One of the great promises of the gospel is of ‘eternal’ or ‘everlasting’ life. We see it across the Bible and in Jesus’ teaching, in particular in places like John 3:16, which famously says:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (Jn 3:16)
Scholars tell us that there’s two aspects to that. One is that it’s an eternal quality of life and also that it will go on forever and ever – in other words an eternal quality and quantity of life.
Jesus’ promise to bring us an eternal quality of life comes from being connected to God because to know him is life – a life which never fades, dies or diminshes. What Jesus described as “life in all its fullness” (Jn 10:10) comes from knowing him.
And of course that life goes on forever and ever and cannot be snuffed out. “He who believes in me will live even though he dies”, Jesus said (Jn 11:25). Eternal life means both an eternal quality of life and an eternal everlasting quantity of life.
And so wherever the faithful church has gone across every continent and through two millennia, this is the promise she has held out to people: Come to Christ and know life in all its fullness, life of a depth and a quality that you didn’t know was possible, made possible by being connected to your creator; and a life which will go on forever and ever because it cannot be snuffed out – any more than the life of Jesus could be ultimately snuffed out! Though he died on the cross, he burst out of the grave and we are ‘in him’. Eternal life, for all who are in him, is the great gospel promise.
That’s the promise for us to rejoice in and root ourselves in today, but also the promise of life that we offer a dying world.
Prayer: Thank you Lord for the gift of life. Please help me both to rest in the promise myself, to live an eternal quality of life in all its fulness and to offer that life to the people around me today. Amen.