¹⁸ I [Jesus Christ] am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. Revelation 1:18 (KJV)

The Rotherham Emphasized Bible of 1902 has translated everlasting or eternal life by the terms “age-abiding life.” The meaning is brought out by these terms better than eternal or everlasting. The KJV term “everlasting life” would better be rendered the “aionian life” if we were to transliterate the Greek word.

• In simple terms, translation is the process of converting one language to another. The goal is for the target language to convey the meaning of the words.  
• Transliteration, on the other hand, is the process of converting language from one script to another. The goal is for the reader to be able to pronounce the words in the target language.

The idea in the original is not so much the length of life, but rather its quality. In fact, an aion is not an eternity, but rather a span of time, an age. An age can be definite, as in the ‘defined’ age (aion) such as ‘the millennium (1,000 years in length)’ or an age may be an indefinite length of time (age). An age is something that has a beginning and an end, which is not true of our idea of eternity today.

The ages or aions are but small portions or parenthesis within eternity. If you would make a little scratch with a knife on the rim of a great wheel with a diameter as big as the universe, that little scratch would indicate in scale the time of the ages. It is not possible to measure the diameter of the universe, for if you start out in a straight line and keep on going you will finally return to the point where you started. Such is the vastness of the universe. You might just as well try to measure the love of God!

So far as we know, the ages began with the ‘overthrow’ of Gen 1:2 (Greek ‘katabole,’ not ‘foundation’). The ages will end when there is another overthrow, when there will be a “new heaven” and a “new earth.”

We are living in the time called the ages or aions. Science has not been able to find any natural life that is age-abiding or everlasting. All life that is known in creation has an end, a terminus. Protoplasm, the living part of a cell, is temporary. It differs from lifeless matter only in that it has that indefinable quality called ‘life.’

How life began, no one can find in the laboratory. And just how it ends, they have not found out. No one knows what life is. And only The Creator can generate ‘life.’ It is of His power and secret.

Man is no exception to the “law of death” (Rom. 8:2b) that is in the creation. Man’s physical being returns to ‘dust as it was’ even as do the animals and the plants.  

⁷ Then shall the dust [of the body] return to the earth as it was: and the spirit [of man] shall return unto God who gave it. Ecclesiastes 12:7 (KJV)

Thus man was not endowed with ‘life’ any different from that of other living things on the earth. All, both man and beast, go to the same place at death and the Bible adds that there is no difference in their deaths.

¹⁹ For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. ²⁰ All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Ecclesiastes 3:19-20 (KJV)

But God, at the infinite cost of His Son, Jesus Christ, has provided ‘the age-abiding life’ which any man can lay hold through faith (John 3:16).

¹⁶ For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him [His Son] should not perish [Greek apollymi, be destroyed], but [rather] have [the son’s] aionian life [age-abiding life]. John 3:16  

This life is the only ‘life’ that can abide during all ages. It is the divine life of God Himself. Man can partake of it. It also guarantees the believing physical man a ‘resurrection’ from the inevitable ‘grave.’ Nothing else can produce a resurrection. There is only ‘One’ who could say, “I AM the resurrection and the life.”

Only “in Christ” there is the genuine ‘age-abiding life.’ Then it is equally true that apart from Him, there is only death. If otherwise, His words of John 11:25 would not be true. But we believe what He has said, so therewith we have partaken of THE age-abiding life.

²⁵ Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead [physically], yet shall he live [Grk. zao, by the ‘age-abiding-Spirit’]: John 11:25 (KJV)

⁶³ It is the spirit that quickeneth [giveth life]; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life [the age-abiding life]. John 6:63 (KJV)

The Age-abiding life not only results in resurrection, but also in immortality. Thus far, Only Christ has been resurrected. He alone has immortality. Yet, He is “the First-born from the dead.” Colossians 1:18)

All those “in Him” will be made alive and immortal.

- Portions adapted by Arthur J Licursi from By Oscar M. Baker