There are a few common misconceptions about what everlasting life is, that should be mentioned before we delve too far into our subject.

At the top of the list is the notion that everlasting life is not that much different than the life that we know now. It may be a little easier, perhaps less stressful, but fundamentally the same. The basic idea is that in death we simply move from one world to another or from one existence to another.

The problem with this view is that it fails to connect everlasting life to the finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ, who assumed a complete human nature, not to make life a little easier for us in the next world, but to take away our sin. Revelation 21:4, which describes everlasting life as well as any passage in Scripture, says, "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." Even the effects of sin will no longer affect us in heaven.

The second misconception is exactly the opposite of the first. Instead of everlasting life being only a little different from our present life, it sees it as being vastly different. When we die, we all become angels and play harps on fluffy, white clouds throughout all eternity. God made heaven, in other words, just to make us happy.

But this is no more accurate than the first view. Men do not become angels when they die any more than they become demons. To the contrary, men and angels are completely different kinds of creatures. Nor will heaven be nothing more than a big picnic where we just lounge around, listen to music, and admire God's handiwork. No, God made man to serve Him. Genesis says that He placed Adam in the Garden of Eden to tend and keep it (Gen. 2:15). In fact, one of the key terms that God uses to describe His covenant people throughout the Bible is servant. Even in heaven God's covenant people will continue to serve Him. Revelation 22:3 says, "And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him." While the exact nature of our future service has not been revealed, we can be sure that whatever it involves will be to our endless enjoyment.

And a third misconception is that everlasting life is something that we receive only we when we die. In this world we have this life, but in heaven we'll have everlasting life.

But this isn't so either. We may not have the fullness of everlasting life in this world, but everyone who trusts the shed blood of Jesus Christ and places his hope in the Lord's triumphant resurrection has everlasting life here and now. This is the clear teaching of Scripture. John 3:36 says, "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life." Note the present tense verb hath or has. Eternal life is not something for which we have to wait. It's ours already. Likewise, John 10:28 adds, "And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." This verse is obviously addressing the present concerns of believers, since the notion of perishing or being plucked out of the Father's hand is exactly the opposite of everlasting life. And concerning this life, Jesus once again used a present tense verb when He said , "I am giving them everlasting life."

Our catechism picks up on the idea that eternal life is a present reality for us when it says, "I now feel in my heart the beginning of eternal joy" (Q58).

When we stop to think about it, the realization that we already possess a life that cannot end because we belong to Jesus Christ is one of the most amazing doctrines of the faith. It ties together all the other articles of faith and fills our hearts with the comfort and joy of the gospel. Body and soul, both in this life and in the next, we will never be separated from our covenant God, who has promised to be our God throughout all eternity!

A Work of the Trinity

Now, let us turn our attention to the Lord's High Priestly prayer in the seventeenth chapter of John's gospel. One of the first things we notice here is the source of eternal life. Its ultimate source is none other than God the Father. It was the Father to whom the Son prayed, and it was also the Father who gave the Son "power over all flesh" and an elect people of His own. Both are mentioned in verse 2.

What we have in this verse is a glimpse into the eternal, intra-Trinitarian Covenant of Redemption. In contemplation of His soon-to-be-completed work on earth, the Son asked the Father to glorify Him exactly as He had promised to do. The glorification of the mediator would then give Him opportunity to apply the work that He had begun on earth. The two promises mentioned here are intimately connected in that the latter is totally dependent on the former. This means that the church of Jesus Christ cannot advance in this world unless Christ Himself has absolute authority over all mankind. He distinguishes His elect from the non-elect, granting all the benefits of His mediatorial work to the former and rejecting all others.

The Covenant of Redemption naturally leads to the Covenant of Grace. Adam's failure to obey the Word of God brought him and all his natural descendants under God's curse and the sentence of death. As Calvin reminds us, the fact that newborn infants occasionally die shows unmistakably that all men enter this world as depraved and guilty sinners, subject to death. Separating the elect from the rest of mankind, then, implies the removal of the curse. In place of death, Christ gives life to His people. But He does not just give us any life - He gives us everlasting life!

