Eternal life is having a personal relationship with God. To help us better understand eternal life we will answer a few questions: Is there life after death? What happens after we die? And when does eternal life begin?
- Is there life after death? John 5:28-29
- Prior to Jesus’ death and resurrection, the concept of life after death was obscure. Psalm 6:5
- After Jesus’ death and resurrection, the concept of life after death was made clear. Matthew 25:46
- Prior to Jesus’ death and resurrection, the concept of life after death was obscure. Psalm 6:5
- What happens after we die? John 5:28-29
- Those who disobey God go to hell. Matthew 10:28
- Those who obey God go to paradise. Revelation 2:7
- When does eternal life begin? John 17:3
If you went to college, you may have taken a course on philosophy. If you have studied philosophy, you may remember that an important aspect of philosophy is cosmology. Cosmology is the study of how the universe is structured. Cosmology is the study of how the universe began, what the universe is like, and where the universe is headed. An important part of cosmology is the study of the afterlife. Almost all religions and cultures have some kind of beliefs about what happens when we die.
For example, the Egyptian Book of the Dead describes how the dead go to the underworld. The underworld is ruled by Osiris, the god of the underworld. When a person dies, he or she must travel through the underworld in search of Osiris. As they journey through the underworld, the dead must face various trials and must fight demons and evil creatures until they finally reach Osiris and the Hall of Final Judgment. At the Hall of Final Judgment, the dead meet Anubis, the god of the dead, who weighs their heart on a set of scales. If your heart was pure, Osiris would guide you to paradise. If your heart was not pure, your heart would be eaten by Ammit, the devourer of the dead; you would never see Osiris or paradise but would be condemned to wander in the underworld forever.
The Hindus also have beliefs about the afterlife. If you lived a good life, when you die you will be visited by good spirits who take you to the Divine Being, but if you lived a wicked life of sin, you will be visited by the messengers of Yamaraja, the king of death. Yamaraja’s messengers then send the dead on a horrific journey through the underworld. In the underworld, the dead must cross a river filled with crocodiles and sharks, where the dead are constantly in danger of drowning and are attacked by the crocodiles and sharks. When the dead finally make it to the other side of the river, they are taken to the city of Yamaraja, the king of death. Their good deeds and evil deeds are read from a book of records, and Yamaraja, the king of death, decides their fate. Depending on their deeds, Yamaraja sends the dead to heaven or to hell. But this is not the end. Those who go to heaven and those who go to hell will eventually be sent back to the earthly realm to be reincarnated and begin life all over again.
These may be fascinating stories, and we could go on to read about many other cultures and their beliefs about the afterlife, but all these stories are simply myths, stories, legends, make-believe, fairy tales, and fantasy, and fiction.
These stories may be entertaining, but what we want to know this morning is what really happens when we die. What we want to know is the truth about the afterlife, and the only place we find this truth is in the Bible. The Bible, and only the Bible, has the truth about life after death.
The Bible says that after we die, those who know God through faith in Jesus will go to heaven, but those who do not know God will go to a place called “hell.”
The Bible says that if we have met God through faith in Jesus, we have a personal relationship with God, and this personal relationship is called “eternal life”. Jesus says, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent (John 17:3).”
Eternal life is having a personal relationship with God. To help us better understand eternal life, we will answer a few questions: Is there life after death?
What happens after we die? And when does eternal life begin?
Eternal life is having a personal relationship with God.
To help us better understand eternal life, we will answer a few questions: Is there life after death? What happens after we die? And when does eternal life begin? The first question is: Is there life after death? John 5:28-29 says,
Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.
Is there life after death? After your physical body dies, is there a part of you that continues to exist? Jesus says, “Yes, after you die you continue to exist, and someday you will be resurrected.”
But the idea of life after death was not always so clear. Prior to Jesus’ death and resurrection, the concept of life after death was obscure. “For there is no mention of You in death; in Sheol who will give You thanks? (Psalm 6:5)”
Prior to Jesus’ death and resurrection, some people seemed to believe that life ends with death and that when our dead body is put in the grave, life is over. The prophet Isaiah said, “For Sheol cannot thank You, death cannot praise You; those who go down to the pit cannot hope for Your faithfulness (Isaiah 38:18).”
