Quick Q&A: Can we become immortal?

Answer: In 1 Timothy 6:16 (ESV) we read of One “who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.” You and I are two.  Who is that One? That is God, not us—at least, not yet!

Yet we know God has promised us an incredible future.  Here’s what your Bible says about the time when Christ returns and the faithful saints will be taken up into the clouds to meet Him: “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, ESV).

Christ’s faithful followers will rise—some from the grave, and some changed from this very life—to be with Him always. This is when all those faithful Christians who have ever lived will become the immortal children of God—real children, members of the God family. To be with God forever, we would not be some kind of lesser being, like chickens or goats being raised by human farmers. We will have the same imperishable and immortal body as God Himself.  We read that “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:52-53, ESV).

Note that we do not have immortality on our own. It is a gift of God.  “For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will” (John 5:21, ESV).  That gift will be given to those who have worshiped Him in spirit and truth. Paul wrote: “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). The wages of sin is not eternal life in Hell; it is death—eternal death. Eternal life is a gift of God; if we had it inherently in us, we would not need it as a gift!