Someone asks the biblical basis for hoping to live forever, that is, of enjoying "immortality" or deathlessness.

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According to the Bible, humans who will live forever will do so because God gives them immortality, not because they possess it already. The Bible says that only God possesses immortality -- that is, has it by his own nature (1 Tim. 6:16). By his own perfect life, substitutionary death, and victorious resurrection, Jesus Christ "conquered" Death and provided assurance to his people of life beyond the grave.

Whenever Scripture mentions "immortality" in connection with human beings, three things are always true: (1) immortality is always attributed to the saved, never to the lost; (2) immortality always applies to the whole (embodied) person, never to a disembodied "soul" or "spirit"; and (3) immortality is always God's gift in the Resurrection, never a characteristic of humans in their natural, created state. For examples, read Romans 2:7; 1 Corinthians 15:53-54 and 2 Timothy 1:10.

Biblical scholars today generally acknowledge the pagan origins of the "immortal soul" concept. It sprang from Socrates and Plato, not from Moses or Jesus or Paul. The biblical hope for life after death is the resurrection of the body, not some "death-proof" substance inside human beings.That simple recognition, after 1,500 years of nonbiblical tradition, has finally freed evangelicals and other Christians to take at face value the Bible's clearest language about the ultimate destiny of those who persistently refuse to be saved -- that they finally will "die," "perish" and be "destroyed" in hell, forever (Rom. 6:23; John 3:16; 2 Thes. 1:9).