Eternal Life in the Old Testament
Eternal Life in the Synoptic Gospels
Eternal Life in Acts and the Epistles
Eternal Life in Acts
Eternal Life in Jude's Epistle
Eternal Life in Paul's Writings
"Heavenly things"
"A well of water"
"Fruit unto life eternal"
"He that heareth My word"
"Ye search the scriptures"
"The meat which endureth to everlasting life"
The Father's Will
"I am the bread of life"
"Whoso eateth my flesh … hath eternal life"
"Thou hast the words of eternal life"
"I give unto them eternal life"
"He that hateth his life in this world"
"His commandment is life everlasting"
"Eternal life to as many as Thou hast given him"
"Eternal life, which was with the Father"
"This is the promise … eternal life"
"No murderer hath eternal life abiding in him"
"This life is in his Son"
"That ye may know that ye have eternal life"
"Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life"
The subject of eternal life is found in both the Old and New Testaments, and was frequently on the lips of the Son of God on earth. There can be little doubt that although eternal life is essentially the same, as given to men, wherever it is found, its form and character differ according to the dispensations. When the Apostle John writes of the eternal life that was with the Father, it is evidently different in character from the life given to the sheep who enter into millennial blessing on earth, as spoken by the Lord in Matthew 25.
Eternal life, given to men, is essentially the same, wherever spoken of, inasmuch as it is a divinely communicated life, and eternal in its duration; but the manifestation of the eternal life that was with the Father in the Person of the Son in Manhood, brought to light on earth a life that had never been seen before. This life did not belong to earth or to time, although manifested on earth in time; it was a life of divine relationships and affections in which there was for men the knowledge of the Father and Jesus Christ whom He had sent.
Although there are few passages in the Old Testament that speak directly of eternal life, the subject must have often engaged the minds, and been the subject of conversation, of many in Israel. This seems clear when we consider that on two occasions the Lord Jesus was asked, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Thoughtful men would contemplate the ravages and prospect of death, and wonder what lay for them beyond death.
Length of Days for Ever and Ever. In Psalm 21:4 the Psalmist is writing of God's King rejoicing in the strength and salvation of Jehovah. In resurrection He is granted His heart's desire, for He is sitting at God's right hand with "a crown of pure gold on His head," and has received what He asked of God, "even length of days for ever and ever." Of Him the Apostle John writes, "He is the True God and Eternal Life;" but here the Spirit of God presents Jesus as Israel's Messiah, and God's answer to all that He has suffered at the hands of His people. His life was taken from the earth by men, but God has given His answer to men by raising Him from the dead, where He lives in the power of an endless life (Heb. 7:16).
Length of days for ever and ever is fundamental to the truth of eternal life, wherever found, being inherent in the meaning of "eternal" or "everlasting." It contrasts the limited period of human existence in this world, and the eternal relations of those who are blessed by God in the resurrection world. What is spoken concerning Messiah in this passage in relation to eternal life is doubtless the personal hope of the Psalmist where he writes, "As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness" (Psalm 17:15).
Life For Evermore. Psalm 133 looks forward to the day when the two houses of Israel will be united under Messiah, when the brethren, so long divided, will "dwell together in unity," producing for God's pleasure a fragrance like the holy anointing oil poured upon Aaron, and bringing refreshment and prosperity from above for God's people, like that brought from the lofty heights of Hermon to the mountains of Zion. Not until then will Israel have the divine blessing promised to Abraham and to David, but secured through the precious blood of Jesus, the blood of the New Covenant.
"Life for evermore" commanded by Jehovah for Israel, will bring the nation into millennial blessing. No longer will their condition be as depicted by the valley of dry bones, but nationally resurrected they will inherit all the blessing foretold in so many prophetic utterances. After the millennial day has passed, the blessed of Israel will doubtless have their place on the new earth, when God dwells with men through His tabernacle, the New Jerusalem. So that life for evermore will be theirs for all eternity, though the truth of the eternal state could not be revealed until Christ had completed the great work that will enable God to dwell with men.
This passage, while giving the duration of the life that God's earthly people will enjoy in a coming day, also tells us something of its character. It is a life in which they will be united together in divine blessing commanded by God Himself, and fulfilling God's thoughts in the rich fragrance of the holy oil that brings before us the graces and precious features of His own Son through whom His people are blessed. It will be a life of true prosperity, with peace on earth; evil being suppressed during Christ's reign, and men able to sit under their fig trees, none daring to make them afraid.
Many Shall Awake To Everlasting Life. The first verse of Daniel 12 looks forward to "a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time." Israel will pass through the great tribulation, "The time of Jacob's trouble," and only a remnant will be reserved for blessing; for "many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting con-tempt" (verse 2). This is a national awakening from the slumber into which the nation of Israel had fallen for many centuries; it is another aspect of the resurrection of the whole house of Israel in the valley of dry bones.
Some of the nation will come under divine judgment; the rebels purged from among God's people, as foretold in Ezekiel 20:37-38; and according to Zechariah 13:8, "in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein" for the blessing of God, the blessing of eternal life of which Daniel speaks, and of which we have read in Psalm 133. It is very clearly earthly blessing that the redeemed of Israel will have, the Maschilim, who turn many to righteousness having a special part in the blessing of that day.
There seem to be but three occasions in the Synoptic Gospels where the Lord Jesus speaks of eternal life, the subject being raised with Him by the lawyer who tempted Him, and by the rich young ruler who desired the blessing of God. The third occasion was when the Lord spoke on the parable of the sheep and the goats. Matthew, Mark and Luke all write of the approach of the rich young ruler; but only Luke gives the tempting of the lawyer; and only Matthew recounts the parable of the sheep and the goats.
The Lawyer. The question raised by the lawyer, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" though given to the Lord to test Him, would probably be one often asked, but which had not been suitably answered. Since the lawyer had asked What must I do? the Lord took him up on this ground and asked him what the Law required. On his answering rightly, the Lord said, "This do, and thou shalt live." The Lord did not say, This do, and thou shalt have eternal life. Had any man been able to keep all the commandments, loving the Lord with all his heart, soul, strength and mind, and his neighbour as himself, he would not have come under the sentence of death.
To have lived on earth perpetually, as ever keeping the law, was one thing; and to have eternal life as the gift of God was quite another. The Lord does not go into the impossibility of man having life on the ground of law, but shows in the parable of the Good Samaritan that man in his natural condition could not be helped by the law, as represented by the priest and the Levite. Only by the intervention of Himself in grace could man be recovered from his hopeless condition, and provided for until He comes to take us into the full joys of eternal life.
The Rich Young Ruler. The question of the ruler was the same as that of the lawyer, but the motive was very different. There seems to have been a real desire in the heart of the ruler to obtain the blessing of God; and he evidently thought that he had met all the requirements of the law. Mark tells us that on his replying that he had kept all the commandments from his youth, "Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest."
Although having so beautiful a character, there was one thing lacking in his life that he had not been conscious of, and the Lord brings it home to him. Riches held his heart; he was not prepared to be parted from them to enter into the kingdom of God. Earthly treasure could have been used to procure heavenly treasure, but he preferred to hold on to the earthly. This so clearly showed that while professing to love his neighbour as himself, when put to the test, he evidently did not love his poor neighbour as himself. Nor was he prepared to take up the cross and follow the Lord.
As in the case of the lawyer, the Lord takes up the young ruler on the ground of the law, seeing he had asked, What must I do? If he desired to obtain life on the ground of his own works the law was there to test him; and the law not only held out life to those who kept it, but death to those who broke its commandments. The Lord, who alone could look into the deep recesses of the human heart, knew that the riches of this ruler, with the lovely character, were depriving him of true divine blessing. A heart set on earthly things was not prepared to follow a rejected Christ in whom the eternal life that he sought was alone to be found.
When Jesus spoke of how riches hindered the rich from entering the kingdom of God, His disciples were astonished, saying, "Who then can be saved?" The rich normally trusted in their riches, and only God's sovereign goodness could turn their hearts from riches to trust in Him for salvation, and the blessings of His kingdom. Peter, and his fellow disciples, had not trusted in riches or whatever they possessed; they had forsaken all to follow the Lord. For them the Lord held out a bright reward, "an hundred-fold now in this time, houses and brethren … with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life."
The possessions of the disciples as being associated with all who belonged to Christ in the present scene would be great indeed; and in the coming age there was the promise of endless life, with all that this involved. Eternal life is not spoken of by the Lord here as a present possession; in consonance with its presentation in the Old Testament, it is viewed in relation to a coming day. No child of God would wish to live for-ever in the conditions that now surround him; with Christ absent, having been crucified by the world, and still rejected by it. All around are conditions that bring grief and sorrow to the hearts of those who love Christ. Eternal life is not to be found in the hatred, evil and fear that mark this generation of mankind; it will be found in a world where Christ reigns in righteousness, and where peace and prosperity flow from His rule of equity and blessing.
