The End of Man: Eternal Life
Eternal life through Jesus Christ
“But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Life is conscious vitality. Life involves activity and a capacity for growth. Life that is eternal is all of this internally, externally, tirelessly, and perpetually. By definition, eternal life is life that comes from a realm where life is not limited either by space or time, much less to a body that tires, wears out, and eventually dies.
There are several Greek words that are translated ‘life’ in our New Testament. The ‘life’ in Romans 6.23 is ‘zoe.’ This life is the same life that God granted to the Son (John 5.26.) It is the life that the Son manifested unto men (1 John 1.2), which life was sinless (2 Corinthians 5.21.) Sinless life is what the saints will have by virtue of grace from God and faith in Christ. There is a singularly informative association between life that is eternal and life on earth. ‘Zoe’ is frequently used to describe life in its earthly environment. From ‘zoe’ we have zoology, for example. Yet every time ‘life’ is mentioned in the New Testament beside the word ‘eternal’ or ‘everlasting,’ the ‘zoe’ life is used. There is a good reason for this. There will be earthly features to our eternity with God. ‘Zoe’ is used in conjunction with ‘eternal’ and ‘everlasting’ to underscore this truth. Eternal life will not be some airy existence without form. Saints will not merely fly to and fro, never coming into contact with anything; their spirits will be blessed with glorified bodies. Eternal bodies will differ from earthly bodies, but not wholly. Persons who go to heaven will have resurrected bodies; these bodies will be spiritual rather than earthly, but bodies nevertheless. A spiritual body does not mean an immaterial one. These bodies will be like unto the body of the resurrected Lord: flesh and bone rather than flesh and blood (Luke 24.39.) Having been redeemed by the lifeblood of Jesus to live without circulation of blood, these bodies will be capable of consuming supernatural sweetmeats. Though Jesus’ body no longer constrained his human nature to space or time after he rose from the dead, he still partook of earthly pleasures. For instance, after he appeared, he ate food (Luke 24.) There will be food and drink for these bodies. There will be “a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22.1, 2.) This is a partial description of life in the New Jerusalem that is to descend from heaven. As I understand it, though certainly imperfectly, resurrected saints, with their glorified bodies, will live there, and will share its riches in some association with a new earth. All will drink, and all will eat. Eternal life will be tangible and tasty. The vision is too holy for us to apprehend but a little. This life will be the glorious future of those who are written in the ‘Lamb’s book of life’ (Revelation 21.27.) This life will be appreciated by its recipients in a way that Adam and Eve could not have appreciated it, had they never sinned and had never been ejected from the Garden of Eden where the tree of life was. Eternal life is best appreciated through grace and sacrifice: through unmerited favor and the death of a satisfactory Substitute for sinners. The Lamb died so that we could be granted it. So this life will be one of humble gratitude for salvation from deserved misery. The recipients of it will not have deserved this life. They will not have gotten it through obedience, unless by obedience is meant that of Jesus Christ. They will forever look to the impeccable life and meritorious death that made their never-ending happiness possible. Whatever was greatest to be merited, it was merited by Jesus Christ: by his immaculate life and redeeming death. Glory to the Man of Sorrows for causing everlasting gladness to wretched multitudes by his incalculable agony! Ita oportuit intrare in gloriam suam. (Thus ought he to enter upon his career of glory.)
Speaking of the infinity of God, Hodge the son, of Princeton, remarks, “Obviously, no bounds can be drawn around the boundless” (A. A. Hodge, Evangelical Theology, pp. 10, 11.) What wonder does that simple comment cause! If God willed to confine himself to within the limits of a certain boundary, he could just as easily decide to cross over it. And so he would be boundless even while bound. God, in the second person of the Trinity, did something like that on the cross and in the resurrection. He suffered his body to be bound and killed; but essentially he was, even then, as free and illimitable as he was from everlasting, giving proof of this by taking up his life again (John 10.18.) His crucifixion was more than the death of an innocent victim; it was the predetermined porthole to an infinity of life and merit, through the justification that he worked out in that terrible death; the perfection, pledge, efficacy, and testimony of this justification was his self-resurrection from the dead (Romans 4.25; 1 Corinthians 15.17.) His death for sin is the source of lives of infinite duration; sinners may live blissfully forever because of the boundless measure of his merits. “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Our sins became his so that his life could be ours. We have earned death by the wages of sin; he has earned life by the wages of obedience. This life is our gift through faith in his obedience. He obeyed the law that we broke; he offered himself to die in our place. Sinners who break the law instead of obey it need a substitute to satisfy their legal requirements and to cancel the wages that they have earned. This is what was Jesus did for all sinners who close with him by faith.