From these verses of Scripture, we might think that the ancient Hebrews did not believe in an afterlife. From these verses of Scripture, we might think that the Hebrews believed that life ends with death and that once we die and are buried, life is over, but these statements are not necessarily a denial of life after death.
These verses of Scripture are poetic. Poetic literature is often filled with metaphors and is not always meant to be taken literally; so, we need to be very careful about building doctrine on poetic literature.
The Hebrew poets used word pictures to create ideas and feelings in the heart and minds of God’s people—ideas and feelings like praise of God, ideas, and feelings like sorrow for sin. The Hebrew poets used word pictures to create ideas and feelings about death and alienation from God.
So, before we go building a doctrine about life after death, we need to make sure that our beliefs are built on Scripture that is clear and unambiguous. And the Bible has many clear verses of Scripture, mostly in the New Testament, that indicate that life does not end when we die.
In the Old Testament, however, the truth about what happens to us after we die was not clear to the ancient Hebrews. Through the ages, God gradually revealed more and more about what happens to us after we die. This gradual revelation is called “progressive revelation”.
When God revealed his word to his prophets, he did not reveal the complete truth all at once. God gradually revealed truth, building on, expanding upon, and gradually completing truth.
The ancient Hebrews only had a vague idea about life after death. But here and there, first to one prophet then to another, God gradually revealed the truth about life after death.
Little by little, God turned on the lights so that from what, at first, was only mist and fog, the truth about eternal life became clearer and clearer. So that today, we know beyond doubt that life does not end when our body dies.
Jesus says, “[Those who follow him] will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life (Matthew 25:46).”
The Bible is clear. There is an afterlife.
Now we come to the second question: What happens after we die? Jesus says in John 5:28-29,
Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.
What happens after we die? What happens to our soul or our spirit, or whatever you want to call that invisible, immaterial part of us that is the “us” that is “us”?
Well, the Bible says that those who disobey God go to hell. Matthew 10:28 says, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
God has the power to send us to hell.
What does Jesus mean when he says God destroys sinners in hell? Is Jesus saying that those who are thrown into hell will be burned up and cease to exist? Is Jesus teaching the annihilation of the soul?
In the resurrection, those who have disobeyed God will be resurrected in bodies made for eternal destruction. When Jesus says that God will destroy sinners in hell, he means that they will suffer spiritual death. This spiritual death is an eternal death and is called the “second death.”
In the book of Revelation, we read about the second death: Revelation 21:8
But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.
The Bible teaches that God will judge unrepentant sinners and cast them into hell, where they will be punished forever in the lake of fire.
The Bible says that God will cast those who disobey him into hell, but God does not want us to go to hell. God wants us to go to heaven and live with him in heaven forever, but if we want to go to heaven, we need to obey him. The Bible says, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God (Revelation 2:7).”
Those who obey God go to paradise.
What is paradise? Paradise is a Persian word that means “garden.” The Bible describes heaven as a kind of idyllic paradise, a garden of great splendor and joy.
Jesus told the thief on the cross who had believed in him, “Today you will be with me in paradise”, but what is paradise?
The Bible says that when we come to paradise,
[We] have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Hebrews 12:22-24
What happens after we die? According to the Bible, those who disobey God will go to Hell, but those who obey God will go to Paradise.
Now we need to answer the third question: When does eternal life begin?
Jesus said, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (John 17:3).”
When does eternal life begin? According to Jesus, eternal life begins when we meet God.
I can’t say that I know President Barack Obama. I know about President Obama from the news and from other information I’ve heard, but I can’t say that I know him. I know about President Obama, but I don’t know him because I’ve never met him.
A lot of people know about God, but they don’t know God. You may know about God because you’ve heard about God, but can you say that you know God?
If you want to know God, you need to meet God. The day that you meet God is the day that you get to know him personally.
So, my question to you is: how can you meet God? You meet God by putting your faith in Jesus. The Bible says that Jesus is the way, the life, and the truth; no one can come to God except through Jesus. The way to God is through faith in Jesus. The day that you believe in Jesus, you meet God.
So, I ask you, have you met God?
If you have not met God, would you like to meet God? If you want to meet God, then you need to believe in Jesus.