[AI translation] "Our Hope" - this is the summary title of the series I started last September, and now we are coming to the end. The themes have been. This is the most central expression of the Christian expectation of the future. The Apostles' Creed also ends thus: "I believe in eternal life." This is the ultimate we can say about the future and as the ultimate - it is also the goal. And there is something wonderfully great that we can believe it and so confess it. For the deepest desire in every human being is to live endlessly and happily! And what a privilege it is to know that God, who has instilled this deepest desire in the human soul, is doing everything possible to make it come true. What is eternal life like? What does it consist in? What can we know about it? Well: let us rely as little as possible on our individual imagination and fantasy, and as much as possible on the divine revelation of it! What can we learn about him in the Bible - because that's the only authentic thing! Let me tell you in advance: not much, but just enough! Enough, I think, to be able to say with happy certainty: I believe in eternal life!1) First of all, a statement full of negatives: "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have the hearts of men considered the things which God has prepared for those who love him." (1 Cor 2:9) So the apostle Paul describes the perfect happiness of eternal life in this negative way. Why only in this way? Because we are talking about things that our eyes have never seen - cannot see - that we lack the words to describe, the concepts to conceive, the senses to sense. Of course, this is God's world, not ours! It belongs to the category of eternity, not to the dimension of time. So something quite unimaginably beautiful and good and great and sublime. But it is so beautiful and good and great and sublime that these words are far from expressing it, they are not enough, they only point the way... It is a fulfilment of all that is beautiful and good, a glorification of the beautiful and the good that I can perhaps only very vaguely capture with an example. I have often imagined that a Beethoven or a Bach, who really spoke a piece of the eternal divine harmony in their immortal works here on earth: when they entered eternity after their death and opened their souls to the heavenly symphonies, they might have somehow marvelled: "Well, this is what I wanted to express, this is what I wanted to make sound, but I didn't even come close!" As the Song says: "What the ear has not heard..." - yes, not even a Beethoven ear has heard... What even a Bach could have wondered at...
Do you feel how much this negative description tells us about eternal life?! Well, if we add to that what the same Word says: "What God has prepared for those who love Him"! That is pure positivity. So we are talking about a situation, a condition that God has prepared for those who love Him! Once upon a time, when I was still a theologian, when I visited Kecskemét from time to time, my mother would always greet me with a special surprise. She would prepare an excellent dinner with my favourite food, a warm home, and she would give me all the warmth of her motherly love to make me feel at home. Well, if even a mother on earth can make her son's homecoming so beautiful and happy, what can it mean for God - who loves you even more - to prepare for her children who will come home at the end of their journey on earth?! What can it mean: again, I can only say, a fullness of joy and happiness which the eye has not seen, the ear has not heard, the heart of man has not thought, - but which God has prepared for those who love Him! And that is enough. We can say no more about it.
2) Then again, another ray of light, which Paul once said, "I desire to move and be with Christ, for that is far better." (Phil 1,23) "To be with Christ" - again, something we cannot imagine in its full reality. Rather, we can only allude to it. To be with someone we love, who loves us, is the greatest happiness on earth that anyone can achieve. To see constantly that he is here beside me, I am there beside him; to feel the power of love which binds us together; there is nothing to separate us, no distance, no secret thought, no misunderstood word; to share in each other's joy in unbroken communion, for that is all there is; to look each other clearly in the eyes - this is what every human being longs for most in the depths of his soul. And the glorified fulfilment of this deepest human longing is what Paul says: to be with Christ! With the glorified Christ. Perhaps what the Apostle Peter says in this way applies even further to this: "(2Pt 1,4) This does not mean that we are deified, but that we are brought directly into the presence of God, directly into the presence of God, without being consumed by his holiness. God brings us into the sphere of his glory. Our relationship with Him is now only a relationship of faith, but then it will become a vision from face to face. so that we will be partakers of a form of human existence so completely renewed and so infinitely sublime as that which was for a moment made visible in the form of the risen Jesus. But this then gives not only the direction but also the limit to our expectation of eternal life. For here we are looking towards a blinding light. This is what it must mean to be with Christ! And something else: to be with Christ: in this there is also the hope of reunion. Because once I am with Christ, I will also be with those who have already gone forward and are already with Christ! And the emphasis here is not on with each other, but with Christ! That is, being with Christ is the basis and the possibility, but also the certainty, of being with one another.
