How to Inherit Eternal Life

Luke 10:25-28 (ESV)
And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" [26] He said to him, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?" [27] And he answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." [28] And he said to him, "You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live."

How do you read it? This is perhaps the biggest question there is, how do you read it? The Law, it is shorthand for the Torah, not the Ten Commandments. The Old Testament was often referred to as the law. It is kind of descriptive of how it was read, how it is read. Man’s natural assumption is that because we are damned for breaking the law, we can some how be saved for keeping it. oh if we could only keep it. The Lawyer will soon find he has worked himself into a corner. He answers Jesus with the law. Jesus says he is right, if he does these things he will live. We will find tomorrow that the Lawyer is just not happy with this answer. He is smarter than most of us today.
We too often think we can accomplish this. We think we can love God with all our heart… our neighbor as ourselves. We can’t. This is no way to inherit eternal life.
I always find that part of the question to be the most disturbing. People don’t do a whole lot in order to inherit things. Unless you are Anna Nicole Smith, then you marry someone from whom you can receive an inheritance. But that is just it. Family members inherit. Some people manage to work themselves out of a will. That is normally where the work takes place. At the outset, the inheritance is yours not for what you have done, but who you are. Take Eliezar for instance. He worked hard for Abraham. But Abraham was insulted that the man should be his heir. He was insulted because he was not his child.
What do we do to inherit? Nothing. We are adopted by God in baptism. This and this alone entitles us to the inheritance of eternal life. At best, we can only work our way out of that.