What is eternal life

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arunangelo

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Eternal life (John 17:3) is to know God. To know God is to know and accept His ways. Those who know Him, therefore, do His will (Marr 7:21-23). His will is this, that we love one another as He has loved us (John 12:15). He loved us by humbling Himself to take a human form (in the person of Jesus) and suffering the most painful death in order to bring forgiveness to us, who were unfaithful to Him, betrayed Him and killed Him. Eternal life, therefore, is a life that has surrendered its will to God; sacrificed its own interest to serve others; and has forgiven and healed those who have been unfaithful to it, betrayed it and hurt it.
 
arunangelo said:
Eternal life (John 17:3) is to know God. To know God is to know and accept His ways. Those who know Him, therefore, do His will (Marr 7:21-23). His will is this, that we love one another as He has loved us (John 12:15). He loved us by humbling Himself to take a human form (in the person of Jesus) and suffering the most painful death in order to bring forgiveness to us, who were unfaithful to Him, betrayed Him and killed Him. Eternal life, therefore, is a life that has surrendered its will to God; sacrificed its own interest to serve others; and has forgiven and healed those who have been unfaithful to it, betrayed it and hurt it.
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Maybe a simplistic answer could be Eternal life is outside of time as we know it?
 
Yes eternal life is participation in God’s life hereafter. And that participation, if I may add, should start here while we are still on earth.
 
JMJ / MMM 17 Feb 2010
All You Brothers and Sisters –
Eternal Life … to share in Eternal Life … to participate with God in Eternal Life. Eastern Christianity has always had a deeper appreciation of what Eternal Life means than we Westerners have had. They call sharing it Theosis, and even Divinization. We in the West have been quite preoccupied with obedience to the Commandments and with sin.
What is this Eternal Life prior even to creation? It involves what we seem to have focused in our understandings about the Trinity. The Begetting of the Word, the Son … the Being Begotten of the Son by the Father … the Spirating of Holy Spirit by Father and Son as One Principle … the Being Spirated of Holy Spirit … each distinct (not separate) Divine Person … Sharing the Whole Being of each other Divine Person, to the extent that each is distinct as Person and each IS the Whole Godhead, the One God.
And we are to share in THIS? Yes. Even now. This is the Goal for which God created every single human being.
All the above Infinite Eternal Activity is the Infinite Knowing and Infinite Loving and Infinite Joying that God Is.
St John of the Cross often speaks of “becoming,” or “being God by participation.”
St Athanasius wrote that “God became man … so that man could become God.”
And God insists that we creatures have a real share (as secondary causes with God as First Cause) in this process, this becoming, this spiritual maturing. And that is one of the reasons why we suffer. Not only a share, but God wants us to merit Eternal Life (we as secondary meritors in Jesus Christ as the First Meritor). In the Second Eucharistic Prayer we pray, “…make us worthy to share eternal life…” How beautiful! How very exciting! How it is right that we pour forth thanksgiving to God constantly!
When does all this Eternal Life start? At Baptism. All you who have been baptized, committed to God in Jesus Christ, and who are without grave sin, HAVE NOW ETERNAL LIFE.
Perhaps during Lent, beginning today, we may all grow in Eternal Life.
John (JohnJFarren) Trinity5635@aol.com
 
It’s simple:
Code: 
             life -> death
eternal life → no death
 
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