Eternal Life

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Have you ever wander about eternal life? The tendency when thinking about the subject is to focus on what to do approach like the young ruler in the First Century who asked Jesus: “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Luke 18:18. Two thousand years later what to do questions still roam in the mouth of a self-help society.

What to do questions focus on an external, temporal and immediate action to be done, in a unilateral way. To do something in order to earn eternal life is like to attempt to build a bridge from a temporal perspective to an eternal reality. Eternal life cannot be approached this way because like the young ruler there is always something one is not willing to give up.

The young ruler had done every conceived thing required in the Law, but when asked to do something that required him to give up something; he was not willing to do it. The irony is that God does not require anyone to give up anything in our own. He is there to help us.
Thankfully, to help us to take the focus of what to do, Jesus defines eternal life when he prayed for his disciples: 

“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” John 17:3

This simple statement, to know the Father and to know the Son, carries deep meaning. The Apostle John interprets what Jesus prayed, eternal life, as entering into a relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A relationship that has a beginning but no an end, it will last forever. A relationship full of surprised and revelations.

To know goes beyond the mere act of knowing the facts, which has its importance, but it also bring a strong relational implication. William P. Young describes in his book “The Shack” a relational side of God that is very seldom seem. He portrays a dreamlike relationship between Father, Son and Holly Spirit that interacts with human life in a surreal way where the truth sets free.

In his First letter, the Apostle John brings more light to the question of eternal life and I conclude with it. 

“We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.” 1 John 5:19-21

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