“Watch out, brothers and sisters, so that there won’t be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage each other daily, while it is still called today, so that none of you is hardened by sin’s deception. For we have become participants in Christ if we hold firmly until the end the reality that we had at the start” (Hebrews 3:12-14, CSB).

Have you ever tried to imagine what life would be like without Time? It’s hard, if not impossible to imagine because our whole existence in this world is measured by Time: how old we are, what year it is, when we are born and when we die.

Everything we are and we do in this world is defined by the dimension of Time. Tomorrow becomes Today and then Today turns in to Yesterday. We progress through our lives from one element in time–an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year–to the next.

So, what would it be like if there was no Time? One way to describe the absence of Time is Eternity. Existence without Time is Eternity.

God is Holy and therefore He exists outside of Time. The Hebrew word for “holy” literally means “separate” or “set apart”. One of the characteristics of the holiness of God is that God is unique to Himself and exists outside of Time. So, God exists in Eternity.

The Hebrew writer declares that we are all running out of Time. Those participating in eternal life with Christ must be attentive and deliberate as to how they spend Time during their earthly life. Because we all will be confronted by Eternity and what we do with our Time on this Earth matters for a timeless Eternity.

In your life in Christ, your Today is the first day of your life in Eternity. But, because you’re still living in this earthly realm you must continue to avoid the deceptions of sin by continuing to live out each day with the original confidence you had in Christ as Savior when you first believed.

In other words, you prepare for Eternity by fervently living out your faith Today. Or, another way I commonly explain living out the Christian life in this world is that of living for the future in the present.

The terminology the CSB translators used to reinforce this connection of our saving faith in Christ to eternity is notable. In vs. 3:14 the Greek word for confidence, parrēsía, used in vs. 3:6 is translated here as “reality.”

Our hope in Christ for eternal life isn’t just a religious experience we once had, but it’s a reality that we should live out every Today to the end of our Time on Earth.

Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future.

Steve Miller Band from the song “Fly Like an Eagle”