Like Flowers in a Garden

By Royce Frederick

Many of God’s gifts are like wild flowers. We can take some flowers out of a field and enjoy their beauty in other places.

Many other gifts from God are like flowers in a special garden. The owners invite us into their garden to enjoy an abundance of rare and glorious flowers. However, they do not let us take any of these flowers away. As long as we are in the garden, we can enjoy the beauty of all the flowers.

Consider God’s free gift of Eternal Life.

Some people have reasoned this way: “After a person has received eternal life, he cannot lose it. If a person could lose eternal life, it was not really eternal.”

That statement contains a mistake about location.

Eternal life is always located in one place — in Christ. Before God made our temporary world, “before time began,” He prepared eternal gifts for all who would choose to love Him and come to Him. He put His gifts of saving grace and eternal life in Christ. He “...has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ….”   (2 Tim. 1:9; Eph. 1:3)

The Holy Spirit tells us how to enter “into Christ.” When we are in Christ, we have eternal life now, because we are in the location where God placed eternal life!   (Rom. 6:3-4; 8:1; Gal. 3:26-27; see Acts 2:38; 8:36-38; 22:16; 1 Jn. 5:11, 20)

A saved person can choose to leave Christ, but he cannot take the gift of eternal life away with him. If a saved person goes away from Christ, he leaves the location of eternal life. We cannot take that present away from His presence. “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered….”   (Jn. 15:6; see Rev. 3:16; 1 Cor. 9:27; Heb. 3:12)

Like beautiful flowers in a garden, God’s greatest gifts are in Christ. Come to Him, or return to Him, and “...abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.” What a joy it will be to see Christ “and be found in Him”!   (1 Jn. 2:28; Phil. 3:9)