While death is best understood in conjunction with sin, life is best understood in conjunction with death. Death informs life. The death of Christ informs the eternal life that a saved sinner will enjoy. Therefore, to enlighten us on the subject of this life, Paul spoke in terms like these: ‘baptized into his death’—‘buried with him by baptism into death’— ‘crucified with him’—‘in the likeness of his death’—‘dead and freed from sin’—‘dead with Christ’—‘alive from the dead’ (Romans 6.) One cannot understand eternal life except by a knowledge of death—the death of Jesus Christ, because this death is the sinner’s freedom from everything that forbad his entry into the holy presence of God, where nothing that hurts can hinder, and where all our heartaches are healed. An ancient proverb truly says: “The fate of a kingdom often depends upon the act of a moment.” The fate of God’s kingdom hung upon the act of suffering on the cross; and the fate of every sinner hangs on his trusting, or not, in the victory over sin upon that cross. Eternal life was being won in Jesus’ dying; it was fully won the moment he announced, ‘it is finished’; and now each sinner must have his moment of appropriating, by faith, all that Jesus has to give, or else his moment, once lost, must lead to unrelenting anguish. What is faith? Here is a comprehensive definition of it: “Faith is a firm persuasion by which we assent to everything which God has revealed to us in his Word and by which we rest fully assured that the promise of the free mercy of God extends to us for Christ’s sake” (Zacharias Ursinus, Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism.) It follows that we need to know what is in the Word that we assent to; therefore we must read it. In the Bible is the way of life that we need. What is saving faith, more specifically? “It will not save me to know that Christ is a Saviour; but it will save me to trust him to be my Saviour” (C. H. Spurgeon, Faith.) This is the way to eternal life.
Though the full experience of this life is in the future, this life is the present possession of any sinner who has faith in the Son. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life” (John 3.36.) He has it; he has it right now; he has it right now by believing. By believing right now, it is as certainly his as the word of God is sure. Jesus is ‘the resurrection, and the life’ (John 11.25.) By believing in him, this life may be ours (John 20.31.) This is as true as the word of God is trustworthy.
Two astonishing facts about this life are that it is, as Romans 6:23 states, ‘the gift of God,’ and that this very fact is a stumbling-block. The majority of people, me included many years ago, are unwilling to believe that working to obtain eternal life does not work. If eternal life is the gift of God, it is an insult to God to try to obtain this life by effort. Such work, instead of being reckoned to a person’s credit, is ‘reckoned of debt’ (Romans 4.4.) Commentators are either vague about this verse or they’re in a tangle about it; well, we know that it means this at least: salvation by works is a roadblock. The word ‘debt’ in Romans 4.4 is the same word used in ‘forgive us our debts’ (Matthew 6.12.) So working for salvation is a sin that we need forgiveness for. On the one hand, our wages for sin is death; on the other hand, we are in debt for trying to earn life. These concepts together form an amalgamated mindbender. The reason for concepts like these occurring in the word of God in despite of paradox is this: In Scripture, the subject of money is used in profusion to teach spiritual realities because sinners love ‘the root of all evil,’ which is money (1 Timothy 6.10.) Is it not wonderful that God would stoop to what we love the most in order to teach us what we need the most to learn? We have earnings that buy death; we have debts for trying to earn life. We can’t win for losing: we have too many earnings of sin; and trying to buy eternal life puts us in debt; therefore we must die the death. We must die for our sinning; and we can’t live by buying. We have earned death; we can’t buy life. Salvation is not obtained by works, but by grace. Only by the undeserved gift of God can eternal life be the end of man; while working for life incurs debt, faith is counted for righteousness (Romans 4.5.)
‘Through Jesus Christ our Lord’—these are the final words of Romans 6.23. Jesus is the only access to eternal life. He is the gate; he is the door. We enter in thereat; or we enter not at all. He rose from the dead; and, in the Bible and through the preaching of it, his life is offered to sinners. A person does not need to worry about the impending doom of physical death, neither the horror of hell that follows death, nor yet the lake of fire that is the end of man, if only he will receive Jesus and be made alive in the spirit.
Eternal life, if we want it, is behind Jesus Christ, and we must go through him to get it. Eternal life and Jesus Christ are inseparable. To have one, we must receive the other. If eternal life is desired, Jesus Christ must be received; if Jesus is desired, we must receive his life by faith. Eternal life is by way of Jesus. This is well demonstrated by the apostle in the following phrases: ‘saved by his life’—‘shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ’—‘even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord’—‘the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus’—‘the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Romans 5.10, 17, 21; 8.2; 6.23.) Eternal life is through Jesus, in Jesus, and from Jesus. This life is nowhere connected to Mary or any other saint as if it may be received through one of them. That Jesus Christ is on a level infinitely higher than mere mortals is obvious from history. Even Jesus’ enemies called attention to his unusual, incomparable character. The officers who were sent by the Pharisees and the chief priests to apprehend Jesus: “Never man spake like this man” (John 7.46.) Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator of Judea, who delivered Jesus over to be scourged and crucified: “I find in him no fault” (John 18.38.) The Roman centurion, with others that were with him, after observing how Jesus died and the strange events that suddenly happened then: “Truly this was the Son of God” (Matthew 27.54.) This all agrees with the revelation in the Gospel of John by Jesus Christ himself: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14.6.)
When people muse about science finding a way to live forever, what they mean is the prospect of living ‘in the body’ as they do now. Few of these people realize that the body, now cursed to die, once had the potential to live forever; and that the Bible now promises, not only life in heaven, but life in the body as well. This is why the Apostles’ Creed affirms: “I believe in…the resurrection of the body….” The life of a physical body is in the blood. The life of an eternal body is by the blood of Jesus Christ. It is only through faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that eternal life may be received. He is the only way to ‘newness of life’ (Romans 6.4.) Through Jesus Christ our Lord, eternal life can be the end of man: ‘the end everlasting life’ (verse 22.)
