The hope and point of Christianity is not this life
The purpose of Christianity is an ambitious topic for volumes of books, years of study, and entire institutions — how much more so for a short blog post on some guy’s website? But here, I want to tackle it from the standpoint of what Christians’ basic mindset should be: Is the point of Christianity this life in this world, or what’s beyond that?
I ask because in several camps that claim the name of Christ, their dominant focus is on this life. I see this most prominently in Christian political circles (on the left and right) and in charismatic prosperity preaching (and there’s quite a bit of overlap there). This mindset is expressed in the words they frequently use, such as “winning,” “victory,” and “success” — all in this world. The emphasis is overwhelmingly temporal; their primary objective is to make our world, or at least our nation, a better place. To usher in the fullness of the blessings of the kingdom of God here. To live our best life now. All this and heaven, too.
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Don’t get me wrong; God cares about this world and this life. His creation is good and beloved. He sovereignly orchestrates everything that happens. The second table of the Ten Commandments, a multitude of instructions throughout Scripture, and the indwelling Holy Spirit sanctify God’s people for holy living here and now. Jesus said the kingdom of God is already among us. As a premillennialist, I believe the Lord will redeem the planet and reign from an earthly throne when He returns.
But for which life did Christ ultimately save us? The Bible gives us a clear answer, particularly in the writings of John.
Eternal life
In John’s gospel, Jesus speaks dozens of times about everlasting life. It’s the end of the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16. It’s where the fountain of water He gives us leads (4:14). It’s the fruit we gather (4:36). It’s the food for which we labor (6:27). It’s the words He speaks (6:68). It’s the Father’s command (12:50).
The theme continues in John’s first epistle: Everlasting life is what we declare (1 John 1:2). It’s the Lord’s promise (2:25). It’s the testimony that God has given in His Son (5:11). It’s the reason John wrote what he did (5:13). And, of course, it’s described gloriously, at length, in John’s book of Revelation.
John is far from alone in teaching this. Eternal life is the gift of God (Romans 6:23). It’s what we reap from the Spirit (Galatians 6:8). It’s what we lay hold of (1 Timothy 6:12, 19). It’s the promised hope (Titus 1:2). It’s the mercy we look for (Jude 21).
The good news of Jesus Christ is about eternal life with Him. We don’t need the gospel to make a positive impact on the world; people of other religions and even atheists can do that, too. The greatest and ultimate difference that Christ makes is eternal; He alone provides forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God. The gospel is what He alone can do; therefore, that’s our proclamation to a dying world. That’s what we live for. That’s the meaning of life.
Related: Why Jesus went to the cross, according to the Bible
This life is a vapor
Conversely, while Scripture doesn’t teach us to neglect or escape this life altogether, it does put it in its vastly inferior place. Several times, Jesus called for the surrender of our lives, loving Him so much that we hate our lives here in comparison:
“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.” (Luke 14:26)
“Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” (Luke 17:33)
“Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (John 12:25)
Just as John emphasized eternal life, he also cast this world as an antithesis: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). Likewise, the Lord’s brother James wrote, “Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4). It seems that many professing Christians love this world, judging by how zealously they strive for victory in it.
Also from James: “For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away” (James 4:14). Is that what we pour all of our efforts into preserving? Just ponder the math; to calculate what percentage of eternity this life occupies, picture .01 but with infinity zeros. And so many Christians just want to talk about the 1!
Before he knew Christ, Paul lived a successful life, gaining much worldly prestige as an educated rabbi. But for the knowledge of Christ, he “suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish” (Philippians 3:8). In return, his decades of ministry were filled with suffering and persecution, right to the end, but he called that “but for a moment” in 2 Corinthians 4:17. That passage makes his emphasis clear:
17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, 18 while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
“If in this life only we have hope in Christ,” he also wrote, “we are of all men the most pitiable” (1 Corinthians 15:19). If you talk like our hope is in this life, if you look to the temporary things which are seen, you’re pitiful.
This world will be burned up
That passage in 1 Corinthians 15 is eschatological. The Bible’s teachings about the end times are another way we know that this life is far from the point of Christianity. Scripture makes it overwhelmingly obvious that this world is doomed under our stewardship. Christ will not return to Christianized lands, but in violent wrath poured out on all nations.
Those who tout a “victorious” eschatology of earthly success often cite Psalm 110 — at least the first verse, about making the Lord’s enemies His footstool. But the rest of the psalm tells us how that will happen:
He shall execute kings in the day of His wrath.
He shall judge among the nations,
He shall fill the places with dead bodies,
He shall execute the heads of many countries.
We don’t do that; He does, when He returns. Likewise, some who think Psalm 2 is about successfully evangelizing the world quote the part that says, “I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your possession,” but they leave out what that looks like in verse 9: “You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.” The wrathful return of Christ is confirmed in Revelation 19:
“Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.” (verse 15)
Peter describes that day on a planetary scale:
“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up” (2 Peter 3:10).
As the saying goes, it’s all going to burn. That should weigh heavily in the weight we give this life.
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The blessed hope
For those in Christ, that day is our hope. Paul wrote to Titus that “the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” is “the blessed hope” — the hope God blesses (Titus 2:13). He doesn’t bless hope placed in anything before that.
Until then, we have a choice to make: For which life are we gathering riches? Not just money, but all our worldly definitions of success and victory. Like another cliche goes, we can’t take it with us. Everything we attain and achieve in this life can be destroyed or rendered worthless in a day. The only thing that lasts forever is our soul. That’s why Jesus said, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” (Mark 8:36). That’s why He said, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Matthew 6:19-20a). Where are we laying up our treasures?
Another question we must answer for ourselves is, what is our home? Scripture is pretty clear there, too: “For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come” (Hebrews 13:14). The home we seek is not here but is yet to come. Our citizenship is in heaven, Paul wrote to the Philippians (3:20). In that passage, he contrasted that mindset with those “who set their mind on earthly things” (verse 19) and taught that in this life, we “eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,” for the glorious day when He will “subdue all things to Himself” (verse 21).
Don’t fix your mind on earthly things. Put all your hope in His glorious appearing. That’s when, as the Lord said in Habakkuk 2:14, “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”
See also this excellent article by Kevin DeYoung on what Christianity is all about: saving sinners.