Although God the Father is the ultimate source of everlasting life, Jesus also made it clear that this life becomes ours through the mediation of God the Son, who sends forth preachers to proclaim the Word of God, which He then makes alive in His elect by the sovereign power of God the Spirit (Q54). Thus, the three Persons of the Trinity work together for our salvation according to the order by which they have chosen to reveal themselves: the Father elects, the Son redeems, and the Spirit sanctifies.

The Essence of Eternal Life

So far, we've talked about eternal life without actually saying what it is. Since this is really the heart of our concern, we will now get to it without further delay.

That takes us to verse 4. Jesus defined eternal life as knowing the only true God (i.e., in contrast to the polytheism of Greek and Roman religions) and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent. The fact that everlasting life requires a knowledge of Christ in addition to a knowledge of God further shows us that He is co-equal with the Father, for how could the knowledge of a mere creature be as necessary to our salvation as the knowledge of God Himself? This clearly identifies Jesus Christ as God incarnate and implies that eternal life requires a knowledge of the Trinity.

Today we ordinarily use the words know and knowledge in an intellectual sense. In fact, this is its only use in modern English according to the current edition of Webster's Dictionary. Other uses of know (e.g., where Genesis 4:1 says that "Adam knew Eve his wife") are labeled "archaic."

While the Bible certainly uses know and knowledge in an intellectual sense, these words often involve quite a bit more. Genesis 4:1 is an obvious example, but consider a few other verses as well. In John 10:27 Jesus said, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." Did the Lord mean nothing more than that He has memorized the names of His sheep? Of course not. He meant that He had chosen the sheep, loved them, called them to be His own and promised to protect them. A similar statement, though lacking the metaphor, appears in 2 Timothy 2:19. Paul wrote, "Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his."

Perhaps even more compelling are the passages in which the Lord says that He doesn't know someone. One such passage is Matthew 7:23. Jesus said that many would prophesy in His name, some would cast out demons and a few would even perform wondrous works. But in the Day of Judgment He will say to them, "I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." Being omniscient, Jesus cannot cease to know these deceivers in an intellectual sense. To the contrary, He knows everything that there is to know about them, including their so-called good works. In fact, He knows them better than they know themselves, since their hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked. He meant, rather, that He did not love them, that He had not made them His people by the power of the Holy Spirit, and therefore that they do not share in the life that He came to give.

An intellectual knowledge of God is indispensible for the Christian. Even our catechism recognizes this when it says that there are three things that we must know in order to have the comfort of the gospel (Q2). Just as Christ had to know His sheep intellectually if He would know them lovingly, our minds must understand what God is so that we can love Him with all of our heart, soul, and strength. And thank God that we can know Him! We can know Him because He has revealed Himself in Scripture. The Bible teaches, among other things, that the triune God is compassionate, merciful, faithful, true, omniscient, omnipresent, and holy.

But knowing God unto everlasting life involves a lot more than familiarity with theological jargon or rattling off a few theological proof texts. There are a lot of people who have an intellectual knowledge of God but nothing more. Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, and H. L. Mencken, the American journalist, are two examples of men who were fairly astute in theology but hated God with a passion. The only knowledge of God that is of any real use involves loving Him, worshiping Him, serving Him, and rejoicing in his immeasurable mercy. It requires adoration, trust, honor, and devotion. Anything less than this is not really knowing God at all.

So, what does this mean for us?

Well, if eternal life is knowing God, which is exactly what Jesus said it is, then it seems that we can experience a greater degree of that life the better we know and enjoy Him. The prospect of growing in our appreciation of God and rejoicing in His increased blessing should motivate every believer to study the Bible more rigorously, pray with greater earnestness, attend worship more faithfully, and strive for a deeper walk with Christ. Is this not what God meant when He told Abraham, "I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly" (Gen. 17:1-2)?

Heaven: The Fullness
of Everlasting Life

In his commentary on Question and Answer 58 of our catechism, Ursinus defines everlasting life as "the perfect restoration of the image of God, with eternal joy and delight in God, heavenly glory, and the full fruition of all those good things which are necessary to a state of perfect happiness" (p. 319).

