Translating eternal life
Translating eternal life is a fundamental question of how best to translate into English a phrase that occurs 18 times in the Gospel of John, multiple times in each of the other Gospels, and 6 times in John's first letter, which is commonly translated as "eternal life." This phrase is part of perhaps the most significant Bible verse of all: John 3:16
In the original Greek, the phrase is "αἰώνιον ζωὴν".
An issue is whether this phrase is only about the future, or whether it refers immediately to the present also. For example, does it merely mean "life forever," or does it also have value immediately for overcoming pain, anxiety, or addiction?
One defect in viewing "eternal life" as merely temporal, as in "everlasting", is that life can be painful and no one wants a permanence of that.
John 3:16
John 3:16 uses the phrase "eternal life" as the opposite of "perish" (which is sometimes translated in this verse as "be lost" or "destroyed", which are more suggestive of anxiety or addiction).
The Greek work in this verse for perish is ἀπόλλυμι (apollumi), but it is translated as "ruined" in Matthew 9:17 as to the wineskins metaphor.
Gospel of John
John 6
There are five references to "eternal life" in Chapter 6 alone of the Gospel of John (ESV), of which the first four are statements by Jesus and the fifth a response by Simon Peter:
- verse 27: Jesus said, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you.”
- This suggests an immediate, permanent meaning to "eternal life," not simply life after death.
- verse 40: Jesus said, “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
- The last phrase concerns life after death, by its prior one suggests more.
- verse 47: Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.”
- This suggests an immediate meaning to eternal life.
- verse 54: Jesus said, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
- This conveys both an immediate and futuristic meaning.
- verse 68: Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”
- The phrase "words of eternal life" suggests something immediate in benefit.
| Gospel of John verse | ESV translation | Counterpoint to "eternal life" |
| John 3:16 | “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." | perish v. eternal life |
| John 3:36 | "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him." | not see life/see the wrath of God v. eternal life |
| John 4:14 | "but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” | thirsty again v. eternal life |
| John 4:36 | "Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together." | hunger v. eternal life (see John 4:31-32) |
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| John 3:14-15 | "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life" | no counterpoint |