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“Heaven,” so to speak, is not the reward for “being a good boy” (though many people seem to think so), but is the continuation and expansion of a quality of life which begins whan a man’s central confidence is transferred from himself to God-become-man. This “faith” links him here and now to truth and love, and it is significant that Jesus Christ on more than one occasion is reported to have spoken of “eternal life” as being entered into Now, though plainly to extend without limitation after the present incident we call life.
The man who believes in the authenticity of his message and puts his trust in it already possesses the quality of “eternal life” (John 3.36. 5.24, 6.47, etc). He comes to bring men not merely “life,” but life of a deeper and more enduring quality (John 10.10, 5.24, 17.3, etc.). If we accept this, we shall not be too surprised to find Christ teachig an astonishing thing about physical death: not merely that it is an experience robbed of its terror, but that as an experience it does not exist at all. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the meaning Christ intended to convey was that death was a completely negligible experience to the man who had already begun to live life of the eternal quality.
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