The Righteous Into Life Eternal. As in His previous utterance on the subject, the Lord Jesus connects eternal life in this passage with the world to come. He is speaking of the time when as Son of Man, He "shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him." "Then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory; and before Him shall be gathered all nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth (his) sheep from the goats."
The judgment pronounced will depend on the attitude that has been adopted to His brethren, those from among the remnant of Israel who have proclaimed His kingdom among the nations. Going forth with the tidings that their King is coming to set up His kingdom, the messengers of the coming Christ were cared for by some, and neglected by others. He does not even refer here to those who had ill-treated His servants, and de-finitely rejected their message. The indifference that had declined to minister to the needy servants of the Great King is punished with eternal punishment.
Those who cared for the servants of the King are reckoned to be righteous by Him. They were quite unaware that it was to the Lord they were ministering when they were kind to His servants; nor were they seeking reward through their works. But the feelings that prompted their kindly actions to those who came with a message from the Lord manifested that they belonged to a different generation from those who rejected or neglected His message and His messengers; and His all-seeing eye took cognisance of them and of what they had done.
If eternal punishment was reserved for those who neglected the messengers of the King, eternal life was the portion for those who had befriended them. Their portion was evidently the blessings of the earthly kingdom of Christ, when, as Son of Man, He will reign over all; His earthly people having their own special place in the kingdom, and these believing Gentiles also having their own peculiar part because of their reception of Christ's messengers. As having eternal life in relation to earthly blessing, it would seem that the sheep will pass on to the renewed earth, with blessing there for evermore.
It is noticeable that neither in the preaching nor in the writings of the Apostle Peter is there mention of the term eternal life. Peter, in his First Epistle, takes us back into eternity, where he writes of Christ as a lamb "without blemish and without spot: who was verily foreordained before the foundation of the world;" and he takes us forward to "the day of eternity," with the "new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness:" and he writes of things connected with eternal life where he speaks of God having "begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you," but he does not speak specifically of "eternal life."
When Paul and Barnabas spoke the word to the Jews at Antioch in Pisidia, and after they blasphemed and contradicted, they said, "It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles." God was offering His blessing to Israel in spite of their rejection of His Son on earth, but eternal life was not only for the Jew, it was also for the Gentile; and the servants of the Lord, according to God's commandment, as seen in Isaiah 49:6, turned to the Gentiles when the Jews opposed and spoke evilly of the Lord.
On hearing the word of God, which Paul and Barnabas preached to them, many of the Gentiles believed. Luke, the writer of this Book, tells us that "as many as were ordained to eternal life believed." In spite of all the efforts of the enemy to thwart God's designs He will assuredly carry out all His counsels, and will even use the opposition of the enemy to accomplish His will. If the Jews will not have eternal life, God has those, from among the Gentiles, who will; those whom He, in the sovereignty of His love, has chosen and marked out for His favour.
Jude, like Luke in the Acts, views the blessing of eternal life in relation to God's sovereign mercy: and. as in the Synoptic Gospels and in the Old Testament, presents it in relation to the coming day.
Having warned the saints of the apostasy that will mark Christendom. and having exhorted them to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. towards the close of his short letter the Apostle writes, "But ye beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life."
With the bright prospect of eternal life before us, we are to nourish our souls with the words of the faith, and in this way, in communion with the Lord, build ourselves up in the truth of God as revealed in the Scriptures. Prayer too is to mark us; not in the formal way that marks those who are merely religious, but as under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Keeping our-selves in the love of God will mean that we feed upon divine love as made known in the cross of Christ, and realising that the love made known there is still the same, unaffected by all the evil and hatred of men that crucified the Son of God.
Eternal life, though a present possession, as John teaches, as to its full realisation is yet future, as brought out here. We are to be looking for it as the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. What mercy it will be when the Lord Jesus comes and takes us away from such a scene as Jude portrays into the joys of His kingdom and the deep eternal joys of the Father's House. This will indeed be eternal life for us! We shall be with the Son for all eternity, conformed to His image, sharing His place before the Father; entering into the full blessedness of all that God has prepared for us.
As everywhere, except in the writings of the Apostle John, Paul views eternal life as that which we shall enter into at the coming of the Lord, but, as we shall consider, in 1 Timothy 6 he exhorts us to "lay hold of eternal life:" to enjoy even now by faith and in the power of the Spirit that which we shall soon have with Christ in the coming ages.
Those Who Seek for Honour and Glory
In Romans 2, the Apostle writes of the philosophers who judged as evil in others what they practised themselves. Such would not escape the righteous judgment of God who knows the actions of men as well as their thoughts. Those "who by patient continuance seek for glory and honour and immortality" will enter into life eternal, but the contentious, who do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, will receive "indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish." In judgment, God will render to every man according to his works, whether he be Jew or Gentile.
Glory, honour and immortality will be found by those who have sought them when they enter into eternal life in the world to come. Only those who know God could seek these things in truth, for they are not to be found in this world, but only in Himself as made known in Jesus. It is true that these things were sought by saints of old, in whom God had wrought in His grace; but it was not until the Son came that death was abolished and "life and immortality" brought to light through the Gospel. These things are not only sought by the Christian, but he has found them in Christ, and soon shall share them with Christ in His kingdom and glory, when He comes to change our bodies of humiliation to fashion them like unto His own body of glory "according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things to Him-self" (Phil. 3:21).
Grace Reigns Unto Eternal Life
The second part of Romans 5 brings out the blessings that belong to the Christian under the Headship of Christ, in contrast to what we inherited naturally from Adam. From the first man we inherited the evil nature from which sin springs, and right down the ages of man's habitation of the earth "sin hath reigned unto death." Not one of Adam's race could by himself escape the sentence of death passed upon sinners, though God, in His wisdom and goodness, took Enoch and Elijah to heaven without dying, thereby showing that in spite of the sentence of death, passed upon all, He had secret resources that would bring men from under death's sentence and power.
Not until the Son came could there be the unfolding of the thoughts of God's wondrous plan, although, in the light of the New Testament, we can now see in the Old Testament the foreshadowing of what He would accomplish through His Son. In the death of Jesus the power of death was annulled, and now grace reigns. God in grace is offering His blessings through the Gospel, and all these rich blessings are to be found in Christ. We look back over the ages of time and see the ravages of the reign of sin; we see by faith the great results that God has procured in the reign of grace; and we look forward to the day when, on the ground of the redemption through which grace reigns, righteousness shall reign in this world that has for so long been the scene of every form of unrighteousness.
Grace reigns unto eternal life, for God has taken us up in the present time in view of future glory and blessing with Christ. When we reach that scene where life in its fulness will be enjoyed, grace will then be displayed, for God will display the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. In that day, "they which receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ" (verse 17). We shall have forever left behind the scene where death reigned, to reign with Christ in the life He has procured for us, and to live with Him in the deep joys of eternal life before His Father's face for ever.
The End Everlasting Life
Having been liberated from the bondage of sin, we have "become the servants of God," to be for His will and pleasure in this world. Formerly, as living in sin, there was nothing in our lives for God; all was for self, as dominated by the evil principle in our nature that hated God and His things. Now it is our delight, as having the divine nature, to come out in the features of Christ, bearing the fruits of His life for the pleasure of God. Under the control of sin there was the hatred of holiness, and we were utterly powerless to be holy or do anything relating to holiness. But the divine nature delights in holiness, and this is the fruit it produces.
The end of a life of holiness in this world is eternal life in the world to come; and this is the portion of those who have been liberated from the service of sin and brought into the service of God. Eternal life is viewed here, as in all Paul's ministry, as belonging to the end of our earthly sojourn; indeed, the great end that God has for us in another world, where all is filled with eternal joy and with what brings eternal satisfaction for the new nature that God, in His grace, has given us.
Eternal Life the Gift of God
In Romans 6:21, we have seen that God's end for His servants is eternal life: now, in the next verse, it is written, "For the wages of sin is death: but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Sin pays very severe wages to those in its service. It may offer happiness, and much that man desires: but the end of all that sin gives is death. Death comes to all who serve sin, and they cannot escape from it; no, not with all the great discoveries of men in this world. Science may prolong the lives of men for a little while, but sooner or later death comes to them as the wages of sin.
Only God can give life to men; and He gives it in the sovereignty of His love. Having come to God, and received of the riches of His grace, it is our delight to serve Him; but it is not our service that obtains for us eternal life; this eternal life is God's free gift to us. Like the rest of men, we have forfeited our natural life, the life received from Adam; but God gives us a life that death cannot touch, over which it has no power, for it is an eternal life. This life is through, or in, Jesus Christ our Lord. We never could have received this eternal life had Christ not died to make it available for us: and how precious for us to know that it is in Him that we have it.
