Two facts about eternal life

After feeding five thousand people with just a few loaves of bread and some fish, Jesus gave two facts about eternal life.

First: For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.

This "I will raise him up at the last day" suggests all the trappings that come with death, namely, the grave. The good news is that there will be a resurrection from the grave.

So far, this is pretty much the common understanding of eternal life: we die; followed by a resurrection at some far distant "last day"; and only after that does eternal life commence.

But here is the second fact Jesus said: Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died ... (I am) the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever ...

This seems to be a different fact. Here, Jesus says that those who will be raised up at the last day ... will not die in the first place. It is in this way that Jesus' work supersedes the work of the fathers: they ate manna -- which was miraculous enough -- but they died. In contrast, partake of me, Jesus said, and you will NOT die.

But how does not dying at all jibe with the common understanding of dying first, and only afterwards ... eternal life? How do you die, but not die?

I think this touches on what I said yesterday: those in Christ, that is, those of the lineage of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, are continuously alive in God all the time.

It is not that there will be no grave. There will be. But as is noted elsewhere by St. Paul, who understood the implications of what Jesus did more than most of us: O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?

In other words, Jesus' second point suggests that eternal life is NOW; that we who believe in Him are already in possession of eternal life. It is not a reality reserved for us only in some far, far mythical future. Eternal life is now.

This suggests that physical death, for those in Christ, is merely a shedding of the body. With respect to life itself, death in this sense is something of an event in a life that never ends. Hence there is no sting to it.

Perhaps it is a kind of graduation.

This might just be the deeper truth illustrated by Jesus feeding five thousand people with only five loaves of bread and two fish. Yes, present life in this world amounts to a few loaves of physical bread. But the real Bread of Life is also here, right now, and its magnitude -- right now -- is a thousand times greater. Right now.

And in that distant future, we get our bodies back too, untainted by sin.

Logos2Go

John 6.40 For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.

John 6.49-51a Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died ... (I am) the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever ...

1 Corinthians 15.55 O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?