Have you ever received something that you really didn’t deserve? An inheritance is where you acquire something because it was passed onto you; somebody in your life decided to grant you a sum of money or materials solely because it was passed down to you. What I am trying to get at is that you don’t do anything specific to get this gift, it is a gift that is just given to you?
Personally, I received an inheritance when my grandmother passed away. My grandmother cared for us deeply and always provided for us. She never let us leave without making sure that we had more than enough to eat! When my Grandma passed away, we all missed her deeply and mourned her. I still think about her often to this day. She left an imprint on this world. One of the strangest parts of her passing away was that my parents and brothers received an allotted amount of money. I was about eighteen at the time, so I knew the concept of an inheritance, but it seemed very strange to me. There was nothing specifically I did that was a reason for me to receive this money, except for my Grandma wanting to provide for her family even after passing away. The gift meant a lot not because of the monetary value, but because I knew that she still was providing for me after her death.
Much like the gift that my Grandma gave to me, God gives an inheritance to all of us who believe in Him. His gift is similar to the one that I described above, we do absolutely nothing to deserve it. The passage of scripture that guides us to what our inheritance is in Ezekiel 44:28:
“This shall be their inheritance: I am their inheritance: and you shall give them no possession in Israel; I am their possession”.
In this short exert in Ezekiel, God tells us what our inheritance will be…to be with Him. The gift we are getting is to be with God. Why is that significant? Isn’t God always with us?
God’s original plan was to not only create us and then leave us forever on our own. He intended to always be with us every day. We broke that plan through our relatives, Adam and Eve. God promised Adam and Eve to be with them forever, as long as they didn’t eat of the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:17). However, in Genesis chapter 3, we see that man committed the first sin, and ate of the tree that God told Adam and Eve not to. That is how sin entered the world and separated us from God.
We are all born with a sinful nature. We don’t seek good but seek evil. In the Old Testament, there are multiple ways that the chosen people of God, Israel, try to redeem themselves after every time they give up on God, sin against God, and/or leave Him. The only way for them to be redeemed was through an animal sacrifice. God intended to be with His people, but time after time, they always sinned against Him. However, God still provided through the miracles, prophets, kings, judges, etc. Yet there still wasn’t a way for God’s people to be fully connected with God without having to sacrifice something.
As seen in Ezekiel, we know that God wants His people to be with Him always! That is exactly why there had to be an ultimate sacrifice that would atone for the sins of everyone. I truly do believe that this prophetic word in Ezekiel is pointing to a promise that God upheld through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus. Jesus died on the cross to redeem us all. Through Jesus we are able to be with God. 1 John 4:9-10, is a passage that describes how much this inheritance is all because of the love God has for us and the desire to be with us always.
“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sings”.
Jesus died on the cross so that we can be with Him always. He paid the price for ALL of our sins, so that way we can be him forever. For without Christ we are still separated from God and His inheritance. In Romans 8: 12-17 Paul says,
“So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, the heirs-heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him”.
Paul is saying that we are heirs with Christ through his sacrifice. In Christ we have an inheritance! There is nothing besides our faith in Him, that we receive this inheritance from God.
Therefore, our inheritance is to be with God eternally. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”. Praise God for his great inheritance that we get to be with Him forever!