3) Then again, a misunderstanding about eternal life needs to be cleared up. Many people imagine that eternal life is a still state where everything is already unfolded, everything is fulfilled, everything has come to its goal, an eternal rest where there is no more... It is also the way they inscribe on graves: rest in peace. In the Roman Catholic funeral mass, too, this motif is always in the foreground: 'Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine' (Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord!) I must confess frankly that this idea of eternal life gives me a feeling of boredom. Modern man is not very attracted by a state in which everything is finished, no more... Well: the Word certainly speaks of this rest, but not as a still, stationary state of rest. Again, Paul has a saying: 'But we all, beholding the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, as of the Spirit of the Lord' (2 Cor 3,18). Not in the sense in which the Roman Catholic Fathers believe in a cleansing fire in which, after death, in a process of atonement, the soul can still be further purified to full salvation, but in the light of the glory of eternal life itself, it can still go on to greater and greater glory. It is inconceivable that a believer should magically lose all his weaknesses at death. Already here on earth, the Spirit of God draws us into a process of growth and maturation, why should this process be interrupted so suddenly by death? So, once again, it is not that one can develop from the state of being lost to the state of salvation, but that there is still further development in the state of salvation itself. Fear not: it cannot be dull when life in glory goes on going up and up!
4) And let me emphasize once again: eternal life is not a perpetual idleness, but rather the fulfillment of service to God. Among other things, this is indicated by the passage in Jesus' parable of the Giras, in which the king gives his reward to faithful servants: "Rule over ten cities, have dominion over five cities..." (Lk 19). Of course, this is also a capable expression, but it contains the idea that eternal life is not just some idle state, but very serious service. Indeed, the whole life of the believer on earth is, in this respect, nothing more than a preparation, a preparation for the service which he will have to perform there for the glory of God. There each of us will have his own task, each of us will have his own work to do, just as he would have liked or ought to have done here. Of course, what this work, this task consists of essentially, practically, would again be very difficult to imagine in our earthly dimensions. In any case, if you have ever experienced something of the joy of some service to God, you know that this is the purest joy in the world: to live as a co-worker with God! Yes: in eternal life, one reaches a crossroads, but that "crossroads" does not mean that there is no more, in fact: that is where the real beginning of the whole adventurous, often dangerous or sad earthly journey really begins. Such is the broad outline of eternal life!
Two more questions arise here: One, which is also asked in our Heidelberg Catechism, thus: "What consolation have you from the faith of eternal life?" Yes: this is the greatest consolation, that I can believe in eternal life! Comfort implies sorrow. He who is sad must be comforted. And indeed, it is death that causes the most sorrow on earth. Every tombstone in the cemetery is a monument to much heartache. How many tears fall on an obituary, on a row of beads! No sooner do the tears of sorrow dry up in one house than they begin to flow again in another... And how little human words of comfort mean here! We feel, in the face of death, that we cannot console, that we are helpless. Indeed, the only consolation we could now speak of is "the testimony that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son" (1 John 5:11). But this: enough! Because it is a real, authentic reality sealed by the blood of Jesus! And the possibility opened up by Jesus' resurrection! If your heart clenches in pain when you think of your departed loved ones, say to yourself over and over again, "I believe in eternal life!" Not eternal death, not annihilation, not passing away, but eternal life, that happy, triumphant, glorious eternal life beyond death.
But there is another consolation in this. That we know where we are going! And that is a privilege unspeakable! I was reading a German poem the other day, and the literal translation goes like this:
"I come - I don't know where from.
I am - I don't know who.
I live - I don't know for how long.
I die - I don't know when.
I'm going away - I don't know where.
It's a miracle that I can stand it!"
This is modern man's hesitant stumbling on the ground... Well, even in the life of a believer in Jesus, there are still question marks, but the main question is clear: the certainty that he knows where he is going! We were already well up, not far from the final destination, when we got caught in a fog. It was scary! There was an icy wind, snow and ice all around us, rocks all over the place, we lost our bearings completely. We huddled under the protection of a rock and waited to see what would happen. Where to now, where to? We almost froze. All at once our whole enterprise seemed aimless, fruitless. We were discouraged. We were going to perish here, miserable wretches! - when suddenly the swirling gale of wind tore a gap in the clouds and for a few moments the blue of the sunlit sky rose above us. I shall never forget the feeling that this sunbeam through the cloud gave us! We looked at each other with renewed hope: let's go on, it makes sense, there's the summit, everything will be clear there! And with this happy hope we reached the top!
Well, sometimes, lost in the desolation and hopelessness of life on earth, wandering hesitantly, such hopeful glimpses are the Word, which sheds a ray of light from the glory of eternal life shining above us! Eternal life! This is the greatest encouragement: go on bravely, there is the summit, there all will be revealed! With the faith of eternal life in our hearts - we are heading home!
Amen
Date: 16 February 1969 Evangelization