Great Bible Truths Podcast Episode 129
The Promises of God Talk 10
The Promise of an Inheritance
In earlier talks we have seen that, among the promises included as part of our salvation, there are promises of righteousness and adoption as God’s children. These are closely related to the subject of this talk, the promise of a wonderful inheritance.
Titus 3:7 tells us that having been justified (made righteous) by God’s grace we have become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
And Romans 8:16-17 assures us that we are God’s children and that as his children we are heirs – heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ.
Paul puts it slightly differently in Galatians 3:29 where he says:
…if you are Christ’s, then you are… heirs according to promise.
So the promises of God to his children include a wonderful inheritance. But what will it be like, why will we receive it, and when? The answers to these questions are neatly summarised in 1 Peter 1:3-5 :
- Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
- to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you
- who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
What will it be like?
The NIV translates verse 4 as follows:
and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you…
Our inheritance can never perish
The word imperishable immediately reminds us of the new bodies we will receive when Jesus comes again (1 Corinthians 15:50-54). As we have already seen, life in the coming kingdom of God will require a body that’s very different from the mortal bodies we have right now. Our new bodies will be immortal and imperishable. And clearly it will not just be our bodies that will be imperishable. The kingdom of God itself is imperishable. It’s unthinkable that there could be anything that would perish in his kingdom! So what we inherit will be forever. We have treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal (Matthew 6:20).
Our inheritance can never spoil
Many years ago, when my wife’s father died, her mother asked me if I would like to have two of his suits. As I was about the same size as he had been, I gratefully accepted them. One of them was almost new and fitted me perfectly and it lasted me for several years. The other one, however, turned out to be of no use to me as I discovered a stain on the left arm. And although we tried everything to remove it, the stain stubbornly refused to go. Apart from the stain, it was a nice suit, but it was unwearable because of the stain. My inheritance was spoiled! How glad I am that there will be no stain on the robes of righteousness that will be part of our inheritance in heaven (Revelation 7:13-14).
Our inheritance will not fade away
Auntie Min was loved very much by all her nephews and nieces and on her seventieth birthday we gathered with all the wider family to celebrate with her. While we were there, my mother (Auntie Min’s sister) gave me some good news. Auntie Min had made her will and I was among the beneficiaries. Great! But of course nobody wanted Auntie to die and it would be many years before we would expect to inherit anything.
About 15 years later Auntie died and I was privileged to preach at her funeral. After the service my mother said to me, ‘David, I’m afraid you won’t be inheriting anything from Auntie Min. She lived so long after she made her will that all the money she had has been spent’. Little by little my share in the inheritance had diminished until there was nothing left. My inheritance had ‘faded away’. But there’s no such danger with our heavenly inheritance. It can never fade because it’s kept in heaven for us.
Why do we receive it?
Notice what Peter tells us in verse 3.
- Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
- It’s because of God’s great mercy
- It’s because we’ve been born again – i.e. because we’re God’s children
- It’s because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead
But to understand more completely why receive it we need to go back to Romans 8:17 which tells us that as God’s children we are heirs – heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ. The Greek word translated here as fellow-heirs is sunkleronomos. The word for heir is kleronomos. The prefix sun means with. So a sunkleronomos is someone who shares an inheritance with someone else.
This means that in Romans 8:17 Paul is telling us that we actually share in Christ’s inheritance! Now to appreciate this more fully we need to understand what is sometimes called our identification with Christ. When we heard the gospel and believed it we were included in Christ:
And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed…(Ephesians 1:13 NIV).
Everything we have – and will have – springs from this. In the New Testament Paul uses ten different Greek verbs, all with the same prefix, sun, to express this wonderful truth:
We were crucified with Christ
We died with Christ
We were buried with Christ
We were made alive with Christ
We have been raised together with Christ
We are seated with Christ in heavenly places
We suffer with Christ
We will reign with Christ
We are workers together with Christ
We are heirs with Christ.
But back to the word sunkleronomos. Apart from its use in Romans 8:17, it occurs only three other times in the New Testament and these reveal three ways in which it is possible to become a fellow-heir.
By sonship
The first way you can become a fellow-heir is by sonship.
Hebrews 11:9
By faith he (Abraham) went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.
Jacob was the son of Isaac who was the son of Abraham. As a result, Isaac and Jacob were fellow-heirs with Abraham. When I was about 10 years old I went into my father’s shed where my bike was kept and attempted to tighten up a screw which had become loose. I looked in my father’s toolbox for a screwdriver and started to tighten the loose screw, when my father came into the shed and said, David, stop. That’s not a screwdriver, that’s a chisel. He explained the difference to me and then went on to say that I should carefully look after his tools because they had belonged to his father before him and one day they would be mine. My father had inherited from his father the box of tools and I became a fellow-heir with my father of the same toolbox which I still possess today. We both inherited the same thing by virtue of being sons.
By marriage
The second way you can become a fellow-heir is by marriage.
1 Peter 3:7
Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
Husbands and wives are fellow-heirs. This means that what belongs to my wife belongs to me and what belongs to me belongs to her! When my wife inherited several thousand pounds when her father died I was glad to be her fellow-heir. She, of course, is welcome to the toolbox!
By grace
The third way you can be a fellow-heir is by grace.
Ephesians 3:6-8
- This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
- Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power.
- To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ
These verses teach that Gentile Christians have become fellow-heirs with Jewish Christians simply by the grace of God. If you were to leave me something in your will – and I’m not suggesting that you should – since I am neither your son nor married to your daughter I would become a fellow-heir simply by your kindness, your grace.
So the three ways you can become a fellow-heir in the New Testament are by sonship, by marriage, and by grace. And that is precisely why we too are fellow-heirs with Christ. We are God’s children, we are part of the bride of Christ, the church, and it’s all because of his wonderful grace. We inherit what he inherits! That’s what it means to be a fellow-heir. And Hebrews 1:2 tells us that he has been appointed heir of all things!
When will we receive it?
So, finally, when will we receive this wonderful inheritance?
1 Peter 1 tells that:
- It’s kept for us in heaven (4)
- It’s part of our future salvation – ready to be revealed in the last time (5)
So I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait for it. We will only enter fully into it when Jesus returns.
But actually that’s not quite the whole story. A foretaste of our inheritance is available to us right now.
Ephesians 1:13-14
In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
The Greek word translated guarantee here is arrabon which can also be translated pledge. In Greece today, as in New Testament times, it’s used to mean an engagement ring. But it also carries the sense of a foretaste. When we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit we receive not only a guarantee of our inheritance but actually a wonderful foretaste of it. As Hebrews 6:4 tells us, in the gift of the Spirit we have already tasted of the powers of the age to come.
But that must wait for next time, when our subject will be:
The Promise of the Holy Spirit.
For more on arrabon see the final chapter of my book, The Holy Spirit – an Introduction.