And the Life Everlasting

The great truth affirmed in the concluding article of the Creed is the Life Everlasting: “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life." This life will be the portion of all who are acquitted in the day of judgment, and they will then enter upon new experiences. Death and hell shall be cast into the lake of fire, and the redeemed, no longer subject to imperfection, decay, or death, shall be raised to the right hand of the Father, where there is fulness of joy; to partake of those pleasures for evermore which have been purchased for them by the blood of the Lamb.

It is interesting to note the gradual development of this doctrine, which was first fully expressed by Him who brought life and immortality to light. We have the statement of the writer to the Hebrews that the faith of Old Testament saints had in view the continuance of life after death in “a better country, that is, an heavenly.” Whether this faith grasped the doctrine of bodily resurrection, in addition to that of the immortality of the soul, we are not told. It is remarkable that throughout the books of Moses there is an absence of reference to the future life as a motive to holy living. Prosperity and adversity in this life are set forth as the reward or punishment of conduct, leading to the inference, either that retribution in the future life was not revealed, or that it exercised little practical influence. As time passed the doctrine of everlasting life for body and soul emerged in the Psalms and in the prophetical writings, but sometimes side by side with such gloomy views regarding death and its consequences as to leave the impression that belief in it was weak and fitful. In the long period that passed between the time when Old Testament prophecy ceased and the advent of Christ, the fierce persécutions to which the Jews were subjected appear to have strengthened their faith in a future life of blessedness, in which the body, delivered from the grave and again united to the soul, shall participate.

The author of the Apocryphal Book termed The Wisdom of Solomon thus records his belief:

The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,
And no torment shall touch them.
In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died;
And their departure was accounted to be their hurt,
And their journeying away from us to be their ruin,
But they are in peace.
For even if in the sight of men they be punished,
Their hope is full of immortality:
And having borne a little chastening they shall receive great good;
Because God made trial of them, and found them worthy of Himself.
As gold in the furnace He proved them,
And as a whole burnt offering He accepted them.
And in the time of their visitation they shall shine forth,
And as sparks among stubble they shall run to and fro.
They shall judge nations, and have dominion over peoples;
And the Lord shall reign over them for evermore.
They that trust in Him shall understand truth,
And the faithful shall abide with Him in love;
Because grace and mercy are to His chosen.

Again he writes:

The righteous live for ever,
And in the Lord is their reward,
And the care for them with the Most High.
Therefore shall they receive the crown of royal dignity
And the diadem of beauty from the Lord’s hand.

The happiness of the kingdom of heaven is in Scripture termed “life,” because it constitutes the life for which man was created. Being made in the likeness of God, his nature can obtain full satisfaction, and his powers will expand into fruition, only when he enters upon a life which resembles, in proportion to its measure and capacity, the life of God. Jesus spoke of regeneration as entering into life. Those who receive the Gospel message and walk in the footsteps of Christ are said to be born again to receive in their conversion the beginning of a new existence, of which the entrance of the infant into the world is a fitting emblem. They possess now not only a natural life, but a life hid with Christ in God, which is a pledge to them that “when he who is their life shall appear, they also shall appear with him in glory." Knowledge of God the Father and of Jesus Christ, imparted by the Holy Spirit, is said by our Lord to be Life Eternal. “This is life eternal, to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."

Standing at the end of the Creed, this article expresses the consummation of the work accomplished for man by the Three Persons of the Godhead. The Father created man and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, that he might glorify God and enjoy Him for ever; and when, through the fall, man had forfeited the gift of life, God spared not His own Son, that, through His dying, pardon and blessed life might be brought within the reach of the fallen; the Son assumed human nature and suffered and died, that He might deliver men from death, temporal and eternal, and procure for them everlasting life; the Holy Ghost, the Giver of life, sanctifies the believer and makes him meet for the inheritance of the saints. All the means of grace were given for the purpose of convincing and converting men, and of preparing them for entrance into and enjoyment of the blessed life in eternity.

