The British atheist philosopher of yesteryear, Bertrand Russell, wrote, “When I die, I shall rot.” Isaac Asimov wrote, “I don’t believe in an afterlife, so I don’t have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.”[1]

Many agree with these sentiments. Jesus did not. In fact, the final line of the creed, “and the life everlasting,” is quite an accurate summary of what Jesus and the apostles taught, and this stands in direct contrast to Russell and Asimov. And this is a very important line—“and the life everlasting”—as Clarence Macartney has demonstrated:

In certain respects the great article of the Apostles’ Creed is the last: “I believe in … the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” Without that article, the other great affirmations have no meaning. Suppose one were to say, “I believe in God the Father,” but not in life everlasting; or “I believe in the Holy Ghost,” but not in the life everlasting; or, “I believe in … the holy Catholic church, the communion of saints,” but not in the life everlasting. All those affirmations would be meaningless without the great chord struck in the final sentence of the Creed.[2]

Time and time again in the scriptures we find this truth: life goes on after the grave.

In John 10, Jesus gives a very helpful definition of “eternal life” (i.e., “life everlasting). He says:

²⁷ My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. ²⁸ I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

Verse 28 has three components, and those three will frame our consideration. They are:

• “I give the eternal life”: Our standing with Jesus determines our standing in eternity.
• “and they will never perish”: Heaven is a place of everlasting life.
• “and no one will snatch them out of my hand”: Our eternity will be spent in relationship with Jesus.

Our standing with Jesus determines our standing in eternity.

When the creed speaks of life everlasting, it is speaking primarily in a positive sense, in the sense of salvation. It is speaking of those who are born again unto life eternal, those who are resurrected unto life eternal. This is the “gift of God” that Paul speaks of in Romans 6:23.

In another sense, however, life everlasting can refer to all human beings for, in the broader biblical picture, everybody will live forever but not everybody will live forever in heaven.

In the Old Testament, Daniel 12 makes this abundantly clear by letting the word “everlasting” modify both eternal life in glory and eternal judgment.

² And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

This is a fascinating passage because this kind of clear delineation between two distinct eternal destinies is not necessarily pervasive in the Old Testament, but here it is quite clear. We will be raised either (a) “to everlasting life” or (b) “to shame and everlasting contempt.”

In Matthew 25, Jesus depicts the separation of the “the sheep” (the saved) and “the goats” (the damned) in eternity. Here, Jesus lets “eternal” modify two distinct final destinies.

⁴⁶ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

A stark picture emerges when Daniel 12 and Matthew 25 are layered one atop the other:

• Some will go to everlasting/eternal shame/contempt/punishment.
• Some will go to everlasting/eternal life.

And what is the determining factor in where we go when we die? Let us return to our introductory text, John 10:

²⁷ My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. ²⁸ I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

Do you see it: “My sheep…my voice…I know them…they follow me.” Who is this? It is Jesus! And in verse 28 we read, “I give them eternal life.” Who? Those with whom He is in relationship. Those who hear his voice. Those who follow Him.

Where you stand with Jesus determines where you spend eternity.

Nothing.

Else.

Matters.

That is it. Have you heard His voice? Have you placed your faith in Him? Are you one of His sheep?

Heaven is a place of life everlasting.

Turning now to the positive sense of life everlasting, as the creed intends it, we must establish a fundamental fact: Heaven is forever. Heaven is a place of life everlasting. Heaven will have no end!

In 1 John 2, John writes this of Jesus:

²⁵ And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life.

That is an amazing and beautiful and precise statement. “Eternal life” constitutes the heart of the divine promise. And it is just that: a promise. God has promised it.

That word “eternal” is such a strong word and such a baffling word. What does it mean? It means, for one thing, unending, but, pressed much beyond that, we confront a genuine dilemma: how can finite beings conceive of eternity? It is impossible! I have tried over the years, but I cannot grasp it.

John Newton took a shot at defining in the final stanza of “Amazing Grace.” He wrote:

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun.

That is helpful! The Baptist theologian J.P. Boyce put it like this:

The blessedness of this state of the righteous is made supreme by the fact that it will last forever. It will never end; it will never be diminished. If there be any change, it will be for its increase.…[3]

The best efforts of the human imagination to depict eternity still fall short! For example, Umberto Eco, in his novel The Island of the Day Before, has one of the characters offer some interesting ways of thinking about eternity. These include:

• Eternity is longer than how long it would take for “a little goldfinch, drinking one drop every year [to] drain all the world’s seas.”
• Eternity is longer than how long it would take for “a plant louse, taking one bite every year…[to] devour every forest” on earth.
• Eternity is longer than how long it would take for “an ant, taking one step every year…[to] circle the entire earth.”
• Eternity is longer than how long it would take for the universe, “if all this Universe were desert” to become empty if “once every century a single grain were taken from it…”
• Eternity is longer than how long it would take for a soul to shed enough tears “to form a flood greater than that which in ancient times destroyed the human race” if it shed “only two tears” every few million centuries.[4]

