THE WHEN OF ETERNAL LIFE: IT MATTERS

 Recently, I read in a popular devotional, “Today we commemorate the Transitus of St. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226), the date he passed from death into eternal life,” and I sighed.  This statement is contrary to the gospel that Jesus preached but is found in pop-cultural Christianity.
Main point: Jesus, and the early Christians, proclaimed that eternal life began NOW (an in-the-present experience) for a person who received the message of the Kingdom of God and entrusted oneself to God.  In short, when Jesus began his ministry, he proclaimed the most wonderful and astonishing news that could fall on Jewish ears,

“And after John [the Baptist] had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.’" (Mark 1:14 – 15 NAS)

To a Jew expecting that God would bring about an end to this present age of sin and suffering and start again with a “new heavens and earth,” this meant the awaited moment had come!  They assumed, as would Jesus’ disciples, that this new age, the age of the Kingdom of God, would be ushered in by the Messiah rather promptly.  Jesus, however, reshaped that expectation.  He taught that the new age would be like the planting of good seed in a field now, but that one would have to wait for the later time of harvest – his return – for the last stage and consummation of the Kingdom.
Still, Jesus taught, as particularly seen in his discussion with Nicodemus in John 3, that participation in the Kingdom of God meant being born anew/from above* (3:3,7) and entering into eternal life NOW.  In good Jewish thinking, participation in the Kingdom of God meant that one had been received into a proper and close relationship with one’s Creator and, therefore, had been reunited to Life.  [Note how Jesus speaks of “see/enter the Kingdom of God” in vv 3 and 5 and switches to “have eternal life” in vv 15 – 16, or see how the phrases are interchanged in Matt 19:16 - 24.]  As the good news of Jesus spread to non-Jews, the Jewish expression “entering the Kingdom of God” was often replaced by the Gentile-friendly phrase “entering eternal life” with the result that the former phrase that Jesus proclaimed has all but dropped from church-talk.
Unfortunately, along the road of transmission and tradition, pop-cultural Christianity also dropped the biblical sequence of salvation and adopted a sequence of a person believing, dying, and then getting eternal life despite the popular preaching of being “born again”!  (For years I have had students who could read these texts repeatedly and then turn around and talk about dying and then getting eternal life.)  But, this teaching makes a difference!  It makes a difference in who we are in Christ, our understanding of our call to serve in his kingdom, and how we see and value life now.

Lord, thank you that you have accepted me as a participant of your Kingdom now, that I am in relationship with you now, and that I have life eternal now.  Help me to live up to this gift of grace now.  Amen.

*The adverb anothen can mean “again” or “from above.”  Since John frequently employs double entendre (words that have two meanings), it is likely that he wanted to play off both meanings.

Note: A suggested subject of study: How does the gospel (“good proclamation”) that Jesus preached and sent his disciples to preach prior to his death relate to the gospel of Jesus that the Church began to preach after his resurrection?