55. Life Eternal
Matthew 25:46And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
We finite human beings cannot grasp eternity; we cannot imagine anything outside of time, before time or after it. We can almost grasp time without end but not time without beginning. We cannot imagine how God exists in eternity without time; and we cannot imagine how we are living and will live in such a kingdom where there is no time.
Eternity is not time without end but no time at all. We have to think of it as future because that is the only way our minds can wrap around it. The real truth is that eternity is also right now and right here. Eternal life is not just life after death; eternal life is also life during this present death. Since we cannot experience this, feel this, or think rationally about it we have to believe it. That is why God gives us promises: to see what we cannot see. We exist in both worlds at the same time; at the same time we live in a world bounded by time and space and in a world unlimited by time and space. This impossibility must be believed since it cannot be understood.
God is Spirit, and He does live in both worlds simultaneously. This God invaded this space-time physical world in the person of Jesus Christ. He lived in our earth so we could see what we cannot see: God in human form, man as he/she was created to be. This person, as God and as a human being, died on the cross. The eternal God died on a cross: this is impossible and incomprehensible to us; thus we must believe the Word.The Infinite, Eternal God died for our Infinite, Eternal Sin (sin against an infinite God is an infinite sin).
We will “go into life eternal” at the end of the Age. We are already there, but at that time we will lose this earthly time-bound life and without that limitation we will see eternal life. In that sense we “go.”It is true to say both: right now we “go to heaven” any time and when we die we “go to heaven;” now by faith, then by sight.
The other side of this promise is that others go away into everlasting punishment; this is just as incomprehensible not only because we can’t understand but also because we don’t want to understand it. We cringe and avoid thinking about “everlasting” punishment. Unending punishment and torture seems to our finite minds to not fit the crime: How can sins only piled up for 80 years deserve eternal punishment? The only answer we have is that sins against an infinite God are infinite sins and can never really be satisfied with any amount of punishment. Only the death of the infinite God could satisfy the infinite punishment for sin. We don’t like it because we don’t understand Holiness; and we do not really understand Love, only our own distorted, insufficient, warped, limited, self-centered version of human love. Infinite Holiness, Infinite Love, and Infinite Life is real, the only thing that is real.