What we believe frames how we see the life we’ve lived, the life we’re living, and the life ahead: the triumphs and the tragedies, the unexplainable and the unimaginable. These beliefs can foster hope, despair, arrogance, humility, optimism, and fear. They can produce contentment, discontentment, or a messy combination of both.

As our beliefs shape our perspectives, they also shape our behavior. Yet it is not merely what we memorize that shapes our behavior. It is what we understand, value, and desire. How we treat others is based on what we believe about them and ourselves.

If we believe we are unsafe, we will act accordingly. If we believe someone is a threat, we will treat them accordingly. It doesn’t matter whether either of these beliefs are objectively true.

Belief in Christ Jesus is often distilled down to a list of things to believe or even say about him. Verses and doctrines to memorize and recite. When this is confused with the belief that brings life, Eternal life, then it is as if simply accepting a “fact” about Christ is what grants this life.

But perhaps, as the Scriptures describe, to know him is this life unending.

Perhaps those who believe in him don’t get Eternal life in exchange for their belief as much as together with it. That this life is so intertwined with the belief that one cannot be withheld from the other.

Perhaps it is simply by knowing, by believing, that this unending life is experienced. It changes how we see and interact with the world around us. It bears fruit naturally and does not need to be manufactured or coerced. It settles what is unsettled and sustains the persevering.

Perhaps it is something to be discovered and shared rather than to be earned or attained.

Perhaps it is something to accept and embody rather than to strive for and conform to.

Perhaps it is an invitation rather than an imposition.