As followers of the Lord Jesus, we look forward to eternal life (Titus 3:7). But what is this life we hope for?
It might be tempting to think of it as simply living forever. But when you think about it, just living forever would eventually get old. Imagine your favorite thing. Then, picture doing it endlessly for a million or two years. Or even a few billion years. Nothing I can imagine would hold its appeal for that long.
And just living forever might actually be an endless life of anguish and torment. That is, after all, what is pictured when many people think of hell—an endless existence of conscious torment. Who would look forward to that?
But the eternal life we look forward to is more than just an endless existence. It is more than just an existence free from pain and filled with good things. And it is even more than taking up residence in our own personal mansion on streets of gold beyond the pearly gates.
Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
John 17:3 NIV
Jesus defined eternal life as a relationship. It is knowing God in a personal and intimate fashion. It is experiencing the incomparable riches of God’s grace and kindness throughout the ages (Eph 2:7). It is a participation in the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). And it is, in some way, experiencing union with God (John 17:20-23).
But eternal life is not something we have to wait for. Jesus said that the one who believes in him has eternal life (John 3:36). Not “will have,” but “has.”
What awaits us is much greater than what we experience now. But we do, even now, experience a taste of the eternal life that will be ours throughout the remainder of eternity.