Reaping Life Everlasting
Our life down here is a time of sowing, and as Christians we can either sow to the flesh or to the Spirit. It is a natural law that what is sown is reaped: and the spiritual law is "he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting" (Gal. 6:8). Sowing to the flesh is simply to be engaged with the things of the flesh; finding gratification in the pursuit of natural things. There is no true satisfaction in natural things, and for us they are all utterly destroyed when death comes.
How very different it is to be engaged with the things of the Spirit! The Spirit engages us with Christ, and with all that is divine in relation to Him; and those who are occupied with Christ reap life everlasting; and while life everlasting is reaped in the coming day, there is doubtless the sense of its present enjoyment, as Paul exhorts Timothy. "Lay hold on eternal life."
Believing to Life Eternal
When the Lord took up the chief of sinners, He made him the chief of His servants: but He also showed in him what His grace could do. He had been "a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious," but he obtained mercy as having done it ignorantly in unbelief 1 Tim. 1:13). Paul was taken up that God might show in him how rich His mercy is, and so that others might realise God's attitude to them.
Those who have believed the testimony concerning the Lord Jesus Christ have tasted of the same mercy, and their faith in Christ is to life eternal. God has not only taken us up for the little time of our sojourn on earth: He has saved us with eternity in view. Nothing short of life eternal is His blessing for us, and nothing less than this is to be proclaimed in the Gospel. It is wonderful that God, in the riches of His grace, has forgiven our sins; but how surpassing wonderful that we are to live with Him and with Jesus in His own house for evermore. Death lies upon all in this world, and we ourselves may be called upon to pass through death; but God has promised us life eternal.
This life eternal held out to the believer is to be laid hold of even now (1 Tim. 6:12). We are not to find our life in the things of this passing world: we are to be content with food and raiment, and to flee from the love of money and all the hurtful lusts connected with it. But we are even now to lay hold of the life that will be ours with Christ in the coining day, for this, says the Apostle is "really life." Paul touches very closely here (1 Tim. 6:12, 19) the teaching of the Apostle John. The latter presents eternal life, as we shall see, as a present possession, whereas the former looks to the full blessedness of eternal life when we are glorified with Christ; but here Paul exhorts us to enjoy in present possession what soon shall be ours in heaven with the Son of God. Paul also gets very near to John's presentation of eternal life in Colossians 3:3 where he writes, "Seek the things which are above, where the Christ is sitting at the right hand of God: have your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth; for ye have died, and your life is hid with the Christ in God." Eternal life is heavenly life; hidden from the men of this world, and enjoyed in communion with Christ. It is impossible for men of this world to know anything of the Christian's hidden divine life, for they know not God in whom our life is hidden, or the Christ with whom we have communion.
The Blessed Hope
In his Epistle to Titus, the Apostle writes of the "hope of eternal life," looking forward to the full realisation of it with Christ in glory, but he also looks back to the purpose of God in eternity, when he writes, "which God, who cannot lie, promised before the ages of time" (Titus 1:2). Between the promise and the realisation of the eternal life there has been the proclamation of it in the testimony of God, a testimony in which the Apostle Paul had a peculiar part as minister of the Gospel and minister of the church.
John writes of the manifestation of life in the Son of God here below, the eternal life that was with the Father before the ages of time: but Paul has his own peculiar presentation of it where, in 2 Timothy 1 he writes. "God who hath saved us, and has called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages of time, but has been made manifest now by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who has annulled death, and brought to light life and incorruptibility by the Glad Tidings: to which I have been appointed a herald and apostle and teacher of the nations" (vv. 8-11). Needless to say, there is nothing contradictory about the presentations of John and Paul; by the Spirit of God they give two different aspects of the same blessed life that was manifested in Jesus, and was procured for us by His death upon the cross.
The "blessed hope" for which we wait (Titus 2:13) is the "hope of eternal life" of which the Apostle writes in Titus 1:2 and Titus 3:7. In this last passage Christians are viewed as "having been justified by" God's grace, and as "heirs according to the hope of eternal life." It is when we are glorified with Christ that we shall enter into the inheritance for which we now wait, and this inheritance belongs to the eternal life that God has promised us.
This, and other writings of Paul, enable us to see clearly why Paul views eternal life in its future aspect; if the inheritance belongs to the eternal life that God has promised, it could not be fully ours until we are actually in possession of the inheritance. Now we are heirs, "heirs of God, joint-heirs with Christ," but we await with patience the coming of the Lord to share all with Him in His kingdom, and in the Father's House.
Eternal Life in John's Gospel
No. 1
The term "eternal life" (or "everlasting life," for they are the same in the original Greek) is found more often in the writings of the Apostle John than in any of the other writings of Scripture, and as often as in all the others put together. This clearly shows the importance of this subject in John's writings. Moreover, John presents this subject in a very distinctive way, for, as we shall see, he views eternal life as the present portion of all who truly believe in the Son of God. We do not have to wait until we reach heaven to possess eternal life; we already have it in the Son by faith in Him.
Life exists inherently in the Son of God, even as we read in John 1:4, "in Him was life," and this is true in regard to all life: He is the source of it, "the Originator of life," and coming into the world, "the life was the light of men." In the Son of God incarnate there was manifested "the eternal life that was with the Father," a life that had never been seen in this world before.
Eternal life in its very nature is eternal, without beginning and without end, and the Son who had ever dwelt with the Father came to reveal God and to manifest the eternal life in testimony to men. Coming into the world, the Son, as the True Light, shone for every man. It was not a testimony confined to Israel, but was for all, that all might see God in a way in which He had never been known before; but such was man's state of darkness, as under the influence of the god of this world, that he was unable to apprehend the divine light shining so brightly in the Son of God.
God had revealed Himself to Abraham as the Almighty, and to Israel as Jehovah, but eternal life was not manifested in these revelations, blessed as they were. The eternal life could not be made known until the Son came with the knowledge of the Father, for the eternal life belongs to the Name of Father, and to the relationships and affections connected with the Father and the Son. In Matthew 11:27, the Son said, "Nor does any one know the Father, but the Son, and he to whom the Son may be pleased to reveal Him." Only the Son, who ever dwells in the bosom of the Father, was competent to make God known, and in wondrous grace He laid aside His glory to be found as Man here below to bring this blessed knowledge to us.
In chapter 3 the Lord had been bringing before Nicodemus the necessity of the new birth for entry into the kingdom of God, and said, "If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?" (John 3:12). God's kingdom, in its present phase, is earthly as belonging to our sojourn on earth, but eternal life is altogether heavenly: it belongs to heaven, even if manifested by the Son of God who came down from heaven. And it is in this connection that the Lord said, "And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven" (John 3:13).
Eternal life could never have been acquired by man apart from the coming of the Son: it was impossible for any man to ascend up to heaven where eternal life belonged to have part in the joys of that blessed scene. Not even Adam innocent could have gone there, much less any of his defiled and guilty progeny. Only the Son of Man who came down from heaven to make known the mind of God could, in His own right, ascend up where He was before; and, being a Divine Person, could add, "even the Son of Man which is in heaven." Such is the mystery of His Person that the Lord could speak of Himself as being in heaven though a Man upon earth. While perfect Man, He can never cease to be what He ever was and is, the Only-begotten Son in the bosom of the Father, and dwelling in light unapproachable which no man hath seen or can see.
But His coming into the world to manifest eternal life could not communicate it to men; for this it was necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up, and of this there was a foreshadowing in Moses lifting up the brazen serpent. The Israelites who had been bitten by the serpents were dying men, and were beyond human aid; only divine intervention could procure life for them, and, at the intercession of Moses, God instructed His servant to make a serpent of brass, and whosoever looked at the brazen serpent received life.
Like the stricken Israelites, every man born into the world has been smitten, and on account of sin lies under the sentence and power of death; only the sovereign intervention of God can aid him, and we can thank God that He has come to our help in the Person of His Son. The Son of God was not only willing to come and manifest the eternal life, but also to die to make it available for us.
Although eternal life is made available to all through Christ's death, God has made it abundantly plain that it can only be procured through faith in His Son. Only the Israelites who believed Moses, and looked to the serpent of brass, were rescued from the clutch of death. And so it is with men today. Men may reason, and say, How can we receive life by believing in One who was crucified on a cross, and who did not save Himself? The simple answer is that Jesus died to take our sins away, that we might not perish in our sins; and God not only grants to us forgiveness of sins, but also communicates to us the eternal life when we believe on His Son.
