When you pick up this issue of A&C and glance at its title “Eternal Life,” what is the first thing that comes to mind? We suspect that you, like most of us, think of life in eternity, a life of bliss with God in the hereafter. Religion and culture have predisposed us to that notion. Of course, it is not completely wrong, because our Christian hope is indeed to dwell and even reign with God in eternity future. The Bible tells us so (Rev. 22:4-5). It is comforting to think about. But there is much more to eternal life according to the revelation in the Bible. In this issue of A&C we dive into the “much more” of eternal life in the Bible (Rom. 5:10).

Eternal life, according to the New Testament, is something that the believers possess from the moment of their initial regeneration, and in the first article we consider what eternal life is—it is nothing less than God Himself in Christ as the Spirit. In the second article we go on a breathtaking journey through the Bible to see what is perhaps its most intrinsic line of development, the line of eternal life from Genesis to Revelation. In the next two articles, both sharing Paul’s striking phrase saved in His life in their titles, we focus on the eternal life first in God’s full and complete salvation (not just from perdition but “much more…in His life”) and then on eternal life for our personal experience of that salvation as revealed in Romans 5—8. In the fifth article we turn our attention to the church, which, according to the New Testament, is not at all an organization but an organic entity constituted with, growing by, and functioning through the eternal life in the believers as the members of Christ’s Body. In the last major article we consider death, the antithesis of life, which has plagued humankind since the very fall of Adam and each of us personally from our birth and which has its only antidote in the eternal life of God. We conclude this issue with three of our frequently recurring departments, offering topics allied to eternal life. In “Milestones” we show the history of the words adoptio and adoption in most Latin and English Bible versions and show what tragic mistakes these have been in translation according to the full revelation of the Scriptures. Then, in “Clarifications” we look at the meaning and significance of the notion of inheriting eternal life as distinct from possessing it. Finally, lest anyone think that our understanding of eternal life is ours alone, we offer a bibliographic essay featuring four books from different Christian traditions that acknowledge and extol the eternal life as our present and abiding possession. In presenting all the articles of this issue, our hope is that all our readers would not only acknowledge what eternal life is but “much more” would be saved personally and corporately in that eternal life, which is God in Christ as the Spirit, who dwells within all who believe.