I've always had a bit of trouble with the concept of the afterlife in Christianity. I never bought into the idea that when we die we spend eternity in a nice place called Heaven with God, or we go to eternal torment and torture in Hell. I saw the idea of Heaven as something self-centred and greedy, that you couldn't just be content with the life God gives you here on Earth, but that people want to live forever, and Hell on the other hand as being fear-mongering nonsense.
But reading John I wondered if I'm completely missing the point. Is the eternal life Jesus promises not some magical afterlife, but the promise of receiving eternal oneness with and closeness to God in this life, here and now? As opposed to those on whom "God's wrath remains" (John 3:36)? i.e. Hell being the state of being alive, but greatly distant from God?
The verse that really stood out to me was John 13-14, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” This seems to imply that it's in this life of the Samaritan woman that she can receive "eternal life", to be with God.
Now I know this doesn't really address the issue of Jesus coming back to take those who are already dead, but one thing at a time...
As was mentioned, the Christian hope isn't to spend eternity in some place called "Heaven", it's in the resurrection of the dead (of the body) and life of the future age when God makes all things new, in the renewal of creation.
I think it can be easy to imagine that "eternal life" is simply saying, "living forever", but I think that conception is perhaps on the shallow end. It's not that it doesn't mean that, it's just that that isn't necessarily the big point.
If we dig a bit to grasp the underlying context of the Gospels and, in fact, the entire New Testament and the Church we do well to understand the thorough Jewishness of that history and context. While Judaism was hardly a monolithic religion in the first century, the rather mainstream Jewish views of the day--expressed in Pharisaism, and all things considered Jesus was a Pharisee and Christianity happened within a very Pharisaic context (Paul himself was, or at least had been before his conversion, a Pharisee)--maintained a belief that history did have a conclusion. The conclusion, the direction and momentum of history, was toward the Messiah and the Messianic age; now what precisely all that meant wasn't always necessarily all that clear, but there were some pretty central ideas--we see glimpses of it in the writings of the Prophets who speak of a time of future justice for the world, of future peace for the world, a time when the nations will come and worship the God of Israel on His holy mountain. And this idea of a future world, well this was the Olam Ha'ba, or "Age to Come" and it was a pretty important idea at the time, and along with it the belief in the resurrection of the dead. While these weren't necessarily central ideas in Judaism, these are the central ideas in Christianity.
When we confess that Jesus is the Christ, that means the Messiah, and if the Messiah has come (as we claim He has) then that means something rather significant. Indeed the Messiah's coming indicated that the rule of God had come to earth, the Messiah was, if nothing else, the viceroy or representative of God's reign, the kingdom of God on earth, interrupting the oppressive powers and bringing not only deliverance to Israel but, indeed, the justice and peace of God to the whole earth. And, well, that's kind of what Jesus was always talking about, the kingdom of God. In fact, that's what the Gospels themselves are about: the story of God as king in and through Jesus the Messiah. In the first century would-be messiahs claiming to bring about these things weren't in short supply, it happened every few years and the end result was always the same: Rome came in heavy handed and people died.
Jesus' story is different for two reasons:
1. Jesus was not preaching a hostile political rebellion against the Romans.
2. Jesus didn't stay dead.
Both are crucially important, but the latter is the most important bit.
Jesus didn't stay dead, and of course as noted resurrection was supposed to be part of the whole Messiah and Olam Ha'ba thing; but in Christianity this whole course of thought is transformed and reshaped in and under Jesus. Read the 15th chapter of St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, where Paul makes his argument that Christ is the first fruits of the resurrection, and the rest shall be raised at His coming in the future.
See in Christianity this idea of kingdom is in a sense split between the now and yet to come.
So let's talk about eternal life. Properly speaking, I would argue, the principal meaning isn't "life forever" but rather it is life of the future age. The word translated to "eternal" doesn't really mean eternal in Greek, it is the word aionion, the adjective form of aion, or age. The life we hope for is life in the age to come, in the resurrection of the dead, in that future world--and that is almost certainly what any of Jesus' hearers would have understood it to mean. But Jesus' death and resurrection means it's not just a life we hope to have some day, it becomes a present reality now because we share and participate in the reality of that future world now, in faith, by the Holy Spirit. Which is why St. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans that all who have been baptized have been baptized into Christ's death, being buried with Him by baptism, and sharing in His death we also share in His resurrection and life. That is a present reality as well as a future hope. In Romans the Apostle also says that, "If the Spirit of Him who raised Christ from the dead also dwells in you, then He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies." The Holy Spirit, who makes us alive together in Christ with God, is--in a sense--God's promise to us of that future life and a participation in that life today through faith.
We share in God's life, by grace, even now in the hope of that future life when in fact the body is raised incorruptible from the dead (just as Christ was) to dwell and live with God forever right here on God's green, renewed, earth. So it certainly is more than just "living forever", it is that life which--properly speaking--belongs to the Risen Christ and which we share in, by grace through faith, in the hope of our own resurrection on the final day.
-CryptoLutheran
