The Cradle Of Christian Truth: Apostles’ Creed (Part 19)—Life Everlasting. Amen

by on June 10, 2025 | Comment

When I was in college, I worked in a warehouse that refurbished science kits for elementary and middle schools. As part of my job, I had to replace used-up supplies for various experiments, like the used-up tape, staples, or flour. One summer, we got really far ahead, but we had this pallet of five-pound bags of flour that got infested with weevils. Because we were so far ahead, our manager decided we would sift all this flour to remove the bugs and still be able to use the flour for science experiments.

If you have ever sat at a worktable for eight hours a day, several weeks in a row, just sifting flour, you know that sometimes time drags on slowly. I am fairly sure the dictionary entry for tedious has a picture of me sitting there sifting bugs out of flour all day. I cannot think of a time in my life when every tick of the clock felt more hard-won than that season of work.

It is easy to associate the sensation that time is dragging by with the experience of forever. It is hard to imagine forever without some notion that it will get old at some point. We tend to link our imagined perception of unending time with the expectation of monotony. Forever cannot be exciting, since we will get tired of it at some point.

Yet the Christian hope is everlasting life. The prospect of unending time stands before us as the location where we ultimately reside. The notion of forever is built into the Christian faith as what stands before us on the other side of Christ’s return.

The Apostles’ Creed is our most basic statement of the Christian faith. It summarizes the message of the whole Bible, Old and New Testaments. We see in the Creed that the whole Bible is about the triune God. We confess our belief in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We also confess our belief in the works most closely associated with each person of the Trinity.

The Creed, then, when we consider it altogether as we come to the end, tells us the Bible is about God and how God saves his people. Salvation is about reconciling us to the triune God. That tells us something really important. When we think about the full message of the Creed, we might be asking, does it suggest that the Bible is mainly about God or about salvation? I think the answer is that we do not need to choose between them.

We do not have to choose which theme is the biggest picture summary of Scripture because they are, in our experience, intimately related. The true God is the God who saves. Salvation is unto a renewed relationship with God. Salvation is not salvation if it is not focused on knowing God in everlasting life. Hence, Jesus said in John 14:3, “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

That brings us to the last line in the Creed, that we believe in the life everlasting. This affirmation really is the culminating line that ties everything together. The Creed is about the triune God and about God’s works that bring sinners to know the triune God in salvation. Life everlasting, which we have through salvation, is to know God, and to know God through Jesus Christ who came to work our salvation.

As we think about life everlasting, I want to try to set a context for how to think about it. We know very little from Scripture about particular aspects of how it will look after we die when we go to be with the Lord in heaven, and we know very little even about what life will be like after the resurrection when Christ returns on the last day to raise all his people from the grave unto everlasting bodily life.

Although we cannot get at too many details about what that life will be like, at least not without speculating, we can look at how Scripture presents these coming realities. As we consider what Scripture says, we see that it focuses more on big-picture, wide-angle descriptions rather than trying to answer the questions we tend to have about the details of our personal, individual experience of life everlasting. In other words, Scripture’s teaching focuses on God with his people, holistically speaking, rather than on what you will experience on your own.

Expansion

In the book of Revelation, we see broad contours for how Scripture wants us to understand new creation life. When we considered the resurrection of the body, we saw how God had created us, namely Adam, with the potential to grow from our good and wonderful original state to a glorified, incorruptible state like we will have in the new creation. We also saw how the sort of stamp on that offer to Adam was the tree of life.

Interestingly, the tree of life appears in Scripture in two primary places, the beginning and the end. It shows up in Genesis and then in Revelation. That the tree of life features in Scripture’s opening narratives and returns in its account of history’s end is significant. Revelation 21 describes the arrival of the New Jerusalem when Christ returns, which we will circle back to think about shortly. Then, Revelation 22:1–2 expands upon what that new creation looks like:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

The tree of life, in this case, helps us get a concept for how to think about everlasting life.1 In Genesis, the tree was in the midst of the garden, but in Revelation it has grown to span the river. On the one hand, Adam was supposed to fill the earth with the new creation kingdom as part of his task, though he left the garden as a small patch of paradise blocked by angels so the rest of us cannot reach it. On the other hand, Christ installs a truly global new creation kingdom.

In Revelation, the tree of life grew to encompass far more space, teaching us about this very development.2 Revelation describes this global blessing, which Christ will grant, by referring to the tree of life’s return: “The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” At history’s end, the blessing of everlasting rest, which the tree of life signifies, extends to people of every tribe, tongue, and nation because of Christ’s work as Savior.3 The expansion of the tree of life illustrates the expansion of Christ’s kingdom to anyone from any nation who believes the gospel.