Because of sin, men are perishing; and they can do nothing to save themselves. It was infinite and sovereign love that caused God to intervene on man's behalf, and to give His Son, that the one who truly believes in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life. Without eternal life, man must perish: his life on earth has been forfeited because he has sinned, but the wondrous compassion of God has been made known in sending His only Son, His love-gift to men, that they might have a life that death could not touch." HE THAT BELIEVETH … HATH EVERLASTING LIFE"
If the word in John 3:15-16 is that the one who believes should have eternal life; it is very definite in John 3:36 of the same chapter that the believer on the Son hath eternal life. The present possession of eternal life by the believer is not only stated here, but is also emphasised in John 5:24, and John 6:47, 54. It is indeed wonderful that believers can pass through this world with the sure knowledge that they now have eternal life. We do not have to wait until we get to heaven either to receive this divine life, or to learn whether it is ours or not: we have it now, and we have the assurance of possessing it now by the word of God.
Eternal life is the life that belongs to the children of God, and the veriest babe in God's family, as having the Holy Spirit can say, "Abba, Father." In writing to the babes in the family, the Apostle John says, "I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father" (1 John 2:13). God's children have been begotten of Him, and faith in the Son has enabled the believer to take his place in God's family and to know the relationships and affections that belong to all who are His children.
It was not possible for the saints of old to know that they were children of God, even though they were born of God. This knowledge awaited the revelation of the Father in the Person of the Son. We can see from John's writings how that the knowledge of our place as children is intimately bound up with the manifestation of eternal life in the Son of God, and with our possession of life in the Son in the presence of God. This enhances for us the revelations that were made by the Son incarnate, and brings out the immensity of the blessing brought to light in the Person of the Son.
The conversation between the Lord Jesus and the woman by Sychar's Well introduces to us the subject of "living water." Jesus said to the woman, "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water" (John 4:10). The Lord had come to give to men that which would satisfy the longings of the soul. In the previous chapter He had made it clear that the blessing from God was not to be confined to Israel: "For God so loved the world," went over the middle wall of partition that separated Israel from the Gentiles, and "whosoever" made it available to every man under heaven. The opening of the conversation by the Lord made it plain that He was not bound by Jewish prejudices, and that blessing for the Gentiles, though founded as all divine blessing is on the work of the cross, was available in Him while in this world.
Living water was not only the gift of God, but it was given by the Son of God come from the Father. Water from Jacob's well could only meet the present need of the body which constantly recurred, but living water meets the need of the soul for evermore. Once the soul has drunk the living water the need is for ever met, for the heavenly gift becomes in the soul a spring that rises up in thanksgiving, praise and worship to its source in God.
The well within the believer is surely the divine life that is received by the Spirit of God. For the Christian, there is not only the life within received through the Spirit, but life in the power of an indwelling Spirit. As having a divinely communicated life, the believer is able to enjoy all that has been revealed by the Son of God, all that belongs to the new life that the Son has made known. This life was not only entirely different to the life known to the woman of Sychar, but just as different from the life in which the religious leaders of Israel lived with all the ritual and ceremony of Judaism.
Unable to understand the ways of God, the disciples "marvelled that He talked with the woman" of Sychar, but they made no comment, for they evidently felt the perfection of their Master's actions even if incomprehensible to them. When they asked Jesus to eat, He told them that He had meat to eat of which they were unaware, then explained, "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work." But the disciples had been called to labour in God's harvest field as reapers, and of their labour the Lord said, "He that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal" (John 4:36).
For their work, the disciples would receive their wages, a reward that they would highly value, even as John showed in his letter to the elect lady and her children, when he wrote, "Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward" (2 John 8). This reward they will have from Christ in the day of His glory in having part with Him in His kingdom. These "wages" are not for the twelve alone, but for all who serve our Lord Jesus in faithfulness here below.
The fruit that is reaped to life eternal are those who are brought through the labours of the servants of the Lord to enjoy the blessings of eternal life. Here the fruit is gathered, but soon there will be the display of those procured for Christ's glory in that day, even as Paul wrote, "For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming? For ye are our glory and joy" (1 Thess. 2:19-20).
Almost all, if not all the mentions of eternal life in John's Gospel are from the lips of the Son of God, which surely emphasises the important place this precious subject had in the ministry of the Lord. There could not be the manifestation of the eternal life except in the Person of the Son, for He personally expressed it, but He also spoke of it in the wondrous details that are given in this Gospel. It is indissolubly bound up with the manifestation of the Father's Name, which none knew until the Son of God came into the world to make it known.
All that the Son spoke He received from the Father, and He never claimed to be the source of His communications; yet He could say "My word," for what He did speak was peculiarly His own, for He only could speak the wonderful words that the Father gave Him. In John's Gospel, the word of the Son was the divine unfolding through Him of all that lay in the Father's heart for the blessing of men, and this was bound up with the revelation of God as Father. From heaven, in Revelation 3:8, we hear the Lord say to the church in Philadelphia, "Thou … hast kept My word," a commendation that we might well value and seek. In John, His word is to be heard; in Revelation, it is to be kept.
There were many who listened to the words of the Lord Jesus who did not hear His word. To hear His word there must needs be an ear to hear, and only those in whom God had wrought had this capacity. Such an one was Mary of Bethany, who "also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard His word" (Luke 10:39). Hearing His word is a mark of a true follower of the Lord Jesus; it is the evidence of valuing and seeking to know the substance, spirit and details of the divine revelation that has been brought to men in the Person of Jesus.
Connected with the hearing of the word of the Son there was the believing on Him that sent Him, for the knowledge of the Father set forth in the word of the Son was received by faith in the hearts of those who heard His word. In John 3, the possession of eternal life depended on faith in the Son; here the faith is in the Father who sent the Son. Whatever the Jews might profess in that day, or others in this day, there can be no separation of the Son and the Father. Those who refuse to honour the Son do not honour the Father; nor can there be faith in the Father if there is no faith in the Son.
Eternal life then is the portion of all who hear the word of the Son and who have faith in the Father. It is not that they shall have it, but that they do have it. We might look at it in this way, that all who have eternal life have these two marks; they hear the testimony of the Son that He has brought from the Father, and they believe on Him who is presented to them in the testimony of the Son. We are living in a day when there is much profession, but so many who profess to be followers of Christ reject His testimony. They know not the Father revealed in the Son, never having received the divine and eternal life through faith in Him who came from God.
Those who possess eternal life will never come into judgment, for the One who came to make the life available to them through His death was about to bear the judgment for them on the cross. They will indeed be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ, to receive the things done in the body; but they themselves will never come into judgment, for all who come into judgment must receive the reward of their deeds. It is impossible to have life eternal and then be banished forever from the face of God, for this is the portion of those who will stand before the bar of Christ at the great white throne.
Already the believer, who has accepted God's testimony of and in His Son, is passed out of death into life. Death has no claim upon the one for whom Jesus died. It is true that he may be called upon to pass through the article of death; but the Son of God has already brought him into a realm of life that knows no death. This is where the believer really belongs as having eternal life; he belongs to another world altogether of which the man of the world knows nothing, the world of the Father and the Son. Death reigns in this world where the believer lives in his mixed condition, but in the realm of life in which he lives with Christ there is no death. It is as having eternal life that we are beyond the reach of death; and in this life the believer does not see or taste of death (John 8:51-52).
It was most solemn that the very people who were searching the Scriptures for eternal life were persecuting and seeking to kill the One who had come to manifest eternal life to them. Although eternal life was not to be obtained by searching the Scriptures, it would be found in Him of whom the Old Testament Scriptures spoke; and He had come to Israel, but they would not have Him. In rejecting the One who had been promised in the law and the prophets, the Jews were rejecting the only One who could give them the eternal life.
Even if there is not much said in the Old Testament of eternal life, it would appear that when the Lord was here the subject was often on the lips of the people. The lawyer and the young ruler, who came to the Lord at different times, both asked, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" The third verse of Psalm 133 was evidently much before them. They no doubt longed for the time when the kingdom would be established under Messiah, when the scattered tribes of Israel would be regathered, nevermore to separate, to enjoy "life for evermore" in a world of peace and plenty.
There had been abundant proof as to who Jesus was; He had just recalled to them the witness of John the Baptist, the works of power they had seen which He had received from the Father, and the voice of the Father which had declared Him as His beloved Son. But with these remarkable witnesses before them, and with the added witness of the Scriptures, they would not come to the Son of God to receive the life that He alone could give them. The Scribes had been able to tell Herod where Christ would be born, and many other Scriptures the leaders and people of Israel were able to quote, but their eyes were blinded, their hearts were far from God; their attitude to Jesus clearly proved that they hated the Father and the Son.
Jesus had fed the multitude with loaves and fishes, and they would gladly have made Him their king. A king who would satisfy them with bread, who was able to meet their every temporal need, they would willingly receive. It was not the miracle in itself that manifested the greatness of Christ's Person that attracted them; it was the provision He had made for their bodies. Their minds and hearts were not concerned with spiritual things; it was what was material and temporal that wholly engaged them. They did not seek Christ for Himself, but for what He was able to give.
