A man who wrote to me frequently always signed his letters: "Your never-dying friend." He believed that his strong faith in Christ would keep him alive until Jesus returned. He based this belief on his interpretation of Jesus' words, "Whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die" (Jn. 11:26). I haven't heard from him for a long time, so I assume he has died. If so, he is in heaven and now knows that his understanding of that verse was incorrect.

When Jesus spoke those words, He had in mind two kinds of death: physical (separation of the soul-spirit from the body) and spiritual (eternal separation from God). Before we receive Jesus as our personal Savior, all of us are "dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2:1). But when we trust Him, we become spiritually alive. Jesus said that everyone who believes in Him "has passed from death into life" (Jn. 5:24). When believers die, their conscious relationship with God continues uninterrupted because they are spiritually alive.

We who have trusted Christ as our Savior can rest assured that we will never experience eternal separation from God. In that sense, then, it would be appropriate to sign our letters with the words: "Your never-dying friend."  — Herbert Vander Lugt