Eternal / Everlasting Life – What’s that all about?
For the last few centuries, we have misunderstood salvation as a future event that happens after death, a ticket to heaven someday.
Most of us now think getting Eternal Life, means getting to go to Heaven forever after we die.
But Jesus revealed that salvation and heaven are both present realities, meant to be experienced here and now. You can know if you have it now, because it is for now and should be felt now.
Jesus’ promised eternal life is something that can be experienced now, whose origins are from outside of time, not effected by time.
He didn’t say anything of the period for which our Spirit, Soul or Bodies will exist or persist, in this offer of eternal life!
The gospel is far more about a better this life than a better after life.
What we think when we read the words “eternal”, “life” and “believes”, in the bible, is most likely not what was originally understood by Jesus’ audiences, or was actually written in Greek.
Eternal or indeed Everlasting:
· The word “aionios” is the Greek word that is translated sometimes as everlasting and sometimes as eternal ("eternal" is a more specific and dare I say it, deliberately by the translators, after-life-sounding word, than everlasting)
· Aionios now means an age, or period of time, without beginning or end, or even outside of time.
· But concepts such as "outside of time", were not known then and they had absolutely no heaven or hell theology.
· Their available scriptures didn’t address heaven, hell and the after-life.
· Their fascination wasn't, as ours, with the after life, but with this life.
· Things were uncertain year to year. It could be good for a few years and then all of a sudden everything was lost.
· Everlasting to them meant “without interruption, unchanged by time for as long as possible”.
· It wouldn’t occur to them to think about how to get to heaven when they die.
· They wanted a continuous good life, without threat of losing it.
· This is how the rich young ruler and other recipients at the time, will have understood "aionios".
Life:
· Life (in English) has one meaning: “Having an animated body, not being dead.” The word for this in Greek is: “Bios” (G979).
· But there is another Greek word other than bios, that is also translated into English as “life”! That word is “Zoe” (G2222) and it means something else: “The highest possible level of fullness, vigour, opulence and thriving – for your biological life.”
· Think “The-good-life” or “Joie de vivre”, health, wealth and well-being, far from “just not dying”.
· Once your biological (bios) life ends, there’s no need for Zoe.
· Zoe applies to Bios and then ends / has no use when you leave this "life".
· Consider also that some “life” isn’t so great. There’s illness, disability, pain, rejection, fear, sadness. No one wants life like this for a moment, far less for a period without end.
· The rich young ruler (Matt 19.16) wasn’t asking how to get to heaven when he died, he wanted fuller silos and full barns, a big harvest, right relationships, authority, finances, stability and a thriving family. Zoe!
· John 10.10… I have come that they may have zoe, and that they may have it more abundantly. That’s abundance abundantly. Jesus even had to redefine zoe for them!
Believes:
· The word "believes" (G4100 – pisteuō), is in Greek, more specific in its meaning.
· It is a “continuous” verb, meaning it must be ongoing to be effective.
· It could readily be translated as “whilst remaining persuaded of the truth of Jesus, you will experience….”
· “Believes” is therefore not a noun or status gained from having once believed.
· Actively “believing”, isn’t something you can do before you are born, or after you die.
· In the spirit realm, heaven, there’s no need of being convinced of such realities (to believe), since all will be revealed and healed, so what we believe won’t change the reality
· It is inconceivable that a belief held, and not even actions done, during your finite (short) lifetime, decides the nature of some idea of an eternal (long) existence outside of time; effectively stretching long before and after your time on earth.
· The only reason so many do think this (and I certainly did in the past) is to justify the erroneous understanding of the previous two words "aionios" and "zoe", where they've been understood as after-life not this-life.
· Think about it. What you believe shapes your reality, not your future.
· When (anywhen) the accuser tells Jesus all the wrong things we did from the books he's recorded them in, and says "we're his for punishing, not Jesus' ", and Jesus gets His own single book out to refute him, the names of all humans in it, have been there since before the foundation of the world, not since they each became convinced a preacher was right and prayed a prayer with the right words.
· John 3.14 is the clincher. "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up," When the Israelites looked at the serpent on the pole, they were healed from the poison of their bites, not healed in the distant future. John says that Jesus on the cross, like the bronze serpent, heals us now.
John 3:16 says for God so loved the World (kosmos)... not the next one!
He wasn't saying "oops this one's shot, better luck next time, I'll save the ones who choose right for the next round".
He was saying "I can fix (have fixed) this, choose to embrace it".
To be totally correct, He was saying "I've made it so you can fix it with me", because we have an important role to play now we've been rescued.
Here’s a couple of key verses to run this through
John 3.15 whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life
John 3.16 whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life
Matt 19.16 Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?
