What did Jesus say about eternal life?
Jesus described eternal life as something that starts in the present rather than only after death. He defined it once directly, as knowing God and knowing him, which is relational language rather than a description of duration or location. He spoke of a future too, but he consistently pulled the emphasis into the present tense.
What Jesus said
In John 17 he gives the one place that reads like a definition. Eternal life is knowing the only true God, and Jesus whom he sent. That is relational, and it is stated in the present.
He repeatedly uses the present tense elsewhere. Whoever hears and believes has eternal life, and has crossed from death to life. Not will have. Has.
He also speaks of the future without much detail. Many rooms in his Father's house. A promise to the man dying beside him about being with him that day. Enough to be a promise, not enough to be a map.
When asked directly what to do to inherit eternal life, he answers by pointing at the law and then at love of God and neighbor, and in another case at giving away wealth. The answers are practical rather than doctrinal.
The hard part
He gives far less description of what comes after than most people expect, and what he does give is sparse and image based rather than systematic. If you came looking for details about the next life, the gospels mostly redirect you to this one, which is either a disappointment or the point depending on how you take it.
What this looks like today
- •Notice the present tense. He described eternal life as something entered rather than awaited.
- •Read his answers to the direct question. Both times he answered with how to live, not what to believe about later.
- •Hold the unknowns loosely. He said less about it than we usually assume.
John 17:3, John 5:24, John 14:1-3, Luke 23:43, Luke 10:25-28
Go deeper: this comes up in the 40 days