Entry

Revelation 22:14 also crystallizes what it means to eat of the tree of life at the last day: “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.”

In our present circumstances as sinners this side of Adam’s fall, we need justification that includes the forgiveness of sins, which Jesus grants to us. The washed robes depict this aspect of our salvation by using the Old Testament’s metaphor that the cleansing of polluted garments represents the forgiveness of sins.4 In our justification, Christ gives us the clean robe of his righteousness, bestowing the right to eat from the tree of life. Eating from that tree includes the right to enter God’s everlasting kingdom.

Entering the gates is imagery for access into life everlasting. Isaiah 62:10–12 depicts the Savior going “through the gates” so that God’s people may enter into the city of their salvation. In Revelation, obtaining the right to eat from the tree of life because of Christ’s work for us allows us to “enter the city by the gates.”5 Having the right to eat the tree of life is then the right to enter God’s everlasting city. “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (Phil 3:20–21).

Being a citizen means a legal right to live somewhere. We are given this citizenship because Jesus Christ justifies us. We may enter the gates of the New Jerusalem at Christ’s return because he has made us clean, given us clean robes, and granted us the status of heavenly citizens as he makes us righteous before God’s throne. That citizenship, our justification and guaranteed entry, also ensures that we will receive a transformed, glorified body.

Paul’s picture of citizenship and entry into the kingdom clearly helps us see that those who are clean before God, washed and forgiven in Christ’s blood, receive the right to eat from the tree of life and enter the New Jerusalem. In Revelation 22:19, having a share in the tree of life symbolizes participation in everlasting life in the New Jerusalem. Entry into the kingdom is received in Christ, tangibly symbolized in restoring us to the tree of life.

Endings

In recent years, people have tried to milk a lot from Revelation’s depiction of our ultimate destination in the new creation as a city. We have been told that means God wants us now to prioritize getting churches in the cities because they are more important strategically, culturally, or what have you. I think that outlook assumes some things that miss the point, that the gospel is not about achieving certain things for society but about reconciling people to God.

What should we learn from Revelation’s depiction of the new heavens and new earth as a city, the New Jerusalem? It teaches us two things. First, cities were the place of safety. In many ways, the ancient mindset toward cities was the opposite of our modern reactions. We think of cities as loaded with crime and dilapidation. The reverse was nearly the case in the ancient world. The wilderness was where dangerous animals lived and might attack you. Criminals usually attacked on the roads between cities rather than in the towns.

We have already seen why the new creation is safe in contrast to the wilderness of this age that we traverse until Christ returns. To be in that city means that our sins are entirely forgiven. When we enter that city, we know that sin, its penalty, its power, its effects, and all the things that take their toll upon us in this life can never harm us again. We will be safe in the city of Jesus Christ.

Second, cities are the place where people lived together. Similar to now, people were spread further apart outside the city, and likely much farther apart than people outside cities today. The city is where you could meet others. It is the place where you can gather with other people. Revelation 21:2–3 tells us why the image of a city helps us in this respect:

And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” (emphasis added)

If the city is where people live together, the everlasting city is where God will live together with us directly. So, we have two endings to encourage us as we close. The end of history is when we will bask in God’s direct presence, and we will see him with us. The Creed gives us a snapshot of how God is the God of salvation and how salvation saves us back into God’s presence forever.

We now see why the Creed ends with “Amen.” That little word means, “Let it be so.” Do we not want this to be so? As long as the weight of this world hangs heavy upon you, we cry to God to make the Creed be so. God, make it be that we know Father, Son, and Spirit on the basis of Christ’s work as delivered to us in the church for it will guide us to the city where we will know everlasting life with God forever.

Notes

  1. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, trans. George Musgrave Giger, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., 3 vol. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1992–97), 8.5.6–7.
  2. G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 1103.
  3. Beale, Revelation, 1106–11.
  4. Isa 1:18; 64:6; Zech. 3:3–5; Beale, Revelation, 436; cf. 1139.
  5. Beale, Revelation, 1139–40.

©Harrison Perkins. All Rights Reserved.

You can find the whole series here.

RESOURCES

Heidelberg Reformation Association
1637 E. Valley Parkway #391
Escondido CA 92027
USA
The HRA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization

Subscribe to the Heidelblog today!


Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comments are welcome but must observe the moral law. Comments that are profane, deny the gospel, advance positions contrary to the Reformed confession, or that irritate the management are subject to deletion. Anonymous comments, posted without permission, are forbidden. Please use a working email address so we can contact you, if necessary, about content or corrections.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.