Living in Eternity

TORAH
Exo. 1:1-6:1

HAFTORAH

Isa. 27:6-28:13, 29:22-23 or
Jer. 1:1-2:3

B’RIT HADASHAH

Mt 22:23-33, 41:46
Mk 12:18-27, 35-37
Lk 20:27-44
Ac 3:12-15; 5:27-32; 7:17-36;
22:12-16; 24:14-16
Heb 11:23-26

Luke 20:34-38

The second verse of the Bible describes the very “moment” before the act of creation, when nothing was but God “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” But how can there exist “something” having neither form nor content; something that seems to exist—the earth—when as yet there had been no overt act of creation (understanding verse one as an introduction or prologue to the creative event about to be described in verse two)? Can something exist that simultaneously does not exist?

 

This is the conundrum we explore in our current parashah. In the account of the burning bush, we have a variant of the mystery, a bush that is not destroyed or consumed by fire. The Hebrew is clear and straightforward, this was not a vision or an illusion of Moses. The bush was not radiating a type of non-destructive but visible energy. The bush was burning with fire. What’s more, it kept on burning with no loss of itself. It did not cease to exist.

 

In this encounter with Moses at the burning bush, God open-endedly calls Himself by the descriptive name “I am Who I am” (or I will be Who I will be), implying that He is without any limitation whatsoever; that He is completely self-existent and separate; that He is His own cause and is eternal and ever-existing. He goes on in answer to Moses’ question by speaking the name by which He desires to be known and describes Himself as the God of Moses’ fathers, the patriarchs. He tells Moses to say to the people, “YHVH the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.” Notice God does not say “who was the God of your fathers...” While grammatically there is no demand to understand God’s answer only in the present tense, the implication is that being self-existent and eternal, there can be no past for Him; that something therefore cannot be in His past since being eternal requires that there be no past—at least not in the sense of the past as a kind of limitation which could require non-existence. God is always in the present tense by His very nature.

 

In Luke 20:34-38 we encounter a key but often not fully appreciated short clause at verse 38. What has been written so far is preparatory to our consideration of that clause.

 

In the dialogue with the Sadducees concerning life after death, Jesus refers to the encounter in Exodus between God and Moses. His point was to demonstrate to them—from the objective standard of God’s Word—that they were seriously mistaken in their understanding of life after death. The Sadducees did not accept the idea of life after death, but more seriously still, by denying it, they were limiting God’s eternal nature. This is brought out by the parallel passage from Mark at 12:27b where Jesus warns them that they were “quite wrong” (ESV) in their beliefs, by which He meant not only wrong in the sense of being incorrect, not in conformity with the facts, but also that they were wrong morally, that their beliefs were morally deviant.

 

Jesus defines the nature of the resurrection (not merely life after death) of those righteous people whom God considers His children. In reference to the episode at the burning bush He categorically defines Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as being alive. In verse 38 He states emphatically that God “is not God of the dead, but of the living.” He then goes on to say “…for all live to him.” These last words are only recorded by Luke, they are not found in the parallel passages from the other gospels.

 

What is Jesus actually saying at this point? “To him” is a possessive pronoun. It means that what is being referred to—all, i.e. all people—belong to God, those “who are considered [by God] worthy to attain…the resurrection”, that is the righteous in Christ (Rom. 6:11), as well as those who are not.  Jesus is in a sense answering two questions. This passage says that no one really dies in the ultimate sense of obliteration or annihilation. Jesus is clarifying that there is really no such thing as death as an ultimate limitation since God is not limited. Death of a kind there surely is and will be. However, this death is really a transition from one state of life into a profoundly different state of life. This in itself is a sobering thought. The Bible commentators Jamieson, Fausset and Brown have this to say, “It is true, indeed, that to God no human being is dead or ever will be, but all mankind sustain an abiding conscious relation to Him; but the ‘all’ here mean ‘those who shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world.’ These sustain a gracious covenant-relation to God which cannot be dissolved.” In spite of the context, I’m not so sure that the “all” only refer to those who are worthy.

 

In this passage, Christ is not speaking about eternal life as such. He is responding to the question concerning the Resurrection to come. His intention is to show the Sadducees that their understanding was wrong. The words “…for all live to him” make it plain that we live in relationship to God from our very beginning. Once created, always created. There is no possibility of being removed from a relationship with God— a relationship of one kind or another. There is no obliteration of the soul or spirit—it will forever be in relationship to God as the creator and sustainer. The only question is what kind of relationship is it or will it be. Thought of in these terms, Jesus dire warnings such as at Matt. 18:8 must be seen as not mere hyperbole but rather as descriptions of certainties that one will not be able to avoid.

 

Since we are created beings, totally dependent on our Creator, we are not eternal;  that is to say, we had a beginning, just as the earth did. But also, like the earth, we must have had some kind of existence prior to our physical creation. The earth is described in Genesis 1:2 as being formless and void—without content, without corporeality, without physical dimensions or material qualities of any kind. Yet it existed nevertheless. It existed because God knew it existed. But in what sense might this be possible? It can only have existed in the mind of God. The earth was knowledge in the mind of God before it became a physical entity on day three of creation. But because God is eternal, His knowledge too must be eternal. If this is so, does it not follow that what has been said about the Earth can also be said about us—all of us, for we all live in relationship to God who is eternal. And since we do, we also must have existed as knowledge in the mind of God before our creation. This was true for the tabernacle, for we read “Exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it” (Exo. 25:9). The pattern of the tabernacle existed, and still exists, and will always exist in the mind of God.

 

And the same is true for us. We are a pattern—a kind of knowledge—in God’s mind. And yes, there will be a resurrection when the dead will rise. (There will actually be two resurrections—one for the just and one for the unjust. Daniel makes that plain and clear, “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan. 12:2)). We need to understand that no one will become non-existent, no one will ever be out of relationship with God, since we have existed in the mind of God as part of His knowledge there is no way to exist or not exist except in relationship to Him. The only questions that remain are “What is the nature of our relationship to God, right now, at this moment?” and “Are we happy with that relationship?” The answers to those questions will have an eternal bearing for you; therefore it is of utmost importance for you to come to firm conviction about them. “And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire” (Matt. 18:8).

AMEN