Read for This Week’s Study: 1 Cor. 15:12–19, John 14:1–3,

John 6:26–51, 1 Thess. 4:13–18, 1 Cor. 15:51–55.

Memory Text: “And this is the testimony: that God has given us

eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life;

he who does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:11,

12, NKJV).

Though writing in Greek, all the New Testament writers (except

Luke) were Jews, and they of course approached the nature of

human beings from the wholistic Hebrew perspective, not from

the Greek pagan one.

Thus, for Christ and the apostles, the Christian hope was not a new

hope but, rather, the unfolding of the ancient hope already nurtured

by the patriarchs and prophets. For example, Christ mentioned that

Abraham foresaw and rejoiced to see His day (John 8:56). Jude stated

that Enoch prophesied about the Second Coming (Jude 14, 15). And

the book of Hebrews speaks of the heroes of faith as having expected a

heavenly reward that they would not receive until we receive ours (Heb.

11:39, 40). This statement would be meaningless if their souls were

already with the Lord in heaven.

By stressing that only those who are in Christ have eternal life (1 John

5:11, 12), John disproves the theory of the natural immortality of the

soul. Truly, there is no eternal life apart from a saving relationship with

Christ. The New Testament hope, then, is a Christ-centered hope, and the

only hope that this mortal existence will one day become an immortal

one.