by Ismerai Ortiz
The hardest questions I’m asked about my faith come from family. I’ve come to understand that when it comes to faith, people ask questions to either pull in or to pull away from God. This binary in questioning doesn’t just apply to people who are not Christians, but also to Christians themselves. Sometimes as Christians, we have times when we ask questions to draw in closer to God, but other times, we just want excuses to pull away.
When my sister and I were talking about Christianity, she asked me a set of questions that I didn’t know how to answer:
“If Christians didn’t have the promise of eternal life, would they even be Christian? Doesn’t this just show how humans are so selfish? They’re trying to be good because they know there’s a reward.”
My first instinct was that yes, eternal life is important, but then I asked myself: how important should it be? First, I don’t think that the fact that there is an end to look towards or a reward at the end of our life diminishes the work that we do in this world. Second, I’ve never placed too much importance on eternal life even though I’ve heard about it a million times in sermons and read about it often in the Bible. So what exactly is eternal life?
“And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent”. Jesus says that eternal life is knowing “the only true God, and Jesus Christ,” and to know and to follow Him means to be in His presence. However, this is not just one way, if we know God, then He also knows us, and if we do not know Him, He does not know us.
In the Parable of the Ten Virgins, once the door to the marriage feast is shut, it doesn’t open again. The people who were ready went in with the bridegroom, and they are therefore in the presence of the groom, who is Jesus. What does the bridegroom say to the ones who came after the door was shut? “Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.”. For these virgins that came after, the Lord did not know them, and thus entry into the marriage feast, and entry into eternal life was not allowed.
Knowing this, I think that the RIGHT question to ask is why is eternal life so important to Christianity? In reality, eternal life is inseparable from Christianity. Answering my sister’s question, Christians wouldn’t be Christians if eternal life didn’t exist, because Christianity itself would not exist without the concept of eternal life. Let me explain. If we take this back to the beginning - and I mean the very beginning - we look at Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. When the serpent is tempting Eve, the exchange is this:
“But God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ But the serpent said to the woman, “You will surely not die…”.
When I was little, I remember reading this verse but thinking, “but Eve didn’t die?” So why did God say that Adam and Eve would die if they ate the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden? Although Adam and Eve didn’t immediately die after eating the fruit, they eventually did die - which could be an answer. Another answer though, would be that the death God was talking about was not physical, but rather a spiritual death. The spiritual death for Adam and Eve was being cast out from the presence of God in the Garden of Eden. Eternal life is the restoration of God’s intended design for us. God’s original design for us is to be next to him, to walk with him, to dwell in His presence forever just as Adam and Eve were meant to be in the Garden of Eden. When we do not know God, or we choose to go away from God, we are choosing death, just as Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden. Therefore, when we choose to follow and obey Jesus, we choose to know God and His Son, and going back to John 17, we choose eternal life.
God didn’t create us to be puppets, but rather, He gave us free will and freedom to choose. When we are invited to the marriage feast as the 10 virgins were invited, we are invited to enter into the presence of God forever. Can you imagine saying no to that? So while eternal life is a reward, I consider eternal life not just as a reward, but as a restoration and as a rescue from a life incomplete. A life that does not fulfill our intended purpose and design is a life in which we seek worth and fulfillment in things that are not able to fill or satisfy us.
Sin will never fulfill us. If sin is doing the things that bring us or lead us away from God, then it only serves to temporarily assuage us, but ultimately we are left feeling more empty than ever, because we are straying so far from our intended purpose. In this world, we are rescued from being slaves to sin, by entering into the new convenant through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and thus we are able to live with Christ.