Sermon quotes on eternal life
Randy Alcorn
The sense that we will live forever somewhere has shaped every civilization in human history…the unifying testimony of the human heart through history is belief in life after death. Anthropological evidence suggests that every culture has a God-given, innate sense of the eternal-that this world is not all there is.
Heaven
Randy Alcorn
He who lays up treasures on earth spends his life backing away from his treasures. To him, death is loss. He who lays up treasures in heaven looks forward to eternity; he’s moving daily toward his treasures. To him, death is gain. He who spends his life moving toward his treasures has reason to rejoice. Are you despairing or rejoicing?
William Barclay
For the Christian, heaven is where Jesus is. We do not need to speculate on what heaven will be like. It is enough to know that we will be forever with Him.
Jerry Bridges
Three means by which God assures us that we do have eternal life:
- The promises of His Word,
- The witness of the Spirit in our hearts,
- The transforming work of the Spirit in our lives.
Frederick Buechner
In other words to live Eternal Life in the full and final sense is to be with God as Christ is with him, and with each other as Christ is with us.
Wishful Thinking: a Theological ABC, Harper San Francisco, 1973.
Oswald Chambers
The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything is has to face without wavering. If we take this view, life becomes one great romance, a glorious opportunity for seeing marvelous things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.
My Utmost for His Highest: The Golden Book of Oswald Chambers: Features the Author’s Daily Prayers”, Discovery House, 1994.
Brandon D. Crowe
Eternal life is not something that is dispensed in passing as if from a drive-through window, irrespective of one’s ongoing relationship with Jesus.
The Message of the General Epistles in the History of Redemption: Wisdom from James, Peter, John, and Jude.
Henry Drummond
It ought to be placed in the forefront of all Christian teaching that Christ’s mission on earth was to give men Life. “I am come,” He said, “that ye might have Life, and that ye might have it more abundantly.” And that He meant literal Life, literal spiritual and Eternal Life, is clear from the whole course of His teaching and acting.
Ludwig Feuerbach (For Contrast)
Christianity set itself the goal of fulfilling man’s unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignored his attainable desires. By promising man eternal life, it deprived him of temporal life, by teaching him to trust in God’s help it took away his trust in his own powers; by giving him faith in a better life in heaven, it destroyed his faith in a better life on earth and his striving to attain such a life. Christianity gave man what his imagination desires, but for that very reason failed to give him what he really and truly desires.”
Lectures on the Essence of Religion
John Eldredge
Eternal life is not primarily duration but quality of life, “life to the limit.”
Ernest Hemingway
“All thinking men are atheists.”
A Farewell to Arms
Francis of Assisi
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
St. Francis of Assisi’s Prayers, Paper & Ink 2017.
Francis of Assisi
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
St. Francis of Assisi’s Prayers, Paper & Ink 2017.
Thomas á Kempis
For a small reward, a man will hurry away on a long journey; while for eternal life, many will hardly take a single step.
C.S. Lewis
If we discover a desire within us that nothing in this world can satisfy, also we should begin to wonder if perhaps we were created for another world.
C.S. Lewis
Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever?
C.S. Lewis
Atheists express their rage against God although in their view He does not exist.
Martin Luther
All which happens through the whole world happens through hope. No husbandman would sow a grain of corn if he did not hope it would spring up and bring forth the ear; how much more we are helped on by hope in the eternal life.
Matthew McCullough
Before you long for a life that is imperishable, you must accept that you are perishing along with everyone you care about. You must recognize that anything you might accomplish or acquire in this world is already fading away. Only then will you crave the unfading glory of what Jesus has accomplished and acquired for you. And you need to recognize you are going to lose everything you love in this world before you will hope in an inheritance kept in heaven for you.
Remember Death: The Surprising Path to Living Hope.
Jürgen Moltmann, D. Lyle Dabney, and D. Lyle Dabney
Eternal life does not mean a life other than this life, it means that this life itself becomes other. “ This corruptible body must put on incorruptibility and this mortal body must put on immortality,” promised Paul in I Corinthians 15:53.
Is There Life after Death? Marquette University Press, 1998.
John Ortberg
[Eternal life] it’s not something we simply receive through a transaction that arranges for our future destination. It’s something we experience now through becoming Jesus’ disciples, which death is then unable to stop.
Eternity Is Now In Session: A Radical Rediscovery of What Jesus Really Taught About Salvation, Eternity, and Getting to the Good Place (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Momentum, 2018), Kindle Electronic Version.
John Ortberg
In the New Testament, the terms salvation and eternal life and Kingdom of God all speak to this same life-altering reality that we grasp by becoming disciples of Jesus. Salvation isn’t about getting you into heaven; it’s about getting heaven into you…It’s not about what God wants to do to you; it’s about what God wants to do in you.
Eternity Is Now In Session: A Radical Rediscovery of What Jesus Really Taught About Salvation, Eternity, and Getting to the Good Place (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Momentum, 2018), Kindle Electronic Version.
J.I. Packer
What were we made for? To know God. What aim should we have in life? To know God. What is the eternal life that Jesus gives? To know God. What is the best thing in life? To know God. What in humans gives God most pleasure? Knowledge of himself.
Lee Strobel
Believing the right things about Jesus isn’t enough. You’re not adopted as God’s child until you confess and turn away from your wrongdoing and receive the freely offered gift of forgiveness and eternal life that Jesus purchased with his death on the cross. Until you do that, you’ll always be on the outside looking in.
Corrie Ten Boom
You know, eternal life does not start when we go to heaven. It starts the moment you reach out to Jesus. He never turns His back on anyone. And He is waiting for you.
Steven Wright
I intend to live forever. So far, so good.
Addison D. Bevere
The Tyndale Bible Dictionary adds that Saints “are the people of the coming age.” In other words, a saint is someone who brings a future reality into the present. They transcend the problems and limitations of the temporal by embracing and partnering with the eternal. They
Saints: Becoming More Than “Christians,” Revell, 2020. Source Material from Walter A. Elwell and Philip W. Comfort, eds., Tyndale Bible Dictionary, Tyndale Reference Library (Wheaton: Tyndale, 2001), 1151.
See also quotes on Heaven, Life After Death, Salvation