Eternal Life

What is eternal life?  Is it a really long period of time?  Does it begin when we die and go to heaven?  Jesus said in John 17:3 that eternal life is to know God.  This might seem strange since we so often equate eternal life with heaven.  But Jesus doesn't seem to even consider heaven as part of the equation.

1.  "to know" God is different than knowing about God.  As westerners we place a high value on information, but we can easily forget that information is not nearly the same thing as knowledge.  Knowledge involves experience.  Just because someone reads magazines and watches videos about snow boarding, if he has never strapped up and launched down a mountain, I dare say he doesn't know the half of snowboarding!  If we apply this idea to the knowledge of God, then the knowledge of God would mean that we don't just know information about God, but that we also have a personal experience with Him.  This experience is actually quite intimate.  The same word used for "know" is the same word used in the Bible to say that Adam knew Eve... and then they had a baby! 
   
2. Eternal life is not heaven.  Eternal life is the very life of God.  When we receive eternal life we are not getting a ticket to heaven, we are coming into union with God himself.  When God created man and woman, he said the two shall become one flesh.  This was a shadow of what God intended all along, which is to draw us into a relationship with himself that is beyond that of husband and wife.  And the two shall become one.  Thus eternal life is not a place, it is a person... Jesus.
3. Therefore, eternal life has nothing to do with time.  It does not begin when we die and go to heaven.  Yes it will last forever, but that's not the point.  The point is that eternal life begins today!  We don't have to wait until we get to heaven until we enjoy eternal life.  As a matter of fact, it is essential that we don't wait until we get to heaven.  Eternal life is now.

Brainstorm

• In youth group we've been spending some time in the gospel of John.  We spent a couple of weeks talking about John 3 where Jesus said we must be born again.  But we took a different approach.  Instead of asking how we can be born again, we discussed what happens to us when we're born again.
  
• We've also talked about eternal life.
• Recently we discussed worship in Spirit and Truth.
• Another theme that has emerged is the power of holiness