Eternal Life

 

 

Last week in our series on Christian Doctrine we asked the question “Does God like some people more than others” and we considered that issue by looking at the different ways God see Humanity “IN and “OUTSIDE” of Faith in Jesus and we concluded that in simple terms there is no sense of degrees in the way that God sees us.

If we are not “IN CHRIST” then God sees humanity as lost to him and each individual equally so, If we are “IN CHRIST” then God sees us as his beloved Children and equally so……So in basic term the answer to our question is NO God does not like or dislike anyone more or less than anyone else for IN CHRIST we are “All one, there is no Jew no Greek, no slave no free for we have clothed ourselves with Christ”

Today in our series we are going to consider another benefit of the Kingdom that of The Gift of Eternal Life…………

For most of my life I have been extremely scared at the prospect of dying; now you may, find this surprising for a Priest but there it is. The thought of death has for me been one of the great enemies of my life an enemy which has in the past sent me into time of almost panic attacks, over the past few years I have to say that this has subsided and now I don’t seem to have such extreme reactions to the whole idea…….My own fear was always the fear of oblivion, not so much of how I will die or of any sort of Hell or Judgment but the fear that there is just nothing afterwards, that in the end I will simply cease to exist completely that ‘what I am’ will just disappear.

This idea is summed up in the following quote from the book “Speak Memory” by Russian Novelist Vladimir Nobokov

'The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness... ……. I rebel against this state of affairs.'

As of course do we.

In the Christian Faith one of the main benefits of joining the new kingdom of God In Christ is the promise of an eternal life that is, that when we die, ‘who we are’ far from descending into This ‘eternity of darkness’ continues in some form and with God forever.

The question of course is how from the Christian point of view, should we begin to understand this? 

Some see this eternal existence in terms of what we can call ‘the 3 parts of man’ i.e. The Body, Mind and Soul / Spirit.

And in this view (originally from Greek thought) when the Body and Mind die our Soul,-that which represents our essence, - continues eternally either within or outside of Gods presence The Soul then is eternal regardless of what we believe, Faith doesn’t make the soul eternal, Faith saves the soul from an eternity without Gods love or in some thought from an eternity in torment.

In Jewish thought however the ‘Person’ was not divided so much into these three parts, for the Jew we are ‘whole beings’ and as such Eternal life is seen in far more corporeal or Bodily  terms. So in the New Testament there is a resurrection in a recognisable Bodily form and the timing of this is usually placed as in the Revelation of St John at the end of days, and after the final consummation of Gods new Kingdom (you know, when the dead shall rise, judgement day and all that Jazz) and in the mean time those who are dead wait some-where in a sort of sleeping state.  What is eternal then is ‘US’ rather than a bit of us called the Soul or Spirit and what ‘Rises’ from the Dead at the last Day is a new ‘US’ and in a semi physical form and again in much Christian thought this ‘US’ which rises, rises either to eternity in the Kingdom with God or to an Eternity somewhere else without God.

Again what we believe doesn’t make us an eternal being we already are eternal beings…life’s essence is never destroyed by our bodies death, our life essence ‘WE’ simply rests somewhere still alive but in limbo or ‘sleeping’ as some N/T writers put it. Which is probably where the catholic idea of Purgatory originally comes from……..

Are there any clues as to the nature of this ‘resurrection body’?

For Christians the only real clue we have is found in the example of Jesus himself and in the characteristics he demonstrated after his resurrection.  He appeared in a physical form, he ate and drank, and he was recognisable, however he could also appear and disappear at will and apparently walk through locked doors (all quite handy attributes if you want to escape from the wife.)  So as well as his past recognisable characteristics he had developed some new ‘supernatural ones’.

Christ’s own resurrected state then is our only real clue as to the possible nature of our future life in N/T thought anyway and because of this Paul refers to the Resurrected Jesus as the ‘firstborn’ of many and as the ‘forerunner.’

Now, whether or not either of these two ideas are in fact correct is of a completely different matter, they are, of course clues as to how our future eternal life might manifest itself…. but we must surely admit that in the end we just don’t have much to go on and so simply cannot know for certain HOW this will all happen in the end, we can only really say that we believe it will.  

For me personally, the REAL hope for eternal life is found much less in trying to understand the form it might make and much more in understanding the nature of our present relationship with God and to his kingdom.

I will try to explain what I mean:

The way I look at it is that if I have been brought into a Spiritual relationship with God in Christ now, if I have been adopted NOW as his child, if he IS my father in heaven, and if this experience of a relationship with God which I have NOW is real then, it seems impossible for me to believe that………

1. God will ever reject me again and

2. That physical death could ever possibly be powerful enough to interrupt it!

Why? Because THIS relationship (the one I experience today with God through Jesus by the Holy Spirit) is based on God’s initiative,- not mine- and is sustained by his power and not my abilities.

My Eternal life then from this perspective and understanding HAS ALREADY STARTED because I am already in a life giving and Soul / person saving relationship ‘IN CHRIST’!

 I am ALREADY IN the Kingdom of God which will become ALL encompassing at the end of time…… I’m home already!

The nature of my ‘essence’ (whether it’s my Soul as in Greek thought or something more ‘complete’ as in Jewish thought) really doesn’t matter to me because ‘I’, - whatever ‘I’ is,- AM ALREADY a part of this new life that will one day come to encompass the whole universe. 

So our assurance of eternal life should be based on, firstly, the fact that we are in the kingdom now and secondly on the fact that, as Paul puts it in our reading today, nothing can separate us from the Love of God which is ours in Jesus Christ.

 In summary then:

As far as I can see from the Bible. We as Human beings are eternal beings, whether we see this as our ‘Soul’ being the eternal bit of us or whether we see this in a more organic way. We live forever……..HOW we live on…would appear to depend on how we respond to the call of Jesus to Faith…If we come to Christ we enter into a new eternal relationship with God an eternal life which we begin to experience immediately We start a saving relationship with God NOW in this life…and it is a relationship which is unbreakable………..This experience of Gods acceptance now is what should bring us a sense of comfort as we know Jesus today so shall we know him forever.

 

Amen