The hope of eternal life is at the very center of the Christian faith. Christ said, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Indeed, in John 17:3, Jesus says that eternal life is knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.

That is why Christ came to earth as a man: to bring everlasting life to we who deserved everlasting death.

As the catechism rightly says, the hope of eternal life reminds us that this present fallen world is not all there is. All the sin. All the sickness. All the suffering. They are real but temporary. They are passing shadows.

Soon we will live with and enjoy God forever. That word soon may not feel true to us, especially since it has been two thousand years since Christ ascended. But in light of eternity, this world is a vapor. When Christ returns, I have no doubt that we will see that it was perfectly timed.

Revelation ends with a vision of the heavenly Jerusalem coming down from heaven onto the new earth.

That day the great covenantal promise that we see throughout Scripture will be perfectly fulfilled: “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” God Himself will dwell with us upon the remade earth.

We will be fully and forever freed from all sin. Our hope is twofold. First, we will be with God. Second, we will be free from sin. The long war against indwelling sin will end. The wrestling against our own flesh will be complete. Sanctification will give way to glorification. No more temptation. No more guilt. No more inward corruption. We will rest perfectly and completely upon the finished work of Christ forever.

And we will not be disembodied spirits. The Christian hope is not floating on clouds with halos and harps. It is resurrection. Christ was raised bodily, and so will we be. The earth too will be renewed, and we will dwell upon that physical but remade earth.

Eternity, therefore, will be more real than this life, not less. We will not be spirits but glorified bodies. It will be life as it was always meant to be lived.

All the best joys in life are only faint echoes of that hope. They are signposts pointing beyond themselves. Each flower we behold, each song that captures our imagination, each sunset or mountain that we gaze upon awakens longing for something that this world cannot satisfy. Every fleeting pleasure is a whisper of greater glory to come.

The hope of eternal life should produce in us that kind of longing. It should steady us in suffering. It should loosen our grip on the pleasures of this world in anticipation for those that will come.

And it should move us to pray the closing words of Revelation: Come, Lord Jesus!