Yes, eternity can be viewed as a long, long time, but it could be that we are missing the mark by using images like this. For instance, some Christians argue that a better way to think of eternity is not to think of it as a long, long time (i.e., an ongoing line stretching into the future) but rather as rather a timeless eternal moment, a singular eternal present, if you will. Peter Kreeft, who is a helpful Christian philosopher, writes:

Even now we experience “timeless moments,” intimations of eternity in the pure present, like a point, rather than spread out into the future like a line. This would not be boring because it has no duration in time, no waiting. And it is apparently faithful to the meaning of the word eternal, “not-ternal,” “not-temporal.” It seems that eternity is a different dimension from time…The image of eternity as a point does, however, contain an essential truth: that eternity is not spread out like time. It is simultaneously present all at once, not piece by piece in passing. The answer to the question “What time is it in eternity?” is: Now. Thus Boethius’ classic definition of eternity is “the simultaneous possession of all perfection in a single present.”[5]

Perhaps Kreeft and others are onto something. I am inclined to think they likely are. But we must not miss the point that Jesus promises us life without end, regardless of how we attempt to understand what this will be like. Let us hear again our verse from 1 John 2.

²⁵ And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life.

Jesus has made this promise to us!

Our eternity will be spent in relationship with Jesus.

And of what will our life everlasting consist? What will it be like? Once again, we must resist undue speculation, but, for the believer, the most important reality to grasp is this: our eternity will be spent in relationship with Jesus.

The last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22, begins with words that comfort our hearts.

¹ Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb ² through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.³ No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. ⁴ They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. ⁵ And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

Notice the relational language of this picture of Heaven:

• The throne of Jesus (the Lamb) is in Heaven.
• We will worship Jesus.
• We will see His face.
• His name will be on our foreheads.

This does not explain all that heaven will be, but it does explain what heaven, at heart, will be: an eternity lived out in the presence of Jesus Christ, an eternity of relationship and love with the King of Kings. I do not in any way think this excludes us knowing, seeing, and loving one another, as if we will ignore each other as we are caught up in some strange worship-service-trance and sit zombified staring at Jesus. No, I think it means that the presence of the Alpha and Omega will generate life and joy and love and relationship in glory for all of eternity, between us and Him and us and one another. Put another way, we will be in the presence of eternal love (“God is love.” 1 John 4:8) and will live eternally in the blissful exercise of it.

This is so very different than our world of darkness, stress, pain, anxiety, and fear! Hans Urs von Balthasar writes:

Many have grown so weary of this transient life, so glutted, that they wish for only one thing: to sleep, to sink into oblivion, no longer to have to go on living. Great religions promise us that we could, if we follow their directives, set ourselves free from having to live. Nature, in its infinitely slow process of development, obviously has a drive toward, and thirst for, constantly more highly organized life; but once having reached the level of consciousness, at which there seems to be nothing more left to strive for, the impulse turns back upon itself and becomes a drive toward death. All that effort was, in the end, not worthwhile.[6]

Yes, we are a people who cannot conceive of eternal, joyous bliss, for we have never known it. Our existence on earth seems bent on self-destruction. But Jesus comes to give us life eternal, life everlasting, life abundant, now and forever! This means that we need not fear our lives and we need not fear our deaths.

P.T. Forsyth has beautifully written of death and eternal life:

I pass but do not cease. I go to those who have gone. I go to Him in whom is no after nor before, and in whom all work is Yea and Amen. To die is Christ. It is gain—gain in reality. I go nearer to the great reality, the eternal holy love. I do not just sink into the Unseen, I move deeper into God and the Kingdom of God. I see His face. I am rapt into the energies of the Eternal. Here I am not where I should be, because others are not. But I go where all souls are filled with Christ; where the public opinion is the Holy Ghost; where all moves in righteousness, service, and worship.[7]

What a wondrous thought, eternity! And it is offered to you now, by and in Jesus. Truly our brother, John, was correct: “And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life.”

And then the last word of the Creed: “Amen.”

And the church says: “Amen!”

 

[1] Asimov quoted in Alcorn, Randy. Heaven. Tyndale house Publishers.

[2] Quoted in https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1984/april-6/editorial-good-news-resurrection-brings.html

[3] Quoted in Garrett, James Leo, Jr. Systematic Theology. Volume 2. (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014), Logos Edition.

[4] Umberto Eco.  The Island of the Day Before (New York:  Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994), p. 453. In Eco’s novel, these specific images are used to illustrate the unending nature of hell. Regardless, they are the character’s attempts at depicting eternity itself.

[5] Kreeft, Peter. Every Thing You Ever Wanted to Know About Heaven. (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 199), Google Books search.

[6] Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Credo. (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press), Kindle Edition.

[7] Quoted in Garrett, James Leo, Jr. Systematic Theology. Volume 2. (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014), Logos Edition.