, as the Creator, the Lord Jesus Christ is the source of all life. God the Father is also the source of life, not from the standpoint of creation, but as the one who breathes the "spark of life" into the fetus when it emerges from the womb at birth. Moreover, God the Holy Spirit is the source of life as the agent of regeneration and as the one who places each Church Age believer into union with Christ at the moment of faith in the Gospel. Through the baptism of the Holy Spirit at the moment of salvaton, the eternal life of Jesus Christ becomes our eternal life. Thus the members of the Trinity are related to life in specific, different ways that never contradict each other and are totally compatible with the operation of the Godhead.