Having exposed the motives of those who would have made Him a king, the Lord added, "Labour not for the meat which perisheth." Their whole outlook was on present things, not on things eternal. After the Lord had left the scene of the miracle they had been very diligent in seeking Him out; but they were labouring for the provision of what belonged to time and sense. He would have them to be really in earnest as regards spiritual and heavenly things.
Men today are no different. There might be great religious pretension, and abundant labour, but alas, it is for the meat which perisheth. Beneath the surface of religious activity, zeal and display, the true motive of the heart is so often self and not Christ, present things not the eternal. It may not always be the needs of the body that control men, but all their activities, whether to meet these needs, or to satisfy some ambition, can be summed up as "the meat which perisheth"; for every desire that is not for Christ will be for what comes to an end with the present life or order of things.
Our labour should be "for that meat with endureth unto everlasting life," which the Lord gives to those who seek it. This is a challenge to our every heart. Are all our energies concentrated on obtaining that which will endure, that which is divine and heavenly, that which is spiritual and eternal? Alas! so much of our lives is given up to what is perishing. We must labour to provide for things that are necessary for our present life, but present things should not absorb us or be the motive of our hearts. Christ desires to meet every longing of the heart after Himself, and after the things of the Father that He brought down from heaven to satisfy the desires God has implanted within us.
The Son of God came into the world to accomplish the Father's will, and to make it known to those the Father had given Him out of the world. For Himself, the Father's will was a delight, but it brought Him into untold suffering and sorrow; but He was prepared to pass through all that the cross involved so that His Father's will might be accomplished. But the will of the Father had infinite and eternal blessing for those who loved His Son, even as Jesus said, "For this is the will of My Father, that every one who sees the Son, and believes on Him, should have life eternal; and I will raise him up at the last day" (6:40).
There were many who looked upon Jesus who did not discern that He was the Son. Some could only regard Him as the son of the Carpenter; others thought Him to be John the Baptist, risen from the dead, or one of the prophets. It was the revelation of the Father to Simon Peter that enabled him to say, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God." That, no doubt, was a special revelation, but only the work of the Father in any man can enable him to see the Son, to discern the glory of Christ's Person so as to believe on Him.
Once again we learn that faith in the Son brings life eternal. How very important this matter is when it is so often upon the lips of the blessed Son of God. Under the law there had been the promise of life through keeping the commandments, and this the Lord had brought to the attention of the rich young ruler; but no one had ever been able to continue his life on earth on this principle of legal obedience, much less receive the blessing of eternal life. We can therefore see the reason for the Lord so often stressing that it was only by faith that eternal life could be received. There had never been any other principle on which man had obtained divine blessing; but man had been under law so that it might be made plain to all that it was impossible to get blessing by works of law.
It is not by our own will that we obtain eternal life. Left to ourselves we must have perished for ever. Even where there was the desire to receive divine blessing, as in the case of the young ruler, the love of present possessions outweighed the desire to be blessed. No one, left to himself, would ever seek after the eternal life that is in the Son of God; one might desire to be in heaven after life on earth is over, but only the working of the Father's grace could ever draw us to the Son in whom the divine blessing is for poor, wretched sinners. In wondrous grace, the Father has willed that those who see the Son, and believe on Him should have the richest blessing that it is possible for Him to bestow upon the creature.
In John 6, the feeding of the multitude was without doubt a fulfilment of Psalm 132:15, "I will abundantly bless her provision: I will satisfy her poor with bread"; though the full answer to the prophecy awaits the millennial blessing of Israel through Messiah. But the coming into the world of the Son of God could not be confined to the blessing of Israel; the counsels of God had something much greater in view, even the glory of redemption, and the procuring of a bride for His Son, and sons who would be in His own house for evermore. The work of redemption would deal with the whole question of sin, and enable God to bring into being new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness would dwell.
When the Jews realised that the Lord would not take the kingdom from their hand, and that He demanded faith in His Person, they exposed the unbelief of their hearts in saying, "What sign showest Thou then, that we may see, and believe Thee? What dost Thou work?" Then they belittled the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand when they said, "Our fathers did eat manna in the desert: as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat." It was as much as to say, The feeding of the multitude is a small matter compared with what Moses gave to Israel in the forty years' sojourn in the wilderness.
The reply of the Lord was that it was not Moses that supplied the heavenly bread; it was His Father, who was now supplying the bread of which the manna was but a type. He was the True Bread, the Bread of God, the Living Bread, the Bread of Life. The manna sustained the natural life in Israel, but "the bread of God is He which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world." The life that the Son of God had come to give unto the world was an altogether different life from that which Adam received from God, and different from anything that Israel as a nation knew as God's people in this world.
Hunger and thirst belong to man's natural life in this world, not only physically, but also in natural desire after that which will satisfy the soul; a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy. Man may gratify his natural desires; he can never satisfy them. But the life that the Lord Jesus came to impart was one in which there is true satisfaction. Every desire of the heart is satisfied not only by Him, but with Him. He is the One through whom the divine life is communicated to us, and the One in whom every desire is fully satisfied.
Life derived from Adam, even though divinely sustained, as Israel's was, by the manna, comes to an end, even as the Lord said to the Jews, "Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead." How very different is the life of those who feed upon the bread of life, even as Jesus said, "This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die."
"Life for evermore" had been promised to Israel; it had come in the Person of Jesus, "the living bread," for "if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever." A life over which death had no power was something new for this world: it was here in Jesus, but only faith could perceive it. Moreover, it was difficult for the disciples then to apprehend this, for Jesus spoke of His death, the laying down of His life before taking it again. But it was life in flesh and blood conditions He laid down, and this in order that He might make available for His own the life eternal in which they would live for evermore with Him in His Father's house, from whence He had come, and whither He was bound to prepare a place for them.
An incarnate Son of God could manifest eternal life, but if men were to receive it He must die, and they must appropriate His death. The life that man has naturally is not really life, for the sentence of death rests on it, therefore the Lord said, "Except ye shall have eaten the flesh of the Son of Man, and drunk His blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day." It is only by having Christ in us by feeding on His death that we have life in us, the life that can never die.
As we feed upon Christ's death we feed upon the love of the Father and the Son made known in that wondrous death, for the life that God has given to us is a life of divine relationships and affections that can never cease. All the relationships and affections of nature, precious as they are, are ended by death; but we shall forever feed upon the blessed affections that were made known to us in the death of the Son of God in the Father's house above, His children then as now, and the brethren of Christ.
The divine relationships and affections belong to heaven, but we enjoy them now, and in a special way as we contemplate all that God is as made known in the gift of His own Son. Our communion with and testimony to the Son of God are bound up with our appreciation of His death, which enables us to apprehend the meaning of, "He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him." Very soon we shall dwell with Him in our heavenly home, but while here it is our privilege to dwell in Him. He Himself is the dwelling place of His people; and their hearts are to be His dwelling place, so that the eternal life, in all its precious features, that were perfectly expressed in Him while here, might be continued in us in testimony for Him during His absence.
The words to which the disciples of the Lord had listened as He spoke to the Jews were very wonderful, but many who professed to be followers of the Lord were offended by them. A Christ who could satisfy them with bread they were prepared to follow, but the Son of Man who spoke of dying they would not follow. His words concerning His death were "an hard saying" for them, and they murmured against it. He would ascend up where He was before, but after He had passed through death to make His flesh and blood available for His own. They could not possess eternal life, or enter into the full blessedness of His love, unless they fed upon His death.
When the mere professors "went back, and walked no more with Him," the Lord challenged the twelve with these words, "Will ye also go away?" How noble were the words of Simon Peter, who spoke not only for himself, but for those who had been the companions of the Lord with him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life." The Person of the Son of God was the attraction for those who had been drawn to Him by the Father, and this is made most manifest in this hour of crisis, when the disciples who had been drawn by the prospect of temporal things walked no more with Jesus (John 6:66).
Moreover, the very words that had caused the false disciples to go back were the words that held the hearts of Simon and his fellows. John the Baptist had preached very powerfully, and his message of the coming kingdom had attached many to him; but he had not the words of eternal life. Such words as Jesus spoke had never been spoken before. Even the officers who were sent to apprehend Jesus, of which we read in John 7, said, "Never man spake like this man."
Peter might not have been able, at that time, to apprehend much of the meaning of what Jesus was saying, not having yet received the Holy Spirit; but the words of Jesus acted powerfully on his heart, and bound him more closely to Jesus than ever before. Whatever the detailed import of the wonderful words to which they had just listened, Peter knew them to be words of eternal life, words with their own peculiar message from God, and with a particular charm and drawing power for those who were true disciples of the Son of God.
