The term “eternal life” is used throughout the New Testament to describe the new, better, unending life we receive in Jesus Christ. The term contains two facets. The first and most obvious sense of the word is exactly what the term would seem to imply, namely, life that goes on for eternity. This is the future hope of every Christian; even if we die before He returns, Jesus will raise us bodily from the dead to live forever with Him. Yet, in another sense, eternal life is not only something we eagerly anticipate but also something we experience even now. Anyone who is in Christ is already a new creation, (2 Corinthians 5:17). I have died to my old sinful self and now Christ lives in me, (Galatians 2:20). To know God through Jesus Christ is to experience the riches of eternal life even now, (John 17:3).

Eternal life as our future hope

The primary use of “eternal life” in the New Testament is to describe what we hope for after our future resurrection. It means that genuine Christians will come out of their graves never to die again. Jesus will one day raise up all who believe in Him and they will live forever with Him in His kingdom. Jesus has conquered death itself, and because of that, death cannot hold Christ’s people.

In the famous story of the rich young ruler (Matthew 19:16, Mark 10:17, Luke 18:18), the man asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. While there is much to say about this conversation,¹See, for example, Does Luke 10:25-28 teach that we receive eternal life by keeping the Law? the point here is that the man’s question implies that “eternal life” is something that Jews hoped to inherit in the future. Jewish apocryphal literature from this period affirms this conclusion, speaking of “the religion that preserves them for eternal life according to God’s promise,” (4 Maccabees 15:3). While the rich man walks away, valuing his riches in this life over eternal life in the hereafter, Jesus says to His disciples immediately afterward:

“And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for My name’s sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life,” (Matthew 19:29).

In the parallel passages in Mark 10:30 and Luke 18:30, Jesus specifies that we receive this eternal life “in the age to come.” Thus, Jesus affirms the idea that eternal life is the future hope of those who trust in Him. The rest of the New Testament concurs, containing verses like:

“keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life,” (Jude 21).

This is certainly the impression the ancient readers of the New Testament took away from it. Many of the earliest Christian writings after the New Testament likewise speak of “the coming kingdom and eternal life,”²2 Clement 5 and say things like “they will inherit eternal life”³Shepherd of Hermas 19 and “we will receive eternal life”.⁴2 Clement 8 The most noteworthy early creeds end with clauses like “I believe in…the resurrection of the body and life everlasting,”⁵The Apostle’s Creed or that men will “rise again with their bodies” and “go into life everlasting”.⁶The Athanasian Creed Thus, eternal life was understood as a future hope fulfilled when Christ raises His people up on the last day to live with Him forever.

Eternal life as a present reality

Eternal life is definitely something we look forward to, yet the Bible also describes it as something we already experience even now. Jesus, for example, says:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life,” (John 5:24).

Upon putting our full trust in Christ and coming to Him in faith, we have already “passed from death to life.” We are free from judgment and hell. The life we have, even now, is a life that is categorically different than the mortal life of condemnation we possessed before in our sin. To be reconciled to the Lord, to know God through Jesus Christ, is itself to experience eternal life. As Jesus later said plainly:

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

The fellowship we have with God even now is a true foretaste of all that will make the life to come worth living. In Christ, even now, we have the substance of eternal life. As John explains:

“And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life,” (1 John 5:11-12).

This is why some ancient Christians wrote of eternal life as something that began breaking out immediately at Christ’s coming, beginning its transformative effect in this life, but having its final consummation in the age to come. As one early-second-century writer put it:

“Consequently all magic and every kind of spell were dissolved, the ignorance so characteristic of wickedness vanished, and the ancient kingdom was abolished when God appeared in human form to bring the newness of eternal life; and what had been prepared by God began to take effect. As a result, all things were thrown into ferment, because the abolition of death was being carried out,” (Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 19)⁷Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers in English (Baker Publishing Group, 2006) 101-102

Conclusion

Eternal life is a multifaceted blessing wherein Christ gives us a fuller and more abundant life through fellowship with God even now and promises to raise us up to live as perfected humans in His kingdom to come, alive with Him forever without sickness or suffering in the fullness of God’s presence without the barrier of sin.