The Hope of Eternal Life

Titus 1:2 - In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began...

God makes promises, and He keeps every promise He ever makes. He cannot lie. It is fundamentally opposite to His nature to ever be inconsistent and unreliable. If ever there were a situation in which God spoke and it did not come to be, then He would cease to be God because someone/something has overruled him. This will never be. God is true.

Here we have a word of scripture in which we are told that God has made a promise. It is a promise of eternal life in which hope is found. We can rest in this hope by faith in Christ Jesus according to the gospel of the grace of God. God has promised to freely justify every one that puts faith in the finished work of Christ on their behalf. This is a great promise that is assuredly true!

However, in this verse of scripture notice the timing of the promise being referenced. This promise was made by God "before the world began." What an interesting proposition! Before there was a world, before there was a beginning, before there was any man in the world to whom to make a promise, God promised eternal life.

The question that stands out in my mind when I read this is, Who is God making this promise to? There is no man to receive it. There is no world who needs to believe it. There is nothing, zero, nada in existence. Yet God promised eternal life.

I submit to you that this is a promise God the Father made to God the Son as the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. In the pre-existent conference of the Godhead when the redemption of Calvary was designed for the remedy of a race yet to be made, God the Father promised His Son that all that put faith in his finished cross-work would be given eternal life full and free on the basis of the merits of Christ. All the fullness of God would rest in Him, and eternal life would be granted to dying men in His name! What a wonder! If you have ever doubted God would keep his promises to you, you need not, for He cannot lie. But far more than this, you can rest assured that the Father will never break His promise to His Son. Our eternal life rests upon the relationship of God the Father to God the Son, and so long as "God is" so we also shall have "the hope of eternal life."