Of these words, the Lord had just said, "The flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." The flesh, as spoken of by the Lord here, would involve the whole of man's existence in present things apart from God. Man's life naturally consists of the things that engage him in this world, and they profit him nothing because death finishes them forever. His life is a life of flesh, a life of natural desires in which he seeks to gratify the nature into which sin has entered. It is not a question here as to the evil of man's flesh, but of the whole course of human life that occupies itself with present things in contrast to the eternal things.
The words spoken by the Lord were not for the prosperity of men in temporal things, but for their eternal blessing. His words were "spirit and life." They were for the spiritual blessing of all men, and brought eternal life to whosoever received them. The life of the Lord Jesus in Manhood clearly made known that He had not come to make this world better, or to improve the lot of His disciples in it. He was not indifferent to man's lot; His sympathies and compassions were deeply affected by the sorrows and sicknesses of men.
His turning the water into wine; the healing of the nobleman's son: the healing of the man at Bethesda, and the feeding of the five thousand, had already proved that Jesus was not indifferent to the things belonging to men in this world. And later, the opening of the eyes of the blind; the raising of Lazarus; His weeping and groaning and His committing His mother to the care of John, all abundantly testify to His compassions and affections, and His regard for the relationships and conditions of human existence.
But all these things will come to an end; and only as we bring the light of heaven into the realm of natural affections and relationships, will there be any lasting profit; and it is lasting profit that was before the mind of Jesus. In the light of eternity what does it matter what a man possesses in this world? His possessions will only profit him if they are used in the service of the Lord. If they are used for the gratification of the flesh, he will find in the end that they have profited him nothing. This is not only a word for those whose lives are wholly in present things; it has a powerful voice for those of us who have received the gift of eternal life.
Oh that we let the words of the Son of God, the words of spirit and life, sink deeply into our hearts, so that we might be the more engaged with the things that are eternal, the things that the Son of God brought down from heaven, and that are in Him where He is in heaven. Very soon, the things of flesh will be forever gone, and only the things of spirit and life will remain. We shall be engaged with the Son of God in heaven when we are with Him there, but He desires that we should be occupied with Himself and His things now, the things of eternal life, while waiting to be with Him in the Father's house for eternity.
If it is impossible to define life, whether natural or eternal, it is nevertheless possible for us to apprehend in what life consists. We know that man could not live without the blood that courses through his veins, for "the life is in the blood"; and we also know that human life consists in the relationships, affections, pleasures and pursuits that belong to men. In the same way we can apprehend that divine life has been communicated to those who believe in our Lord Jesus Christ; it is altogether different from the natural life that is in flesh and blood, and is heavenly and spiritual, and ours because the Son could say, "I in them." This life also consists in divine relationships and affections, with pleasures and pursuits altogether unknown to the natural man.
In John 10 the Lord Jesus presented Himself as "the good Shepherd," who had come to lead His sheep out of the fold of Israel, so that with the sheep that He had who were not of this fold, there might be "One flock, and one Shepherd." As the Good Shepherd, He had come to lay down His life for the sheep. In no other way could He have the one flock, and bring them into the rich blessing that God had purposed for them. He was also the Door of the sheep, and said, "I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." Salvation and liberty are promised to any man, not to Israel only; and these were blessings that Israel never could have had under law.
If it was necessary for the Lord to die to secure blessing for His sheep, it was also necessary for Him to rise again to give it to them; and of this the Lord said, "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father" (John 10:17-18). The laying down of His life in obedience to the Father, called forth from the Father His love in a new way; but it was an act of the Son's own volition, as also an act of voluntary surrender.
The relationship between the Shepherd and the sheep was a very real one, and the voice of the Shepherd was only known to those who were truly His, even as Jesus said, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." The disciples were followers of Jesus because they knew His voice. There was a vital link between Jesus and His own, even the recognition of His voice, and the refusal of the voice of a stranger. Peter was held close to Jesus by His words of eternal life (John 6:68), and Mary, when the Lord rose from the dead, recognised His voice when He called her by name (John 20:16).
Salvation, liberty, pasture, and the knowledge of the Shepherd's voice had no place in the life of a man under law, and certainly not in the life of a heathen. If the Jews were bound under the law of Moses, the Gentiles were bound under sin, idolatry and superstition. But the Lord had not only come to set men free from their bondage, but to bring them an altogether new kind of life in which they could live for the pleasure and the will of God. Therefore He said, "And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand."
Jesus presents Himself as the Giver of eternal life, and well He might, for "In Him was life"; He was the source of all life. This eternal life is not only in marked contrast to the life that man has received from Adam, a life that has been corrupted by sin; but it is a life that can never be brought to an end. The one who possesses it can never perish. His life from Adam may terminate in death, but he can never perish, for the eternal life that Christ gives does not lie under death's sentence as does the life of the first man.
Those who have eternal life are in the hand of the Son, where they are eternally safe. A mere professor may perish, but one who is truly Christ's, possessing eternal life in Him, can never be plucked out of His hand. An apostate, who has professed to be a Christian, and who has given up the profession of Christianity, was never one of Christ's sheep; he never had eternal life, else he could not have become an apostate. Those who truly believe are held in the hand of the Son, and in the hand of the Father; and not all the wiles or power of Satan, or of man, can take from the loving hands of the Father and the Son those whom They have taken up for eternal blessing.
The Lord Jesus had been among those who loved Him in the beginning of John 12; then, on the next day, the multitudes of Israel had welcomed Him to Jerusalem crying, "Hosanna, Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord." Afterwards, the Greeks had come to the disciples saying, "Sirs, we would see Jesus." Here we have indicated the circles where eternal life shall be enjoyed: the saints of God of the present period; the nation of Israel when they shall be blessed through Christ their King in the millennium; and the Gentiles who, as the righteous of Matthew 25, enter the kingdom prepared for them from the "foundation of the world."
Before any in these circles could be blessed, the Corn of Wheat must fall into the ground and die, "The Son of Man must be lifted up." He was about to go into death that His own life might be communicated to those who believed in Him, that there might be much fruit, a company in His own life and nature for His pleasure, and for the glory of God. The life that He would communicate to them was not connected with this world; it was a life that could only be enjoyed with Himself on the other side of death. Those who lived for the enjoyment of the things of this world would soon lose them through death, and therefore lose everything in which they lived as men in this world. In losing his life here, the man of the world has nothing to look for afterwards, nothing but the judgment of God; but the Christian has the life that Christ has procured for him by His death upon the cross.
Soon the Lord Jesus would give up the life in which He had lived altogether for the Father. The only reason for His being in this world was the carrying out of His Father's will, which gave Him deep delight. His every thought, feeling, desire and movement was for the Father's good pleasure; and there was never a moment in which He sought to gratify Himself. This is the life for the disciple of Jesus; a life in which there is no gratification of self, and the hatred of everything that would hinder the fulfilling of the will of God. Ambition, self-seeking of every kind, and God excluded from all his thoughts, is the life of man in this world: this is the life the Christian is to hate; and he is to seek to follow in the steps of his rejected Master that the world gave a cross.
Those who choose to follow Christ, those who truly believe on Him, not only have eternal life now, but they shall have the full blessedness of eternal life in that world where they shall live with Christ for eternity. A life lived for Christ is not lost, everything for Him in our lives is carried over to the scene where we shall be His companions before the face of His Father. In this passage, John touches on the aspect of eternal life found in the writings of Paul, and in other Scriptures, where eternal life is connected with the world to come.
At the close of John 12 we have the Lord's last words to the world in testimony from the Father. He had quoted from Isaiah in relation to the unbelief of the nation, and to the judicial blindness and hardening of their hearts consequent on their refusal of His testimony. The Father had been perfectly expressed in His words, and in all that He was before their eyes, so that He said, "He that believeth in me, believeth not on me, but on Him that sent me. And he that seeth me seeth Him that sent me" (John 12:38-45). Israel's rejection of the testimony of the Son of God could not but bring judgment upon them; not only upon the nation, but upon the individuals who would be judged by His word in the last day.
The Son never claimed that anything He spoke was His own, and this made the rejection of His words the more serious for those who claimed God as their God. Every word He spoke was the Father's, for "The Father which sent me, He gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak." Not only the substance of His communications, but the very words were the Father's; and in obedience to the Father the Son made known His every word.
The words that the Father commanded the Son to speak were the words of eternal life. If the Jews did not recognise the words of eternal life, the Son knew them; and Simon Peter, earlier, had confessed that Jesus had "the words of eternal life." In rejecting His words, the Jews had refused the richest blessing that God offered to them, the richest blessing it was possible for God to offer men.
Before leaving the world to go to the Father, the Son prays to Him in relation to His testimony and His own. If Israel had rejected Him, there were those who had gladly received Him and His testimony: they were the men that the Father had given to Him. They were indeed a favoured company, loved by the Son and loved by the Father who had given them to the Son. In ascending to the Father, the Son would have authority over all flesh from the Father, and the special object of this was to give eternal life to those that the Father had given to Him (John 17:2).
