Living the Life of the Ages

Richmond’s First Baptist Church, May 16, 2021

The Seventh Sunday of Easter
1 John 5:9-13

God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.

Today we come to the end of this Easter Season sermon series called “Beloved

Disciples,” and we end with this simple proclamation from 1 John 5:11: “God gave us

eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” It’s simple, but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy.

Several years ago I offered a regular Sunday morning class called “Sermon

Talkback” which I advertised as “a candid conversation between the pulpit and the pew,

where your questions become the curriculum.” I thought the class would be made up of

people who had come to the 8:30 service and wanted to ask some follow-up questions

about the sermon. There may have been a few of those, but most of the people in those

classes came to ask questions about religion in general, and one of the things they wanted

to know is what happens after we die.

I told them I didn’t have a lot of personal experience with that and the Bible

doesn’t say nearly as much as we might wish, but I told them what I could. I talked about

the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. But mostly I tried to reassure them. I

said, “Look, you don’t have to worry about what happens after you die. If you have put

your life into God’s hands then God will hold onto it and nothing, not even death, will be

able to snatch it away.” And then I tried to move on. But they weren’t ready to move on.

They wanted to talk about heaven. They wanted to know where it was and what it was

like. Would their loved ones be there? What would their resurrection bodies look like?

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Would they have to work in heaven, or would it be one long vacation? Would they have

an actual mansion, on a golden street? And were there any fish in the Crystal Sea? Those

are fun questions, some of them; others are more interesting; but not many of them have

solid answers in Scripture. The best we can do is speculate, and yet we speculate a lot.

Why is that?

Marcus Borg was a New Testament professor whose work at one time was

focused on the historical Jesus.i He wanted to learn everything he could about the Jesus

who lived and ministered on this earth. In time, he became an authority, and he began to

travel around the country giving lectures which typically concluded with a question-and-

answer session. Even though his topic was the historical Jesus, people often asked

questions about Christianity in general, and, like me, Borg discovered that most people

wanted to talk about what happens after we die. This led him, eventually, to make a

rather shocking statement: he said, “If I were to make a list of Christianity’s ten worst

contributions to religion, number one would be its emphasis on the afterlife.”

He went on to say that when the afterlife is emphasized, it is almost inevitable that

Christianity becomes a religion of requirements and rewards. When that happens people

begin to reason that if there is a blessed afterlife it wouldn’t be fair for everybody to have

one, regardless of how they have lived. So there must be something that differentiates

those who get to go to heaven from those who don’t—and that something must be

something we do, either believing or behaving or some combination of both.”

The problem with this, as Borg points out, is that it “counters the central Christian

claim that salvation is by grace, not by meeting requirements. Another problem is that the

division between those who measure up and those who don’t leads to further distinctions:

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soon we start judging between the righteous and the unrighteous, the saved and the

unsaved. Another problem is that an emphasis on the afterlife focuses our attention on the

next world rather than on this world.” Borg adds: “Most of the Bible focuses our attention

on our lives in this world and the transformation of this world. At the heart of the Lord’s

Prayer is the petition for the coming of God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. There

is nothing in the Lord’s Prayer asking that God take us to heaven when we die.” ii

But back to Borg’s original problem with all this emphasis on the afterlife

(something he claims has only developed in the past couple of hundred years): it turns

Christianity into a religion of requirements and rewards. In other words, if we believe

what good Christians are supposed to believe, and if we do what good Christians are

supposed to do, then we will get to go to heaven when we die. Let me say this clearly so

that there won’t be any misunderstanding: This was not the primary message of Jesus,

and it was not the primary message of Paul. This is what happens to Christianity when

we put too much emphasis on the afterlife, so that we come to a passage like today’s

epistle reading from 1 John 5 and imagine that it is the “Golden Ticket” that will get us

into heaven.

Listen to verses 11 and 12: “God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.

Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”

“OK!” we say, taking careful notes: “‘God gave us eternal life’: check! ‘This life is in his

Son’: check! ‘Whoever has the Son has life’: check! ‘Whoever does not have the Son of

God does not have life’: Oh! And so we walk down the aisle of a church. We tell the

preacher we want to get saved and baptized. And when we do we think we’re done. We

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think we have fulfilled the basic requirements of Christianity. All that’s left is to receive

our reward—eternity in heaven!

Do you remember those television commercials that used to ask: “Got milk?” I

once saw a short video of someone standing on the railing of a bridge, getting ready to

bungee jump. He downed a carton of milk, tossed it over his shoulder, burped, and then

jumped off the bridge. I watched the bungee cord follow him over the railing, and then

watched the end of it go over, because it wasn’t tied to anything! I heard a loud thud

before these words appeared on the screen: “Got Jesus?” And then I heard the bungee

jumper say, “Ouch!” just to let me know he was probably going to be okay. In a way, it

was funny, but in another way, it was not, partly because somebody might have died, but

mostly because our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ—the one to whom we sing hymns, and

say prayers, and offer our heartfelt praise—had been turned into an eternal life insurance

policy.

Let’s see if we can undo some of that damage.

First, let’s recognize that the phrase “eternal life” in this passage is an English

translation of a Greek phrase that means, literally, “the life of the ages.” I talked about it a

few weeks ago when I was preaching on John 3:16. “For God so loved the world,” I said,

“that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish,

but have the life of the ages.” And that just sounds better than everlasting life, doesn’t it?

Some of you are living lives, right now, that you wouldn’t want to keep living forever.

You’re suffering from pain, or loneliness, or a lack of purpose that makes you think, “If

it’s going to be like this for eternity just shoot me now!” But to live “the life of the ages”?

That sounds incredible!

