Eternal Life

When I was young I grew up thinking that eternal life meant "going to heaven when you die". How wrong I was. Jesus didn't leave his Father, come to this broken wretched world and become a human being, die a criminals death staked to a piece of wood, rise from the dead, only to sell us some fire insurance.

Making the Gospel - the good news of Jesus - only about escaping hell, receiving some forgiveness of your sins, and then spending an eternity in paradise with God is an absolute tragedy! It's so much more than that.

Jesus knew we would be confused about this idea of eternal life - which in Jesus day happened to be a very popular idea with perhaps several different meanings attached to it. So Jesus defined it for us. He spelled it out when he said in His prayer to his Father in John 17:3 " And this is eternal life," he says "that they may know you the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent."

Jesus is saying here that eternal life is to know God - to actually know him, like you know your spouse or your friend. This means that we can be intimately acquainted with God, to interact with God, to have conversations with God, to experience God! Isn't that exciting? An this is what eternal life is!

Jesus has reconciled us to God and restored as human beings who can know and relate with their Creator and Father.