a The Facts of the Case	3Back to Home

4 Navigation --------------- Homepage St. Matthew St. Matthew 2 St. Mark St. Luke St. Luke 2 St. John St. John 2 Acts of Apostles Acts of Apostles 2 --------------- The Letters --- Romans --- 1. Corinthias --- 2. Corinthias --- Galatians --- Ephesians --- Philippians --- Colossians --- 1. Thessalonians --- 2. Thessalonians --- 1. Timothy --- 2. Timothy --- Titus --- Philemon --- Hebrews --- James --- 1. Peter --- 2. Peter --- 1. John --- 2. John --- 3. John --- Jude --------------- The Apocalypse

Now let us pull our loose ends together. Fact one. The Bible recognizes the reality and finality of death. It does not try to avoid the problem. It does not minimize the fact that we die and that our bodies decay. It looks this fact squarely in the face. Anything more that it has to say, then, will come not from an unrealistic evasion of the problem, but from a realistic facing of the problem, and a determined wrestling with it. Fact two. The Bible does not try to "prove" eternal life. It is not something that can be demonstrated so convincingly that it must be believed. Belief in eternal life is a consequence of belief in God. If you believe in the God revealed in the Old Testament, eternal life becomes a possibility, and even a probability. If you believe in the God revealed in Jesus Christ, whom God raised from the dead, then you know for sure that death is not something that can frustrate God's purposes. God has conquered death, and is the Lord of life and death. This does not mean that the Christian has a blueprint of heaven, but he knows that eternal life will mean continuous fellowship with God -- and that is enough. Fact three. Eternal life is a gift. It is not something that is earned. Fellowship with God is not something of which we are "worthy." It is God's gift, bestowed upon us despite the fact that we are not worthy. We can refuse it, but not demand it. When Jesus tells a parable about the Last Judgment ( Matt. 25: 31-46), the "righteous" ones, who shall enter into the joy of their Father in heaven, do not realize that they are righteous. They do not feel that they have earned any special privilege, that they have done "good deeds" that guarantee heaven to them. Paul makes it clear that fellowship with God is not achieved by "works," but that it is the result of faith that God in Christ has himself opened up new possibilities for fellowship, even though we do not deserve them. We are not "good" enough to deserve eternal life. It is God's gift. Fact four. Eternal life can be described as rebirth. This lies behind Paul's image of the grain of wheat. It must die and be reborn. So with us. We die, and are reborn. This is, in fact, what Christian faith itself involves, and is at the heart of what Paul says so often about putting off the "old" man and putting on the "new" man. The Christian life is a perpetual dying to self and being raised to newness of life in Christ. It involves a break with the worship of self. Somewhere along the way, whether suddenly or gradually, the time must come when we cease to organize life around ourselves, and organize it around God. We must die to the life of self-concern, and begin a "new" life centered in God-concern. We must, in other words, be reborn. Jesus stresses this in his discussion with Nicodemus, "Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God" ( John 3: 3). When one is reborn in this manner, he has begun to live eternally. Eternal life therefore is best described as a new life, in which the individual is born again to a different kind of existence. He is no longer trying to praise himself; he is trying to praise God. Now the way in which the notion of rebirth is emphasized in the New Testament in connection with eternal life is by the idea of resurrection. Rather than speaking of immortality of the soul, the New Testament, as we have seen, speaks of eternal life as something that will be accomplished by the power of God, who will raise up and transform the total personality of the individual; not just the soul, but all that is distinctive about him. Both Old and New Testament agree that the body and soul cannot be split apart. They are not two very different ingredients, poorly fused together. They form a unity. We are "psychosomatic" persons (psyche = soul, soma = body). We are not just one or the other; we are both, together and indissolubly. This means, then, that eternal life is a transforming, rather than a junking, of life on earth. The "body" stands for everything that we do and are, here on earth. Thus, to talk of the "resurrection of the body" is a way of saying that all that happens on earth concerns God, and that he will pick up, fulfill, and complete all our partial incomplete human efforts. Fact five. This leads to one other point. Eternal life is not understood in the Bible simply as something that begins at the moment we die. Eternal life is a possibility here and now. This is particularly stressed in the Fourth Gospel and the letters written by John. To the degree that the life of the individual is oriented toward God in Christ, he is living eternally. He is experiencing in a fragmentary form that quality of life which is deathless, which, rather than being terminated by the moment of physical death, will be released at that moment to continue in a richness and fullness unimaginable to us. We can thus have foretastes, "hints and guesses," about eternal life, because eternal life is a partial reality here and now. God conquers death God gives us the power to conquer The Only Real "Answer" A Question You Can't Avoid Some Current Answers -- a Dime a Dozen The First Part of the Biblical Answer What Is the "Image of God"? Some Consequences The Second Part of the Biblical Answer What Sin Is Supplying Some Documentation What Sin Is Not Getting Straightened Out How Can I Be Changed? The Third Part of the Biblical Answer The First Step After the First Step The Heart of the Matter Not Once and for All Some Hints for Growing -- Tried and Tested A Final Warning Why Isn't "Individual Religion" Enough? The Case Against the Church -a Bagful of Objections When Did the Church Get Started? Just What Is a "Covenant"? The "New Covenant" Becomes a Possibility Those Words of Jesus to Peter Those "Upsetters of the World" A Rebuttal of the Case Against the Church Why the Church? Last Judgment? Second Coming? What Do They Mean? The Inescapability of Eschatology The Point of Biblical Eschatology: History Is Going Somewhere The Dangers of Literalism Exploring New Testament Eschatology The Kingdom of God A Few Bits of Help The Gift of God Schatology and "What I Do Today" What Happens When I Die? Sheol -- Where God Is Not Present The Community of the Resurrection Paul's Attempt to Describe the Christian Fact A "Spiritual Body" The Facts of the Case I Try to Live a Good Life. Why Isn't That Enough? The "Micah" Variation The "Worship and Action" Variation The "Therefore" Variation The Biblical faith that God is the Creator