What is Eternal Life?

So what’s eternal life? The whole reason Jesus took on flesh and endured the Cross was so that we might obtain this eternal life — so what is it? What is this great hope that Jesus promises to everyone who believes in him? A few thoughts.

Qualitative not quantitative.

I think we usually think of eternal life in a quantitative temporal sense, but it doesn’t take long to realize that doesn’t hold up. It makes much more sense to think about eternal life qualitatively rather than quantitatively.

Sure, eternal life is everlasting life. It lasts forever and will never come to an end. But that’s not unique to eternal life. Eternal life is reserved for the sheep of Jesus’ fold, but unless you believe in annihilationism, everyone has an everlasting existence. Whether it’s with God or without, we all exist forever. Additionally, God was eternal before there was time. It doesn’t make any sense to subject eternal life to the finite notion of time when the eternal God transcends time. So it’s clear that eternal life cannot just refer to a length of time.

So what does it refer to? If the unending part isn’t unique, what is? Well, it’s that eternal life is spent with God. It’s the quality of fullness of joy in the presence of God. It’s the whole reason Jesus came. Jesus says that he came so that we might “have life and have it abundantly.” Eternal life is abundant life. Eternal life is life that overflows. It’s the inexhaustible fountain. It’s the well that never runs dry. It’s the living water that Jesus offers the woman at the well.

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).

How we obtain it.

What’s cool about eternal life is that we get it as soon as we want it. In fact, we get it through the very act of wanting it. It’s that simple. In a verse so well-known that I hardly need to quote it, Jesus says that, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). So all we have to do to obtain eternal life is to believe in God. And guess what? Eternal life is believing in God. When Jesus prays his high priestly prayer, he says that eternal life is to know the only true God. So that means that eternal life is to know God, and we get eternal life by believing in (knowing) God. That’s the free gift. The gift is the task.

“And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

We have it now.

Eternal life isn’t some future hope. We have it now. This follows from the above idea about how we obtain it. If the act of believing in Christ constitutes the substance of eternal life, then we obtain eternal life the moment we believe. Additionally, Jesus explicitly states this fact in numerous places. Perhaps most clearly in John 6:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life” (John 6:47).

It’s a process and it takes eternity.

Jesus is life. “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). He is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Eternal life is to know Jesus. So the more we come to know Christ, the more abundant our eternal life will be.

In this way, eternal life is a process. We will spend eternity growing closer to Christ. The only thing keeping us from knowing the fullness of him who fills all in all is our own insufficiency. As we grow in our capacity to know Christ, we will know him more and more. Christ’s infinite supremacy rises before us, and to engage in eternal life is to “press on to know” Christ (Hosea 6:30). And we will never be satisfied. We will never exhaust the fountain of Christ’s glory.

“We can never by soaring and ascending come to the height of [the love of God]; we can never by descending come to the depth of it; or by measuring, know the length and breadth of it . . . Let the thoughts and desires extend themselves as they will, here is space enough for them, in which they may expand for ever. How blessed therefore are they that do see God, who are come to this exhaustless fountain! . . . After they have had the pleasure of beholding the face of God millions of ages, it will not grow a dull story; the relish of this delight will be as exquisite as ever . . .” (Jonathan Edwards, Works of Jonathan Edwards, Edinburgh, 1974, vol. 2, p. 909).

So what are you waiting for? “Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called” (1 Timothy 6:12). You’ve glimpsed the new Narnia. Heed the unicorn’s beckoning:

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that is sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-heehee! Come further up, come further in! (C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle, p. 161).