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 Second, this passage doesn’t say that God will give us eternal life, when we die, it

says that God has given us eternal life, already. The verb “to give” is in the past tense,

while “eternal life” is in the present. Marcus Borg writes: “In John’s Gospel ‘the life of

the ages’ has come. It is here. Eternal life does not refer to unending time beyond death,

but to something that can be known now. ‘This is eternal life,’ Jesus says in John 17, ‘to

know God.’” Borg claims that, “To know God in the present is to experience the life of

the ages. It is a present reality for John, even as it also involves a future destiny (we do

get to go to heaven). But we can know it now, experience it now.” iii In other words, we

don’t have to die to get there.

And third, this passage claims that the life God has given us, the life of the ages,

is in his Son. I’ve been thinking about that all week and this is what I’ve come up with:

that in spite of our sin God loves us and wants us to have eternal life. He gives that gift to

his Son and then gives his Son to the world. Only this gift is not a golden ticket to

heaven. The Son is not standing on a street corner somewhere, handing them out. The

Son is the gift. The life of the ages is in him, or rather, it is him. As the author of 1 John

puts it, “Whoever has the Son has life.” I keep picturing it like this: that Jesus is actually

standing on a street corner and people are coming up to him asking, “Where is it?” Where

is what? “You know: the Golden Ticket that gets you into heaven.” There is no ticket.

“But I thought God sent you to give us eternal life!” God did. “Then where is it?” It’s

here. It’s me! The life of the ages is literally standing right in front of you.

In this sermon series I’ve been telling you that the author of 1 John must have

been someone very close to John, the son of Zebedee, who was, in turn, very close to

Jesus, the Son of God. In fact, I believe that John was “the disciple Jesus loved.” And so

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the author of 1 John—sometimes referred to as “the Elder”—could be thought of as “the

beloved disciple of the Beloved Disciple.” Which means that he would have spent a lot of

time with him. He would have listened to his stories. He might have asked John over and

over again, “Tell me what it was like to be with Jesus.” And John would have told him.

John would have been glad to tell him, because those were the best days of John’s life.

I keep thinking about that: about what it would have been like to walk and talk

with Jesus, to spend time with him, to share meals with him, to hear the sound of his

laughter and feel the warmth of his smile. Some of you know what I’m talking about.

You’ve had relationships in the past that meant everything to you, whether it was with a

parent, a friend, or a spouse. You could easily look back on those days and say, “Those

were the best days of my life.” Some of you have those relationships now, and one of

your fears is that something might happen to that person, or that the relationship would

come to an end, and the best days of your life would come to an end right along with it.

That’s how it must have been for John. In those days with Jesus John was living

the life of the ages, and when Jesus died on the cross something in John died, too. He

must have thought those days were over forever. Only they weren’t over. John didn’t stop

living the life of the ages because Jesus didn’t stay dead. He came back to life. And when

he did, in a very real way, John came back to life, too. He thought he had lost Jesus

forever, but he got him back again. As the author of 1 John says in today’s reading:

“Whoever has the Son has life.” And I don’t think he was talking only about the Beloved

Disciple: I think he was talking about himself, I think he was talking about those others in

his church,

And I think he was talking about you.

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 Because here’s the truth: the author of this letter had never met Jesus, had never

known him personally. But the Beloved Disciple had, and the more he talked about Jesus

and how wonderful it was to know him, the more this author wanted that for himself. And

eventually it happened: he got to know Jesus through the Beloved Disciple, that is, he got

to know him through someone else, just as you got to know him through someone else.

Down through the ages this is how it has happened: that one person has told another, who

has told another, who has told another that in Jesus Christ you will find the life you have

been longing for, the life of the ages. Along with that discovery you may find that heaven

is not a place, but a person.

After I graduated from college I went to Boston, Massachusetts to seek my

fortune. My brother was housesitting in a mansion up there on the North Shore. He had

plenty of room. I bought an old car for $700, loaded it up with all my earthly belongings,

and started driving north. It was a long trip but I got there, got settled, and started looking

for a job. I also started feeling really lonely. So I wrote a letter to the girl I’d had a crush

on in college, and another letter to a girl who was just a friend. The crush finally wrote

back and it may have been the least interesting letter I have ever read. All she told me

was what she had done every day since she graduated. But the friend! She told me what

was in her heart. I wrote back and told her what was in mine. We started writing to each

other every day until, ten weeks into my summer adventure, I couldn’t stand it any

longer. I quit my job and jumped in that car and started driving south. She was a thousand

miles away, but I intended to drive the entire distance without stopping to sleep. I was

motivated. I believed that heaven was waiting for me in a little place called Georgetown,

Kentucky.

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 That was 40 years ago this summer, but tomorrow morning I’m going to get in my

car and start driving toward Sheridan, Montana, 2,279 miles away. That’s a long trip,

more than twice as long as that other trip. But here’s the difference: that girl I thought

was just a friend? The one who became my wife? She will be with me the whole way.

Catherine of Siena once said that all the way to heaven is heaven because Christ is

the Way. iv Maybe it’s true that if we have the Son, we have eternal life. Maybe it’s true

that if we’ve “got Jesus,” in the best sense of that phrase, then we are already living the

life of the ages.

—Jim Somerville © 2021

i
Marcus J. Borg, The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith (HarperCollins, 2003), from the
Preface.
ii
Marcus J. Borg, “Agnostic about the Afterlife,” The Washington Post, March 17, 2010.
iii
Borg, Heart of Christianity, in the chapter on Salvation.
iv
As attributed in The Last Things : Death, Judgment, Hell, Heaven (1998) by Regis Martin, p. 39