Let me rephrase that, lest you think I mean His time has run out.

God is not bound by time. He is time-less. He is without time. He has no past, no future. He is now and then. Time is God’s creature, enslaved to Him. God is outside the space we have grown familiar with as “time.” 

Forgiveness

I used to think of forgiveness in linear terms. What I did in the past, I have confessed, and it is forgiven. But, subsequent sins I was still culpable for. The realization that, to God, all my sins are His present reality helped me grapple with shifting guilty feelings. (Funny, how even language is wrapped in time tenses: are, was, will be, having been, etc.) When God forgave, he forgave me for actions that I hadn’t yet committed as well as past ones, because He saw all my time.

A friend of mine gave me this “a-ha!” moment when I shared my struggle with Ephesians 2:6. It says, “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” I was teaching through Ephesians, and wanted to communicate with passion, but this verse bugged me. I can’t teach, what I don’t get. The sentence hinges on the verb tenses; raised (in the past) and seated (present).

I asked, “Why is it so important that we are seated in heaven with Christ?”

“Maybe, because God doesn’t live in time, and we are already at his side?” my friend ventured.

“A-ha! Wow!”

New Life Now

In a brief study of space-time theories, I learned that scientists are speculating that time is one of up to eight other dimensions. This helps me grasp (Whether their theories are correct or not, the Bible is true.) how there can be reality outside of my own time at the same “time” as now. I am already at the throne of God in another “dimension” as a perfected daughter of the Father. I am already raised to New Life. I am sinless, now, in God’s world of no-time. Does that blow your mind? Rejoice in the glories of God! He is so other than us, I can’t wait to learn more about His mysteries.

Change Takes Time

This offers me encouragement. I’m enslaved by time. I must follow its rules. I have to be in it and progress through it like all other creatures. God wants me to live godly in my time, but it seems as if the changing process from a habitual sinner to a habitual do-gooder is taking forever! I fail more than I succeed, and take two steps back for every step foward, it seems. But the time it takes is irrelevant to God. He sees my life in total through the lens of Christ. Because my future is His now, I have the courage to keep on keeping on.

One more random thought… Jesus, unbound by time in God’s eternity, willingly submitted to time by becoming a man. He denied His eternity by taking a past and a future. He understands us time-creatures because he is one of us.