All of these “lifes” are Zoe, not Bios.
So “having” or “how do I get?”, opulence and wealth, the best, for my biological life.
There’s absolutely no suggestion in these verses that this is for the afterlife, and the rich young ruler in Matthew, asking how to get it, expected to be experience it now, he was missing it despite doing what he thought was right.
God is not trying to save you away from time and your body. He's trying to give you time and a body that time can't touch.
John 3.16 and Matt 19.16
· These verses are not talking about gaining a positive after life. They are saying, “whilst connected, oriented to, getting your reality from, the Spirit of God, gaining your knowledge (of good and evil) and your identity from Him, you will have fullness of life on earth”.
· The “impact”, the extent of this “goodness”, is finite; such “improved living” can only affect now, whilst we have a Soul (and a body) that can benefit from being oriented to Spirit, not to Flesh.
· These verses say we can experience something now, whose origins are from outside of time.
· It doesn’t say anything of the period for which our Spirit, Soul or Bodies will exist or persist.
As a reminder, we are our Spirits which are eternal, we have Souls which are temporary and these reside temporarily “in” a body.
If a rich young ruler comes to Jesus and says, "I'm still missing something. How do I get it?" And Jesus says do these things and he says “I have and I still don't have it”, you must conclude that you can observe whether or not eternal life has been apprehended, while you're still alive.
Therefore, you must change your definition of eternal life.
You can no longer play the wait and see game.
And yet many Christians are still waiting to see if they're saved after they die.
Reframe what you expect out of your rescuer!
Eternal life is observable. Eternal life is experiential.
It is not hypothetical. It is not postmortem. It is in time and space.
· Your spirit does not need to be saved. That’s sorted.
· You (your Soul and Body) do not need to be saved in heaven.
· You do not need to be healed in heaven.
· You do not need money in heaven.
· You do not need faith in heaven.
· You do not need wholeness in heaven.
· You will not have depression in heaven.
· You will not have anxiety in heaven.
· You will not have need to be rid of any of the things that plague you and keep you from becoming the measure, of the stature, of the fullness of Christ in this life, in heaven.
You need them now.
Creation is groaning for the sons of God to be made manifest, not to escape.
Jesus’ salvation is the road to manifestation.
Many Christians point out sin in non-Christian’s lives, and get them to repeat a prayer so that they can go to heaven when they die.
They do this because that's what they were told.
Likewise, Saul used to kill Christians at the command of the chief priest because he though he was offering service to God.
He received legalism from his version of God.
So, he gives legalism to his version of God.
And anyone that confronts legalism, was an enemy of his God because in his zeal he desired to defend what he was told.
You become a reflection of the God that you know.
You better know the right one.
You better know the God of the Bible.
You better know the father that is displayed in the Son.
In the New Testament, there was no method of evangelism where they went looking for people that they could save.
All they did in the New Testament was walked.
They moved, breathed, and be.
That's all it takes.
When you move in the father, breathe in the father, and be in the father, everybody wants what you have.
They never went into a town and said, "This is what you have to do to be saved." No, they just walked through town and everybody came to them and said, "What must we do to be saved?"
The gospel was so scandalous and attractive in the first century that people were willing to lose everything to get it.
People were willing to endure the criticism of their religious counterparts just to cling to what these guys had.
There are between 103 and 109 uses of the word that we translate into saved, saviour, or salvation; approximately zero of them have to do with your afterlife.
Why are we willing to tolerate a salvation that never touches our bodies?
Why are we willing to tolerate a salvation that never touches the people we love?
Still to be revealed to me:
· Will any aspect of our Souls (Hearts and minds), perhaps Good/God aspects, be/become “attached” to our eternal outside of time Spirits?
· Will any aspects of this “stickable bit” have to have been “refined” (through fire?) of Bad/Delusionary parts for this to happen?
Another comment on the idea of Eternal...
· Something without beginning or end, is giving a nod to time. Without time, you wouldn't need to exclude beginnings and endings.
· As such, eternity requires time as its subconstruct to even exist.
· For there to be a need for no end, it must be “in time” because there is no beginning, middle, and end in the eternal, in Word.
· So eternal life cannot exist outside of time by its very definition. Eternal requires time.
· So this adjective for life, can only apply within time.
· Jesus could have also understood the notion that His source of life was from “outside” of time. That is, the nature of the origin of life is from outside of time and so the origin is eternal. It is an adjective of the source of life, rather than a time frame for your soul experiencing it. This is moot though, since the concept of “outside of time” wasn’t something the askers of and listeners to Jesus were yet familiar with.