The eternal life had been expressed in Him here below; He was going into death to make it available for men; and from His place above He would communicate to His own what His death had procured for them. This was the Father's will, and nothing could frustrate its accomplishment; and it gave the Son the greatest pleasure to speak of that which was so soon to be given to His loved ones as the fruit of His work upon the cross.
"This is life eternal" (John 17:3)
Here we learn that eternal life consists in the knowledge of the Father as the only true God, and of Jesus Christ, the Sent One of the Father. This precious knowledge is ours even now, as it shall be in the Father's house for evermore. To know God fully revealed in the Person of the Son is a knowledge that brings with it the affections and relationships that are eternal. How wonderful it is that we are loved by the Father in the nearest possible relationship of children!
Soon we shall enter the Father's house to dwell with Him and His Son; but there we shall know the same Father that we have known as we have passed through this world; the Father that was brought to us in Jesus, and to whom we have been brought through Jesus. It is our holy privilege to commune with the Father and the Son now, as we shall then, and this communion is in the eternal life that the Son has manifested here below, and has communicated to us from His place above. Our life on earth will soon be over, but the eternal life that we have in the Son will never be over, for we shall dwell in the affections that we now know when every hindering element shall have for ever gone. It is in the Sent One that the eternal life is; and we shall delight in this for ever that the Son came, sent by the Father, to make Him known that we might revel in His love in the scene to which the eternal life belongs.
The Apostle John opens his First Epistle with the words, "That which was from the beginning." It was the beginning of the Christian revelation in the Person of the Son of God on earth, and contrasts with the opening words of his Gospel, where he writes, "In the beginning was the Word." In the beginning takes us back into eternity, where the Son dwelt with the Father; from the beginning takes us back to the intervention of God in the Son of His bosom for the blessing of men.
In the beginning, the Son dwelt in unapproachable light, which no man hath seen, nor can see; but the Apostle can say of that which was from the beginning, "Which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life." It was the expression in time of a life that existed eternally, and in One whom men heard, who was visible to mortal eyes, whom men contemplated as before them, and whom the disciples of the Lord had touched with their hands.
Divine life was manifested by a real living Person, a Divine Person in human form, but a real Man, as really Man as God, in the complexity of being Man on earth with the nature and conditions of life that belong to men, and yet, the Only-begotten Son in the bosom of the Father. He was not an angelic visitor with a message from God; it was God Himself in Manhood manifesting in bodily form, and during the years of His sojourn on earth, something that had never been seen in this world before.
The divine life manifested is called eternal life. It is eternal as belonging to eternity, and has come out from the eternal scene into time that it might be revealed to men. No other but the Son could reveal it, for though it belonged to heaven, it was not the life of the angels, but the life that was with the Father. The eternal life, connected with the Name of Father, could not be made known apart from the manifestation of the Father's Name. It was not connected with the revelation of the Name of Almighty to Abraham, or with the Name of Jehovah to Israel, but with the Name of the Father as the only true God, that is, God fully revealed in His nature of love and in His relationship with His eternal Son.
Eternal life was something entirely new so far as this world is concerned, but it had its existence with the Father before it was manifested here. We cannot expect to understand all about this divine life any more than we can about the life of man's existence on the earth; but although these wonderful mysteries are beyond us, there is so much that has been revealed in which we can delight. For us, as we have learned from John 17, eternal life brings to men the knowledge of the Father and of Jesus Christ His Sent One; the deepest knowledge that ever entered the hearts of the creature, and bringing with it the consciousness by the Spirit of God of a love that is heavenly and divine.
It was not a life that began to exist with the Son in Manhood, for it was the manifestation of a life that was with the Father. There is that which the Son had, and has, with the Father that is not the subject of revelation, for "No man knows the Son, but the Father"; but there are those wondrous things that belonged to the Father and the Son in eternity that have come to us in the divine revelation. If there is the divine and eternal glory that is beyond the creature's ken, there is also the divine and eternal glory that the Son desires His own to behold in the Father's house, even as He said to the Father, "Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which Thou hast given me: for Thou lovest me before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24). There surely can be no doubt in any spiritual mind that this is the glory to which the Son refers in verse 5 of the same chapter, where He says, "And now, O Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was."
In the same way, there is a life given to us that be-longs to eternity, that brings us into communion with the Father and the Son, and that belongs to the Father and the Son; but this does not in any way suppose that creatures can enter into that which essentially belongs to the Persons of the Godhead. Our souls delight in God as knowing Him as our God, and as knowing that in His being He is unknowable, so great and so glorious; but this in no way detracts from the holy intimacy into which we have been brought with the Father and the Son in the enjoyment of the love made known in the Son in Manhood here.
How great was the privilege of the disciples to see the eternal life in its manifestation in Jesus, and to be the divine witnesses of it to you and me. It was specifically declared by the apostles of the Lord that we might have fellowship with them in that which they were privileged to declare in their ministry, that is in the truth of Christianity, in the life made known in Jesus. The apostles, no doubt, had their own peculiar part in fellowship with the Father and the Son, as promulgating this blessed testimony, but this precious fellowship is also ours who have received their testimony.
What joy there is for us in the knowledge of these things! Fulness of joy is to be ours even here, our cup running over in the enjoyment of the communion of what the Son has made known. We know that in His "presence is fulness of joy"; but although this will be the portion of all saints when we enter the Father's house, it can be ours even now in the company of the Father and the Son, whether as individuals, or as gathered together with the saints in assembly.
This is not the only Scripture where we have the promise of eternal life. The second verse of Titus reads, "In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began." No doubt it is the same promise that is referred to in Ephesians 3:6, God's "promise in Christ by the Gospel." This divine promise is not to be confused with the promises made to Abraham and David, which Israel inherited, for these were promises made in time, but God's promise in Christ, made known in Paul's Gospel, belonged to eternity.
Promise, in the sense in which it is used here, relates to the purpose of God which was fulfilled by the coming of His Son into the world to give effect to all that was in His heart for the blessing of men. It is clearly this in Titus and Ephesians; and even if we referred it to what the Lord Jesus said while on earth, it is still connected with the coming of the Son to fulfil His Father's will. Paul had written to the Corinthians, "For all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen, unto the glory of God by us" (2 Cor. 1:20). This would include the promises of the Old Testament as well as the New; every promise of God is affirmed and confirmed in the Son of God. The promises related to Him, and have been fulfilled in Him, and God's glory secured through all; and we have come into the present blessing through and in Christ. Even the New Covenant, which belongs to Israel, with all its promised blessing for them, brings its blessings to the saints now, as is brought out in 2 Cor. 3.
It is true that eternal life is virtually promised to Israel in Psalm 143:3, but "life for evermore" for them in the millennium is very different from the knowledge of the Father and the Son as given to the saints in this day. "Life for evermore" will indeed continue after the millennium is over; and no doubt the eternal blessing of men on the new earth — in which Israel will share, though perhaps not then in a national way, but as one of the redeemed families with whom God shall dwell — will exceed the blessing of the millennium, bringing them into new creation relationship with God where all things in heaven and earth are new.
In 1 John 2:24 we learn something more of what eternal life for us consists in, where the apostle writes, "Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that therefore which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father." And of this, John says, "And this is the promise that He hath promised us, even eternal life."
There were many agents of Satan attempting to corrupt the work of the Lord, and to take the saints away from the simplicity of Christianity. The divine safeguard for the veriest babe in the divine family was to hold fast to the truth that had been ministered to them through the apostles, for this is what had been from the beginning. Christ's apostles had been with Him from the beginning, they had witnessed the manifestation of eternal life in the Son, and had been sent forth by Him as His witnesses, and had been empowered by the Holy Spirit in their witness; so that anything contrary to the apostolic witness was not of God.
The apostolic witness was to be held vitally in the saints. It was not simply doctrine received from men, but the very word of God; and this has been brought to us in the pages of inspiration. There is no other means of knowing that which is from the beginning but from the Scriptures. All other authority is human, and is to be rejected by the saints of God. Anything which challenges the sole authority of Scripture over the saints of God is to be refused as not of God. The truth as to Christ's Person and work, the revelation of God in the Son, and the manifestation of eternal life, are vital truths, and only those who hold them have eternal life.
To have the truth ministered from the beginning of the Christian revelation abiding in us will ensure that we abide in the Son and in the Father. This is what a true Christian really is, one who abides in the Son and in the Father. It teaches that there is a vital link between every true believer and the Son of God and the Father whom He revealed; and the vital link depends on the place the Christian revelation has in his heart. Every one who, in his heart, holds the truth of God, is in communion with the Son and with the Father.
