The life belonging to man after the flesh has been forfeited by every child of Adam because of sin, even as it is written, “and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12), but God, in His wonderful love has provided for men a life that is not subject to death, a life that belongs to heaven, and this we can have in our spirits now through faith in God’s Son, and every believer shall have it in his glorified body when brought to the image of God’s Son at His coming. “Life for evermore” will be the portion of Israel (Ps. 133:3), but the saints of the present day of grace, and no doubt also all who have part in the first resurrection, will enjoy eternal life in heaven where death is unknown.
Eternal Life Manifested
In 1 John 1:1-2 we read of “that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.” The Father is presented to us as the One with whom the eternal life was before its manifestation in the Son in this world. It was a life without a beginning, and that has no end, because it is indeed eternal, and heavenly. Only One who knew the Father, and who lived in the joy of this life with Him could make this life known, for it is a life of divine relationships and affections.
To manifest this divine and eternal life it was necessary for the Son to become Man, and this He, in grace, has done, so that the Apostle can tell us that the eternal life has been made known in One “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled…the Word of life.” It was the Son of God in flesh and blood condition who made God known, and who brought before men, in His own Person, the eternal life, a new kind of life that had never been seen in this world before. The Father Himself was seen in the Son, as was also the life in which the Father lived with the Son.
Eternal Life Taught
John tells us in the verses mentioned that the eternal life was “heard,” for it was not only revealed in the Person of the Son, in all that He was before the eyes of His own, but it was also spoken of to them in the words of the Son. This the Lord also refers to in John 12:49-50, where He says, “The Father which sent me, He gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak, and I know that His commandment is life everlasting.” The substance, and the very words spoken by the Lord were given to Him by the commandment of the Father, so that they expressed the thoughts, desires, love and will of the Father.
When the Lord spoke to Nicodemus He told him first of earthly things, which he should have known, then He spoke of what He knew as belonging to heaven, the heavenly things, even of the things of eternal life. To the woman of Sychar in John 4, and to the Jews in John 5 and 6, the Lord Jesus spoke the words of eternal life, words that the Jews refused, but which were so attractive to His disciples, for Peter could say when challenged of the Lord, “Lord to whom shall we go, Thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). By refusing the Son and His words the Jews plainly declared that they were not His, but the Lord could say, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:27-28).
Eternal Life Made Available
If eternal life was to be made available to men, “the Son of Man must be lifted up” (John 3:14). The death of Christ was the only way to make the eternal life available for those who by nature and practice were far from God, and in the giving of His Son that men might have life, God has manifested His love for men. Though available for all men, only those who believe can obtain the eternal life that is found in the Son of God. The life that we have received from Adam has been forfeited, and though the soul of man is not annihilated when he dies, the life in which he lived on earth is gone for ever, and if not a believer he will be raised again, then sentenced at the great white throne. Eternal existence is not eternal life.
Again in John 6:51 we hear the Lord Jesus speaking of His death as that through which life is made available to men. In this verse He says, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” In this world the Son of God was the bread of God, but to make this bread available for men He must die; and in making the living bread available for men Jesus made eternal life available, for He says here, as also in verse 58 that the one who ate of this bread would live for ever. Living for ever is to obtain eternal life, the life made known by the Son, not eternal existence which is the portion of every man.
Eternal Life Communicated
Having finished His public ministry in John’s Gospel, then spoken privately to His disciples, the Lord Jesus spoke to His Father, and speaking as beyond the cross, He said, “As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him” (John 17:2). From His place of exaltation the Lord Jesus is now communicating the eternal life He has made available through His death, and this life is given to as many as are the gift of the Father to the Son. How blessed it is for believers in the Son of God to discover that they belong to the Father and that He has given them as a love gift to His Son.
In His prayer to the Father the Son of God tells us the nature of the eternal life He communicates to His own. It is a life in which there is the knowledge of the only true God, that is God revealed in His Name of Father, and in which we have the knowledge of Jesus Christ as His Sent One. How very wonderful it is that we have the divine and eternal life that gives us such knowledge, a knowledge in divine relationships and affections that had not been previously known. Already the Lord had spoken of the Father’s affection for them, saying, “For the Father Himself loves you, because ye have loved me” (John 16:27), but soon, in resurrection, He would reveal to them that His Father was their Father, and His God was their God. With the coming of the Holy Spirit to indwell them, the disciples would be able to enter into this new place of relationship and affection, and so enjoy the eternal life the Lord had given them through faith in Him.
Eternal Life Appropriated
We have seen from John 6 that eternal life has been made available to all by the death of Christ, but this same chapter teaches how the eternal life is appropriated. In verse 53 the Lord says, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat (or shall have eaten) the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you.” This surely means that only those who have made Christ’s death their own have the divine life that He has died to make available to us. Every true believer has accepted the very truth that Christ died for him and that only through Christ’s death has divine blessing come to him from God. Without the appropriation of Christ’s death we are dead in sin, in ignorance of God, and without the consciousness of His love.
Jesus goes on to say, “Whoso eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (verse 54). Verse 53 looks back to our first partaking of the life that is in the Son of God, but this verse views the appropriating of Christ’s death as that which daily occupies the believer. As we feed upon the death of Christ we feed upon the eternal love made known in that wondrous death, and those whose habit it is to find their delight in the divine love are those who possess eternal life. Moreover there is also made known to us that such as have eternal life in their souls now will have it in their bodies in the last day, when they are raised up at the coming of the Lord Jesus.
Then the Lord adds, “He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, dwells in me, and I in him” (verse 56). Here is the communion that we have in eternal life. As we feed upon the death of the Son of God we have communion with Him in the place that He occupies before the Father, and draw upon His infinite resources that enable us to manifest His life in testimony in this world. His abiding in us gives us the deep consciousness of His love, and allows Him to control all our thoughts and actions, as dwelling in our affections.
Eternal Life Enjoyed
We have just seen something of the way in which eternal life can be enjoyed through feeding on Christ’s death, in 1 John 1:3 we learn of the fellowship into which we have been brought through the manifestation of eternal life in the Person of the Son of God. All who have received the testimony of the Apostles are privileged to have part in Christian fellowship, in which we rejoice together in the knowledge of the Father and the Son, and in which we have fellowship with the Father and the Son. How very blessed it is to be able to speak to the Father about His Son, and to be able to speak to the Son concerning the Father whom He has made known to us.
The Testimony of Eternal Life
In 1 John 5 we have a three-fold witness from God telling of the greatness of the Son of God and of the work He has wrought for the glory of God and the blessing of His own. These witnesses are the Spirit, the water, and the blood (verse 8), and they unite to tell us as believers in the Son of God that “God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son” (Verse 11). Only the Son of God could bring to us the eternal life, no other could make it known, for of Him only could it be said, “This is the true God, and eternal life” (verse 20). In Him there has been, and is, the expression of the eternal life that was with the Father; in Him the life is now seen where He lives before the Father; through Him the life has been made available to us; by Him it is communicated, and in Him we possess it.
Our guilt and our defiled state in sin would have kept us out of God’s presence for ever, and hindered our having the life eternal, but Christ has died, and out from His side in death have come the water and the blood, the water that gives us the moral purification that removes our defilement, and the blood that has secured the propitiation that has enables God to take all our sins away. The Spirit of God who has come from a glorified Christ tells us of Him who has done this great work, making known His place before God, and ours in Him. Moreover we are indwelt by the Spirit, who becomes in us the witness of all that Christ has wrought, and of all that God has given us in Him. In this way we have within us the witness to the greatness of the Son, and the witness that eternal life is ours in the Son.
R. 13.12.68