If you ask most people what eternal life is, you’ll mainly hear answers that relate to place and time. The place is heaven. The time is after we die. And the duration is, well, forever.
But what does the Bible actually say about eternal life? Let’s walk through Scripture and see what it tells us.
Eternal Life in the Old Testament
We start in Genesis, chapter 2. God plants a tree of life in the Garden of Eden. It says that eating from it would have allowed the first humans to live forever. But in the fallout of their rebellion by eating from a forbidden tree, God closes off access to the tree of life. He tells them, you are made from dust, and to dust you will return.”
So right out of the gate, Genesis tells us that eternal life was the original design. Not a ticket out of this world. Not a reward in some other realm. But unending life in this creation, in these bodies, on this earth. That was the plan. From the beginning.
From that point forward, the subject stays largely in the background. There are only brief mentions of life after death here and there. The story of Job and a few Psalms contain glimmers of hope for eternal life.
And Isaiah speaks to a broken and hopeless generation proclaiming God’s promise of a new creation. A creation that lasts. A homecoming where there is no sorrow, and gladness never ends. In Isaiah we see the first hint that God has not given up on the world he made and that the story is going to end with joy not in dust and ashes.
So it seems that eternal life isn’t just an idea God had in the beginning and then abandoned. He had a plan to set things right.
The clearest Old Testament statement about eternal life comes through the prophet Daniel. He has a vision of a coming day when multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.
And we see in this passage that eternal life isn’t just for whoever happened to be alive when God renews things. His promise reaches back. It reaches into the grave.
And that’s about as far as the Old Testament takes us. The picture is hopeful, but it’s incomplete. Questions about who and how people can have eternal life. And, what is it exactly? What does it mean to live forever? These few mentions in the Old Testament make it difficult to establish a concrete understanding of the nature of eternal life.
Turning to the New Testament
So let’s turn to the New Testament. The Apostle Paul says if you belong to Jesus, eternal life has, in some sense, already started. His writing refers to a future resurrection of our earthly bodies.
In Revelation, we read that in the end, God makes his home among his people. Every tear is wiped away. Creation is renewed. And the tree of life that we lost at the very beginning is returned. The arc of the whole Bible closes. What was lost in Genesis is recovered in Revelation.
So, we know that eternal life was the original design. That God never gave up on it. That it reaches back into the grave. That it starts now and is completed later. And that when creation is restored, the tree of life will be ours again.
Jesus Defines Eternal Life
There is one place left to look to understand eternal life. In the Gospels, especially in John’s Gospel, Jesus talks about eternal life frequently. And there is one sentence that summarizes everything he says about it. In fact, it is the only straight-forward definition of eternal life in the entire Bible. It is in John chapter 17.
This is a chapter made up entirely of a prayer spoken by Jesus. And near the beginning of the prayer, he says this:
“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
Now, I need to confess, I am one of many Christians who has drawn conclusions about eternal life that involve only place and time. So, as I started to dig into this chapter in John, things started to shift for me. And I came across a statement I had never heard so clearly before. One of those paradigm-shifting statements that has the potential to be life-changing.
It comes from a commentary on John’s Gospel by D.A. Carson. This is what it says:
Eternal life turns on nothing more and nothing less than knowledge of the true God. Eternal life is not so much everlasting life as personal knowledge of the Everlasting One.
If you take the definition of eternal life that Jesus provides, and start working your way through the whole story of the Bible, you will see that everything God had been doing from the beginning was an invitation to eternal life.
Because, according to Jesus, eternal life is a relationship. It doesn’t just include a relationship. To have eternal life is to know God. Not knowing about God. Not believing in a doctrine. Not following a moral code, Not having a spiritual experience.
He says eternal life is knowing God. And knowing Jesus Christ, which really is saying the same thing. Knowing God and knowing Jesus is the same because Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God.
That means eternal life starts the moment you begin to familiarize yourself with the only true God who is revealed most clearly in the person of Jesus.
What It Means to “Know”
Let’s dig a bit deeper into this understanding of eternal life.
Throughout John’s Gospel, Jesus is presented as God in the flesh who came to invite human participation in his life. And in this passage, it is the eternal life that comes by knowing God.
That word “know” is far richer than what we usually mean. In our information age, we can come to know things fairly easily and quickly. But, usually we think of knowing as acquiring information about someone. You might ask me, “What do you know about sailing?” And I could give you a lot of information because I find sailing quite fascinating. But, my knowledge is limited to information gained through other peoples’ experience.
When Jesus said that eternal life is that people know God, he was not talking about having information about God. The word translated as “know” literally means an intimate relationship which is experienced. It implies a continuity of relationship. Direct personal experience.
You can know a lot about someone and not know them at all. You can read biographies, study their work, even admire them deeply and still not know them. But when you know someone personally, it is more about their presence and character, what gives them joy and causes them pain. And much of what you know is related to multiple senses and emotions.
That’s what Jesus is talking about. Eternal life is of the kind that comes from being in relationship with God. Being familiar with his presence and character. It is participation in God’s own life.
