NOTES for Luk 20:27-40

Even people who have long believed often find it strange to read that we will rise again. We cannot avoid dying, because we sin, and sin cannot enter the Kingdom of God; but we cannot avoid living for ever if we are God’s children, and God is immortal. This means that, like God, we are immortal: we are alive. The living are those who can love, those who are free.

How much hope there is for us in the words, “For to Him all are alive”: if to God we are equally alive whether we live or have died, then perhaps even after death, with God’s help, we will be able to change something in our life and repent. What matters is the vector, the direction of our life here on earth. We know nothing about what will happen to us after death, but probably, if in this life we constantly strove toward evil, it will be difficult for us there to change our direction... Yet a lifelong desire to be with God will surely lead us after death into the Kingdom, to the One toward whom we have striven all our lives. Our freedom matters to God; He waits until we ourselves direct our steps toward Him, until we ourselves turn to Him. Only such love—love that is free—can be called love.