There is doubtless the practical aspect of this as well as the vital link with the Son and the Father; but the primal aspect is that which we have considered, living union through the indwelling word of God. It is in the measure that we practically dwell on the truth in communion with the Father and the Son that we enter into the enjoyment of the eternal life that God has given to us.
It was a most serious matter for anyone who professed Christianity to listen to the "many antichrists" who had apostatized, leaving the Christian circle, and giving up the vital truths of the deity of Christ, the reality of His Manhood, and His propitiatory work. This is the reason for the "If." Mere professors and apostates come under the influence of the many antichrists; and the saints of God had also to beware of their pernicious teaching.
We are living in a day when many professors of Christianity have turned away from the doctrine of Christ, and speak as if the truths relating to Christ's Person and work were of little consequence; but the apostle tells us here that these truths are of the utmost importance, and only those who hold them firmly in their hearts are vitally linked with the Father and the Son, and so have eternal life.
How wonderful it is to contemplate that into a scene of death the Son of God has brought a life that death cannot touch, a life that belongs to heaven, and that has been communicated to men who have proved themselves unfit to live on earth, but who have been made fit by the work of Christ, and by the work of God within them, to live forever in heaven in relationship with the Son of God and with the Father whom He revealed. How precious are the holy affections that belong to the eternal life, known and enjoyed now by the family of God in their sojourn in this world. This is the "manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us" in now calling us His children, and assuring us that the day is soon coming when we shall be like Jesus, and see Him as He is.
This Scripture supposes that there are those who have eternal life abiding in them. Righteousness and love are the marks of those who belong to the family of God, and these are the features of the divine life that God has given to His children. The features of the children of the devil are hatred and murder, as evinced in Cain, who slew his brother "because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous" (1 John 3:12).
It should occasion no surprise that the Christian is the object of this world's malice and hatred, for the Lord said to His disciples, "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you" (John 15:18); and again, "Now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father" (verse 24). If our Master was and is hated by the world, as His disciples we can expect no other treatment; if the world hated the Father as seen in the Son, what else can the children of the Father look for?
But the heart of the true believer goes out to every other true believer, and because he has the divine nature. The expression of the divine nature can only call forth affection from all who have this nature. The sense in our souls that we love the brethren, that is those who are the children of God, is the proof to us that we belong to the family of God, and that we have passed "from death unto life." It is in the new life that we have received from God that there is the affection for the children of God.
Every professed Christian has taken the place of being a brother in Christ, but his attitude to the expression of the divine nature in one of God's children evinces whether he has the divine life or not. If he does not love the true child of God he has not passed from death unto life; he still remains unregenerate, dead in trespasses and sins. His position is the more serious because of his pretension. And this is where so many are in Christendom today. There is a large profession, but so relatively few who are truly children of God as having been born again.
Water baptism can never make one a child of God; there must be a divine work within the soul, even as the Lord Jesus said, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." There must be the cleansing efficacy of God's word in the power of the Spirit of God to produce a new life that manifests and loves the features that were seen in all their perfection in Jesus, and that now come out in the family of God for His pleasure.
Cain was a murderer, and the murderous hatred of his brother was in his heart before he actually slew him. So it was with the leaders of Israel who, with wicked hands, crucified and slew the Son of God. Jesus convicted them of their hatred to Him before they actually slew Him. Every one with hatred in his heart towards a Christian, because he is a Christian, is viewed by God as a murderer. God can and does look into the heart, and judges the motives and feelings of the heart; and where there is the hatred of the one who manifests the divine life, God calls it murder.
Where there is hatred in the heart towards one who evinces the beautiful traits of the divine life, there cannot be eternal life. Divine love and hatred of divine love cannot exist together in the human heart; so that one with hatred of divine love is exposed as not having the eternal life in which there is the knowledge and the expression of the love of God. It was the shedding abroad in our hearts, by the Spirit of God, of the love of God, that drove every bit of hatred from us towards God and towards those who are His.
But the divine love that was shed abroad in our hearts, and that is manifested in the children of God, has its origin in God, and found its expression in the cross of Christ, even as we read, "Hereby perceive we the love, because He laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." Those with eternal life abiding in them should be prepared to go to the extent to which Christ went in love for us; but we may not be called upon to lay down our lives for the brethren, only to meet the needs of those in want.
There are three witnesses that God has given to us, each with a peculiar witness, but unitedly telling us that "God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son" (v. 11). The blood witnesses to accomplished redemption, the water to moral purification, and these from the side of Christ, dead on the cross, witness to the love that procured propitiation and purification for us. They also witness to the greatness of Him who accomplished this great work for God's glory and our blessing.
The Spirit has come from a glorified Christ to witness to His glory, and to give us the witness of the divine life communicated by and in the Son of God. Eternal life is God's gift to us; it is in His Son; and the Spirit within us is the witness that we possess it in the Son. We could not have eternal life independently of the Son, for, we read in the next verse, "He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life."
The test of life is the possession, by faith, and by the Spirit of God, of the Son of God. Where there is not living faith in the glorious Son of God, who gave Himself for our sins, and who lives in the presence of the Father, there is not the possession of eternal life. To have the Son involves the acceptance of His deity, true humanity, and finished work on the cross to accomplish propitiation. The refusal of any of these great truths means that the Son is not known in the heart, whatever the profession with the lip.
John's Epistle was written that believers might know what eternal life really consisted in; its manifestation in the Son here below, its being promised of God. its abiding in those who express the features of obedience, righteousness and love, and its witness in us by the Holy Spirit as possessed in the Son of God. The Gospel of John was written "that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His Name" (John 20:31). Here, the address is to believers; not that they might have life, but rather that they might have the knowledge of the things relating to eternal life (1 John 5:13).
We have not to wait until we reach the Father's house to know what eternal life is, or to know that it is ours. It is the life that was with the Father, and it belongs to His children, as the Apostle wrote earlier, "Beloved, now are we the children of God." Our part, in glory with the Son, has not yet been manifested; but we already know that we shall come out in the likeness of Jesus, and that we shall be with Him in the Father's house. There we shall see Him, not as He was in the path of His humiliation, but in the glory in which He now is before the face of the Father.
Eternal life has been given to us that its features, so perfectly manifested in the Son of God, might be seen in us while waiting for our heavenly part where we shall have it in its full enjoyment for evermore.
In chapter 1 of this epistle, the eternal life was manifested in Him who is the Word of life, and in 1 John 5:11 the life is presented as in God's Son; now we have the Son brought before us in His Godhead glory, and in His Person, the eternal life. What holy mysteries are in the Son of God! How wonderful it is to behold Him, a Man among men, His Manhood full, perfect and complete; and yet the One who is God, the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in Him in Manhood here below, and in Him where He now is in heaven above.
We have heard that the Son of God is come, and we have believed it, but we also "know that the Son of God is come." This is a knowledge that springs from the indwelling Spirit, and as permeating all that we are as having the divine life and nature of the Son, and as having our life practically in communion with the Father and the Son and with those who belong to God. Every association that we have as Christians is because the Son of God has come, and every relationship that we have in this world is coloured and ordered by our association with the risen Son of God. We never would have been united with the children of God apart from the coming of Jesus, and every thought, desire, movement and feeling that is of God attests to and assures us of this great fact that the Son of God has come into this world from the Father.
The Son of God has given to us the knowledge of God as One that is true; One on whom we can rely with the utmost confidence because of what He is as seen in the Son. Our hearts rest with assurance and delight in God as One who is altogether reliable, and who is altogether what He was as seen in Jesus. In Revelation 3:7, Jesus is brought before us as "He that is holy, He that is true"; and this is exactly what God is as revealed in Jesus: One in whom we can trust implicitly at all times, for He cannot be inconsistent with Himself as The True.
Moreover, God has given us part with His Son before His face as being "in Him that is true, even in His Son, Jesus Christ." We are accepted before God in all that the Son is as Him that is true. The favour in which He is, as so delightful to God, as being the expression of what He is, is the favour in which we are before His face. The love that rests upon Him that is true is the love that rests on those who are in Him before the Father. Nothing can exceed the blessedness of the place that the Father has given to us as blessed in His Son in His presence; for being in the Son we have the eternal life manifested by the Son and which is seen in His Person.
While we rejoice in all that we have in association with the Son of God, we are never to forget who He is in His own Person — the object of our adoration and worship — the true God. What is said of the Father in John 17:3 by the Son, is said here of the Son. This surely calls forth from our hearts the homage of which He is justly due; for we are called upon "to honour the Son" even as we honour the Father.
And the Son is the eternal life, for everything relating to the life that belongs to heaven, the eternal life that was with the Father, and was manifested here below in the Son, is seen in His own Person now. He is the Eternal Life; He was the Eternal Life here below as in eternity, and ever shall be the Eternal Life.