The Jew­ish hope all along was the mes­sianic age. They call it the “Olam Haba”, that is “the Age to Come”. It is the King­dom of God or more rev­er­ently, the King­dom of Heaven.

Jews often avoid call­ing the name of God that they may not blas­pheme, thus refer­ring to Him as “Hashem” — that is, “the Name” — or other ways. We find a good exam­ple in Rev­e­la­tion where God is referred to as “the One sit­ting on the throne” or as “who was, who is and who is to come”, but very sel­dom as “God”.

The mis­sion of John the Bap­tist was the prepa­ra­tion of the King­dom, and Jesus picked up from where John left off. All his teach­ing was related to the King­dom that was to be ush­ered in pro­vid­ing the nation turned and accepted him as their leader.

The Greek term “aio­n­ios”, trans­lated “eter­nal” in Chris­t­ian bibles, comes from the root “aion” (or in Eng­lish we would say “eon”) lit­er­ally mean­ing “age”. The set­ting of the gospels is Jew­ish and keep­ing in mind that the Jew­ish hope was (and is) “the Age to Come”, and know­ing that Jesus’ mes­sage was about the King­dom (Olam Haba = Age to Come), we may rightly con­clude that when “aion” is used, the ref­er­ence is to the King­dom of God rather than to eter­nity, which is a pos­si­ble, but not the pri­mary mean­ing of the term, and doesn’t fit the Jew­ish setting.

There are many pas­sages where Jesus talks about enter­ing the King­dom of Heaven/God. The right­eous stan­dard required was cen­tral in his teaching.

Now con­sider John 17:3 where Jesus is pray­ing to the Father God:

“This is eter­nal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ.”

The term “eter­nal life” (“aio­n­ios zoe”) here, there­fore, should more cor­rectly be trans­lated as “life belonging/pertaining to the Age”. Jesus’ thoughts are on the King­dom of God, and he tells us how to obtain an entry ticket.

We need to make sure that we cor­rectly under­stand and fol­low these words. Read it, ask ques­tions about it. Med­i­tate on it and pray about it.