The Everlasting Life of the Creed covers more than the immortality of the soul. Even heathens grasped in some measure the fact that the spirit of man survives separation from the body; but life for the body in reunion with the soul is a doctrine of revelation. In the Pagan world various conflicting beliefs were held as to the condition of men after death. Some thought that existence terminated at death; others that men then lost their personality and were absorbed into the deity; and others that the spirit was released by death and then entered on a separate existence, possessed of personality and capable of enjoyment; but of the Christian doctrine of resurrection-life for soul and body in abiding reunion they were altogether ignorant. Those consolations which Christianity brings to the mourner were unknown. There is an interesting letter extant which was written to Cicero, the Roman orator, by a friend who sought to comfort him after the death of his daughter Julia, in which the consolation tendered strikingly marks the distinction between Pagan and Christian views regarding death. Cicero was reminded by his friend that even solid and substantial cities, such as those whose ruined remains were to be seen in Asia Minor, were doomed to decay and destruction; and if so, it could not be thought that man’s frail body can escape a similar experience. This is poor comfort in comparison with the hope of glory which sustains the Christian under trial. He knows not only that his soul shall live for ever, but that the life of eternity is one in which the body too, then incapable of pain, weariness, or death, shall have part. “We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

Everlasting existence after resurrection will be the portion of the righteous and the wicked. Attempts have been made to explain away various emphatic Scripture statements regarding the doom of the ungodly, with the view of lessening its terrors; but, if we are to accept the plain meaning of these statements, there seems to be no reasonable interpretation of them which gives sanction to the belief that this doom can be escaped.

What is called the doctrine of Conditional Immortality finds not a few advocates and adherents, who hold that existence in the future state is exclusively for the faithful, and that the sentence to be executed upon the wicked at death or at judgment is annihilation. A different belief, termed “The Larger Hope,” is maintained by others, who affirm that the punishment to which those dying impenitent are to be subjected will in time work reformation and cleansing, after which, restored to God’s favour, they will enter upon a life of happiness.

It is a strong argument against such doctrines that the same word which our Lord employs to describe the permanent blessedness of the redeemed is used by Him to denote the punishment of the wicked. The reward and the punishment are both declared by Him to be everlasting or eternal. The same Greek word is in the English New Testament sometimes rendered eternal and sometimes everlasting. The portion of the righteous will be life life everlasting; that of the wicked is described as consisting, not in annihilation or in terminable suffering, but in “everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power."

While this article may be regarded as bearing upon the doom of the ungodly, it is rather to be viewed as affirming the eternal blessedness of the risen saints. The everlasting life begins on earth, but is perfected only in eternity. It is sometimes spoken of as a present possession: “He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life." Again it is spoken of as a reward in futurity: “He shall receive an hundredfold now in this time ... and in the world to come eternal life." Our knowledge of what that life will be is very limited. Human words cannot describe it; human beings in this life cannot understand it. We know that it will arise from knowledge of God. Men will be equal to the angels who see God. “Now we see through a glass darkly," but “we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is."

Statements regarding the happiness of the saints are in Scripture expressed sometimes in negative and sometimes in positive terms. In the new heavens and the new earth the redeemed “shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more"; “There shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light." Pain and sorrow and death can never touch them; they shall be delivered from perplexing doubts, from all misery and trouble. Care and anxiety shall be banished for ever, and God will wipe away all tears from every eye.

There are also many positive statements regarding the future life. Not only will there be the absence of all that is painful and productive of sorrow; those for whom it is prepared shall enter into rest. They shall possess abiding peace, and the joy of their Lord will become their own. Their bodies shall be like Christ’s own glorious body, which, when transfigured on Tabor, shone as the sun, and was white as the light. They shall be satisfied, when they awake, with the Divine likeness. “They shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars for ever and ever." They shall sit down with Christ upon His throne, and shall be rulers over cities. “They are as the angels of God in heaven." In the many mansions of the Father’s house there will be a place for every saint. Each will be rewarded according to his works. Some are to be raised to higher glory than others some are to have authority over ten cities, and some are to bear rule over five but all the saints will be happy in the eternal enjoyment of God’s favour, which is life; and of His loving kindness, which is better than life.