Have you ever asked why God’s forgiveness
is of any value? Or what about eternal life? Have you ever asked
why a person would want to have eternal life? Why should we want to
live forever? These questions matter because it is possible to want
forgiveness and eternal life for reasons that prove you don’t
have them.

Take forgiveness, for example. You might want God’s
forgiveness because you are so miserable with guilt feelings. You
just want relief. If you can believe that he forgives you, then you
will have some relief, but not necessarily salvation. If you only
want forgiveness because of emotional relief, you won’t have
God’s forgiveness. He does not give it to those who use it
only to get his gifts and not himself.

Or you might want to be healed from a disease or get a good job
or find a spouse. Then you hear that God can help you get these
things, but that first your sins would have to be forgiven. Someone
tells you to believe that Christ died for your sins, and that if
you believe this, your sins will be forgiven. So you believe it in
order to remove the obstacle to health and job and spouse. Is that
gospel salvation? I don’t think so.

In other words, it matters what you are hoping for through
forgiveness. It matters why you want it. If you want forgiveness
only for the sake of savoring the creation, then the Creator is not
honored and you are not saved. Forgiveness is precious for one
final reason: it enables you to enjoy fellowship with God. If you
don’t want forgiveness for that reason, you won’t have
it at all. God will not be used as currency for the purchase of
idols.

Similarly, we ask: why do we want eternal life? One might say:
because hell is the alternative and that’s painful. Another
might say: because there will be no sadness there. Another might
say: my loved ones have gone there and I want to be with them.
Others might dream of endless sex or food. Or more noble fortunes.
In all these aims one thing is missing: God.

The saving motive for wanting eternal life is given in John
17:3: "This is eternal life, that they know you the only true God,
and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." If we do not want eternal
life because it means joy in God, then we won’t have eternal
life. We simply kid ourselves that we are Christians, if we use the
glorious gospel of Christ to get what we love more than Christ. The
"good news" will not prove good to any for whom God is not the
chief good.

Here is the way Jonathan Edwards put it in a sermon to his
people in 1731. Read this slowly and let it waken you to the true
goodness of forgiveness and life.

The redeemed have all their objective good in God. God himself
is the great good which they are brought to the possession and
enjoyment of by redemption. He is the highest good, and the sum of
all that good which Christ purchased. God is the inheritance of the
saints; he is the portion of their souls. God is their wealth and
treasure, their food, their life, their dwelling place, their
ornament and diadem, and their everlasting honor and glory. They
have none in heaven but God; he is the great good which the
redeemed are received to at death, and which they are to rise to at
the end of the world. The Lord God, he is the light of the heavenly
Jerusalem; and is the ‘river of the water of life’ that
runs, and the tree of life that grows, ‘in the midst of the
paradise of God’. The glorious excellencies and beauty of God
will be what will forever entertain the minds of the saints, and
the love of God will be their everlasting feast. The redeemed will
indeed enjoy other things; they will enjoy the angels, and will
enjoy one another: but that which they shall enjoy in the angels,
or each other, or in anything else whatsoever, that will yield then
delight and happiness, will be what will be seen of God in them.
(The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader [New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1999], pp. 74-75)

Savoring God through the gospel, with you,

Pastor John