Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of God’s elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness — 2 a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time, 3 and at his appointed season he brought his word to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Savior,
4 To Titus, my true son in our common faith:
Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.
Paul (or his editors with the NIV) is the king of the run-on sentence; four verses before we hit the first period.
However, it isn't that questionable sentence structure that caught my eye, it was verse 2, were eternal life was "promised before the beginning of time." Who besides God was there to promise anything to before the beginning of time?
That promise was an open question, since in Jesus' day, the Sadducees were lobbying against the idea of a life-after-death. They must have missed that pre-historic promise from God.
Eternal life is thus baked into the fabric of the universe, part of the cosmos' warranty. Even if I can't quite grasp who God was promising it to when only He (or some angles if they pre-dated time as well) was around, it's a very cool and comforting thought.
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