Eternal life?

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men: yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end."  (Ecc. 3:11)

There is a longstanding debate on whether God intended Adam to live for eternity or whether he had the ability to live for eternity. It's rather a mute discussion in my opinion. The answer is "yes." 

Adam was made in the likeness of God. However, in biblical anthropology we tend to bypass the  communicable characteristic of the imago Dei (image of God) that deals with His eternality. God is eternal in his being. By created nature and design, we too, are eternal beings. Eternal in the sense that from a given starting point (which differs from God) we will live into eternity.

If you remember the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, they were tempted by Satan, sinned, hid from God, and then cursed. 

The consequence of that disobedience was given to Adam by God in Genesis 2:16-17. "In the day that you eat of it [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] you will surely die."

Now they ate but they didn't drop over dead. What died at that moment? Healthy relationships. Their relationship with God was broken in the sense that they had ceased imaging God in his perfection and glory.  Their relationship with each other was broken. Their relationship with the created world was broken. 

The important part of this conversation was a follow-up Trinitarian conversation that is found in Genesis 3:22: "And the LORD said, 'The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 

Was man created to live for ever? It appears that the means for that was provided in the garden. It was actually a gracious act of God that he kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden for if they would have eaten from the tree of life they would have lived in perpetual brokenness before God. 

God did intend for us to have eternal life. Jesus came to reconcile this world to the Father through his own tree of life. 

Because of the Fall and because of Jesus every person born has eternal life. But I'll leave you with the words of the prophet Daniel to describe it. Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake:  some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt." (Dan. 12:2). 

I wonder how this would change our thinking if we truly believed that people will, indeed, live forever? Per the Scriptures, that destination is made in this brief span of life so how does this bring a sense of immediacy to how we view others in our realm of influence?

Thoughts to ponder.