Apostles will Inherit Eternal Life.

(Mat. 19:27-30; Mark 10:28-31 and Luke 18:28-30).

In relation to the Lord’s answer to the rich youth, Saint Apostle Peter — on behalf of all the Apostles — poses a question to the Lord as to what reward they will receive for leaving everything behind and following Him. While they were poor people that had very little — fishing-nets, hooks, boats and humble dwellings — it was all they had that they left to follow Christ and through this, showed a genuine selflessness. Perhaps the Apostles doubted that with their poor background, they would be unable to achieve completeness. The Lord calmed them saying that not only they, but anyone that leaves everything that is close to his heart for His sake and the Gospel, will receive great rewards, not only in the life hereafter, but in this earthly life. In leaving his house and his relatives, he will receive 100 times more homes and relatives in the form of genuine Christians and their homes.

Indeed, in the initial period of Christianity, everybody was a brother and sister in Christ, and every home was opened to every Christian, was like his own home in place of the one he had left for Christ’s sake. Having renounced his home and family for Christ and the Gospel, he entered every Christian’s house as though it was his own, and found in it a new family for himself: a father, mother, brothers, sisters and children. However, the major reward was of course “in the age to come, eternal life. The term “age to come” is understood to mean the renovated world, which will be open with the resurrection of the dead, universal judgment and transfiguration of heaven and earth. The Apostles will then take part in glorifying Man-God Jesus Christ, participating through witness and intercession in His judgment of the Israel nation and all the people of the world.

Being God’s chosen people, the Jews regarded themselves as “first” among all others: and they considered that they would be first in the next world. However, the Lord pronounced that “many” of them, for their disbelief in Him as the Messiah, will find themselves “last,” while the penitent tax-collectors and sinners, as well as heathens, will be proven first.