And if eternal life is knowing God, then Jesus’ mission was not just to get people into heaven. But to get heaven into us.
And what is heaven? It is eternal life. Not a place. Not a time. It is knowing God.
His mission is to bring you and me into relationship with God, just as Jesus the eternal Son and God the eternal Father are in relationship. He says he has authority “to give eternal life,” and then defines that life as knowing the Father through him.
How Jesus Makes God Known
So how does Jesus make God known? Throughout John’s Gospel, he talks about God’s character. He tells us that God is not distant or indifferent, but he is our loving Father.
He performs signs and miracles that are not just displays of power but revelations of identity. When he feeds the hungry, he is showing that God is the one who satisfies. When he casts out demons, he shows that God liberates the enslaved and oppressed. When he raises the dead, he is showing that God himself is life.
Jesus makes God known by embodying God as a human man. He says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” He is the perfect image of God, putting on display the likeness of God.
In other words, Jesus does not merely tell us about God. He shows us God. He is God’s self-disclosure.
So eternal life is not abstract. It is deeply personal. It is knowing the Father through the Son.
The Heart Curved Inward
But here’s the question: if that’s what eternal life is, how do we experience this life here and now? What does eternal life look like in our daily lives?
At the core of the human condition is what Martin Luther referred to as the heart curved inward on itself. We are self-centred. Everything we do, even our good deeds, tends to orbit around ourselves.
Tim Keller once preached a sermon that explains this so well, I need to just quote a bit of his message:
Self-centredness can make you a cruel person… [but] more often, self-centredness makes you incredibly moral, because if you have a ravenous ego, if you need so desperately to feel good about yourself, if everything is about you, there’s no better way to feel good about yourself, there’s no better way to put people in your debt, there’s no better way to get control over other people, there’s no better way to feel good about yourself than to be a good person. There is no better way than to be moral.
Self-centredness drives most people into being incredibly good, trying really hard. What you’re doing is you’re serving the needy and you’re being a good child to your parents and you’re being a good parent to your children and you’re being a good friend and you’re helping people, but as Luther said, you’re doing it all for you.
You’re not doing it for their sake. You’re helping people, but you’re not helping them for their sake. You’re helping them for your sake so you can feel like you have a meaningful life, so you can feel like you’re a good person. Do you see? You’re being very good, but it’s all about you. You’re working very hard, but the work is all about you so you can feel you’ve made a name for yourself.
This not just a bad habit. It’s a condition. It means we don’t approach God to know him. We approach him to use him. Even religion often becomes a way of trying to get God to serve our purposes.
You see, self-centredness doesn’t just lead to certain behaviour. It blocks relationship. If you are always thinking about yourself, always using others to validate yourself, you cannot truly know them. And if you approach God that way, you cannot know him either.
Repentance as Reorientation
That’s why repentance is so central. And repentance is often misunderstood. We think repentance means feeling sorry for our sins or trying to do better. But biblically, repentance is a reorientation. It is turning away from the self as the centre of your life and turning toward God.
It is not merely behavioural change. It is a shift in the direction of your life based on an experiential and intimate knowledge of God. You begin to ask not, “What’s in it for me?” but “Who is God, and how do I respond to him?”
That’s a radical shift. And it affects everything, including how you read the Bible. Many people read the Bible as a kind of moral handbook: “What rules should I follow? What principles will make my life work?” But that approach keeps you at the centre. You are using Scripture for your own purposes.
But when repentance happens, you begin to read the Bible differently. You ask, “What does this reveal about God? How does this draw me into relationship with him?” The focus shifts from self to God.
And here’s the paradox: only when you stop making your life about yourself do you begin to experience the life you were made for.
Eternal Life Begins Now
If eternal life is knowing God, then it is not something that begins when you die. It begins when you come into relationship with him.
Dallas Willard said that the message of and about Jesus is specifically a gospel for our life now, not just for dying. It is about living now as his apprentice in kingdom living, not just as a consumer of his merits. Our future, however far we look, is a natural extension of the faith by which we live now and the life in which we now participate. Eternity is now in session and we with it, like it or not.
The eternal life of Jesus is a life of love, of communion, of joy in God that begins now, in the present, as you are united to Christ.
It’s not something we simply receive through a transaction that arranges for our future destination. It’s something we experience now through becoming Jesus’ disciples, which death is then unable to stop. It is a trajectory we start on now and it continues right through death and into eternity.
It’s about your desires being reshaped, your identity being re-grounded, your relationships being reoriented. It is about becoming the kind of person who can actually enjoy God forever.
Eternal life is not just a reward; it is a capacity. It is the capacity to know and love God. And that capacity is formed in you through the work of Jesus Christ and the power of the Spirit.
Questions for Reflection
So, take a moment to consider:
Are you being drawn out of yourself and into relationship with God?
Are your loves being reordered?
Is your life becoming less about you and more about him?
Because that is eternal life. And that is what Jesus came to give.
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