On the Road to Jerusalem: Inheriting Eternal Life

“And He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.’ And He said to him, ‘You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.’"—Luke 10:27-28

Only Jesus truly fulfilled the commands of Scripture, as He Himself said:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them”—Matthew 5:17. 

When a lawyer asked what needed to be done to inherit eternal life, Jesus responded with a question, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” He answered,  

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself”—Luke 10:25. 

 He was summing up all 613 Old Testament commandments—loving God and loving man. Jesus replied, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live"—Luke 10:28. The problem is, we can’t. We aren’t able to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We may try, but we can’t love as much as God requires. Nor can we love man the way that God requires, but Christ can and did.

Jesus is the only one who truly fulfilled every single aspect of the Law. He and only He could go to the cross to pay for our sin. We get a glimpse of this in the book of Revelation when an angel cries out, "Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?" (Revelation 5:2). And John describes what happens next,  

“And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it”—Revelation 5:3-4. 

There was no one worthy to open the scroll or even look into it, until one of the elders said to John,  

“Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that He can open the scroll and its seven seals”—Revelation 5:5. 

It was then that John saw a “Lamb standing, as though it had been slain” (Revelation 5:6) who went and took the scroll and then opened it.

Jesus is that Lamb, and He alone is worthy to provide for our redemption and achieve our salvation. He is the only one who both loved God and man perfectly. And by placing our faith in Him, we have become recipients of His achievement—that is, the salvation of man. He alone was acceptable in the sight of God, redeeming us by identifying with us, taking our sin upon Himself, and becoming sin in the process, even though He didn’t having any sin of His own.

C.S. Lewis captured the thrust of this thought when Aslan, the Christ-figure in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, laid down his life on the Stone Table. After he rose from the dead, much to the relief and surprise of sisters Lucy and Susan, he says,

“If the Witch knew the true meaning of sacrifice, she might have interpreted the deep magic differently. That when a willing victim who has committed no treachery, is killed in a traitor’s stead, the Stone Table will crack and even death itself will turn backwards.”

Because of Christ, death no longer has a hold over us. He died so we can live, and we die to ourselves daily so the resurrection life of Christ can be manifested in us. Amen.