Everlasting life is our present possession. But as wonderful as that is, there is so much more to come. That's the point that Ursinus emphasized for us. Only in the next life will we know God as fully as we can. Paul wrote that we will know Him even as we are known by Him (1 Cor. 13:12).

But what does this mean? What will heaven be like? What glory will the Lord give to his beloved sons and daughters?

Here's where we have a bit of a problem. The simple fact is that there is a lot about heaven that we just don't know yet. Only in a very few places does the Bible draw back the curtain of glory to give us a tiny hint of what awaits us. The last two chapters of Revelation are one such place, but the picture given here is symbolic. It uses numerous images drawn from the rest of Scripture to make a theological statement. This being so, the writers of our catechism demonstrated a remarkable amount of restraint and wisdom when they chose to describe everlasting life simply as "complete bliss, such as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man; therein to praise God for ever." Their point is that everlasting life is more than anyone still trudging his way through this vale of tears can now imagine.

But we do know a few things. Here are some of the more important ones.

First, eternal life entails a complete love for God. The Lord commands us to love Him with all our heart, soul, and mind. As much as we may wish to do this now, the sin that lingers within us makes it impossible. But in glory our entire being will be devoted to adoring Father, Son, and Holy Spirit forever.

Second, complete bliss means complete joy in God through Christ. Here our joy is interspersed with periods of trial, sickness, sorrow, and death. Sometimes it seems we shed more tears of pain than of joy. But, as we saw earlier, in heaven "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away" (Rev. 21:4). This will be a joy that no man can take away (John 16:22).

Third, our glory will guarantee our perfect righteousness before God. In this world we have complete justification, but only partial sanctification. In fact, our sanctification is so incomplete that our catechism says that we currently have only a small beginning of the obedience that God requires of us (Q114). But this only emphasizes the need to pursue God's commandments all the more zealously until we find complete sanctification in the life to come (Q115).

Fourth, in heaven we will find the Lord to be everything we'll ever need. Throughout the Bible the Lord promises to be many things to His people. He assured Abraham, for example, that He was his shield and exceeding great reward (Gen. 15:1). The twenty-third Psalm teaches us that Christ is our shepherd, and therefore we will never lack any good thing. Yet, there is an especially high concentration of these kinds of statements in the last two chapters of Revelation, which describe the fullness of the life that we have in our Savior Jesus Christ: "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men" (21:3); "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely" (21:6); "I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof" (21:22-23); "And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever" (22:5). The apostle Paul put it succinctly when he wrote that in that day God, who "filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:23), will be our all in all (1 Cor. 15:28).

And lastly, all of these blessing will be ours without interruption. The kingdoms of men come and go, but of Christ's kingdom "there shall be no end" (Luke 1:33).

All of this, and a whole lot more, is what everyone who belongs to Jesus Christ has to look forward to. We can be assured that He purchased it all for us, and not one whit of it will fail to be ours!

The knowledge of God that constitutes eternal life does not require that we know everything about God. In fact, we can know Him only as far as He has revealed Himself. And yet, this knowledge is completely true and accurate. It is this knowledge that teaches us to walk before Him in righteousness in this world and eagerly long for His uninterrupted fellowship in the next.

A child does not have to know everything about his father to know that his father loves and cares for him. If a child's father is a physician, the child may not understand chemistry, biology, pharmacology, or electro-magnetic imaging. But he knows that his father goes to work every day to provide for his needs, that he comes home every evening, and that he takes time to play with him, instruct him, and put him to bed at night. Thus, the child knows his father well enough to love and respect him.

The best place to begin learning more of God's grace and mercy is Jesus Christ. As the second person of the Trinity, He is God Himself. In His incarnation, He is a perfect manifestation of all that God wants us to know about Himself. Jesus said, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (John 14:9). And Paul wrote, "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6). This is where eternal life begins. John wrote, "And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life" (1 John 5:20).