IN THE previous verse we heard Jesus say that the gift he was to purchase and give to his people is the gift of eternal life. This gift cost him the humbling of himself to become human and live for us, and then cost him his life and the sufferings of hell to redeem us. In this verse before us Jesus tells us the nature of this gift. The gift is promised and mentioned so many times in the New Testament, but we rarely are given a description of it. Perhaps this is because we shall not really be able to appreciate the wonder of the gift, until we receive the fulness of it in glory. However here at least and in 1 John 5:20 we are given an explanation of what eternal life is and will be. 1 John 5:20 reads like this "We know also that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true - even in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life." I guess that all of us have speculated over what it will be like to have eternal life in the future. It is immediately attractive because death is an anathema to us and deep down within us it is feared. We know that really we were created originally for immortality. We understand that death, and eternal death is something very dreadful, so eternal life is the answer. We think of it in terms of a life of bliss, where all the pains and trials of this earthly life will be no more. We go to the last two chapters of Revelation for this, where we read there will be no more sorrow or tears. When we think more deeply endless life has a fearful quality about it, even though we understand that eternal life will be in a timeless existence, so the passing of time as we know it now will not exist. Even this, however, is difficult to conceive. What we need to know is the nature of eternal life so that we may really know that it will be life of infinite fulfilment. The words of Jesus in our text does in fact give us this assurance, even though our understanding must be limited in this life. THE NATURE OF ETERNAL LIFE The great revelation which Jesus gives here is that eternal life is to know God. With the verse in 1 John we can add 'to be in God'. This will be true understanding of God, which will be deeply satisfying. This will not mean that we will know all there is to know about God. That will never be, and such knowledge of God as we will know will be the increasing joy of eternity. God being so great and immense, eternity will not be enough to ever get to know him, let alone give him the praise that is his due. The knowledge of God that Jesus is speaking of is the knowledge of meeting with and becoming the friend and lover of God, and to dwell with God and have fellowship with him. We meet a person and we say that we know that person. When we have had much more contact with a person, so that we have developed a sincere friendship and done much together, then we may say we know that person really well. This is the sort of knowledge of God that Jesus is speaking of here and which he gives to his people. It is not simply an intellectual understanding gained by studying the Bible, though this is of very great value. This is why when we read that Jesus gives eternal life to us as soon as we believe, we can truly experience it, because faith in Jesus means that fellowship with God is restored and we are made to sit in heavenly places with Christ. Immediately, as soon as we believe unto salvation, we know God as our friend and Father. This knowledge, this experience of eternal life, increases as our fellowship with God increases and we find ourselves more deeply to be found in him, and increasing in the knowledge of his love. This experience of eternal life grows with every new experience of his presence and loving dealing with us, as he works in us to will and to do of his good pleasure. We begin to enter more into eternal life as we know God as Father and all that this means. In a word, eternal life is this relationship with God which was lost by Adam. Adam sinned and lost eternal life. In the Garden of Eden Adam experienced eternal life on probation. He was on probation for all the human race. When he sinned not only did he die and lose eternal life, but all humanity did also. Christ, the second Adam, was also under probation for us when he became incarnate, so that we may be granted eternal life. Unlike Adam there was no doubt about the outcome of Christ’s doing and dying. He would glorify the Father and provide for his people eternal life. Now in Christ we have eternal life restored, which is to know God, that is to live in fellowship and love with him again. The deep joy and satisfaction for Adam and Eve in paradise was not so much in all the material provision and the totally healthy bodies and the beauty all around them, but rather that God walked with them in the cool of the day, and they knew fellowship and love in his presence. This was their joy because they were created for this very thing to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. We have been so created that we can never know fulfilment and peace unless we are in God and dwelling with God and having fellowship with God. Such is our creation that when we have this constant and deep fellowship and living with and in God, we are truly fulfilled and with a joy unspeakable and full of glory. This is why our experience of eternal life now is so partial, and will be partial, until we get to glory. Eternal life, therefore, in heaven will be total happiness and contentment. We shall never in fellowship with God know boredom, or dissatisfaction, or emptiness or any of the other inner experiences that we find destroying the fulness of living here on earth. Because we have been created for God, so in eternity we will never feel that time stretches endlessly and hopelessly on, not just because we will be in a timeless situation, but rather that we possess eternal life, that is we know God and his love and dwell in him and with him in uninterrupted communion. This will be fulfilment because this is how God created us and what he created us for. THE EXPERIENCE OF ETERNAL LIFE Our text also says that eternal life is found in knowing "Jesus Christ, whom you have sent". According to what we have already considered about the nature of eternal life under the heading of knowing God, as Jesus is God, eternal life consists in fellowship with Jesus as friend and Saviour and Lord. However these words have additional meaning for us, for it is in Jesus and through Jesus that we are able to have fellowship with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is essential to life that we are holy. Adam lost life because he sinned and ceased to be holy. Fellowship with God cannot be maintained when sin defiles a soul. To dwell in God's presence we must be holy. Fellowship with God is only possible where there is the absence of sins defilement, because God and evil cannot dwell together. Eternal life is to know Jesus Christ because it is only in Jesus Christ and through him that we sinners can be holy. The moment we believe on Jesus as our sin bearer and Saviour that moment we are accounted holy in God's sight, and fellowship with the Father and the Son is renewed. When we believe we taste the first experiences of eternal life, because God owns us as his people and sees no fault in us whatsoever. This is not to say that we cease to sin, or that our bodies are not still corrupt. What has happened is that all the perfect righteousness of Jesus is made over to us and accounted as ours. The law of God is now no more offended or transgressed because the Saviour has met all its holy demands on behalf of the believer. When God looks upon us in Christ he sees only the perfect righteousness of his holy Son, and we are thus beautiful in his eyes. Because of the righteousness of Jesus accounted to us there is no offence which defiles us, and our fellowship with God is restored. Eternal Life is ours from that moment, and because the righteousness by which we are blest, is not ours but that of the Lord Jesus, which righteousness is entirely perfect, we can never ever again lose eternal life. God will never cast us out of his presence again. But this is not all. For all eternity our fellowship with God and thus our enjoyment of eternal life will always rest on the perfect holiness of Jesus imputed to us, but here and now we are still plagued with our sinful bodies, which clouds our enjoyment and experience of eternal life, and causes us much failure and sin. The first thing we can say to this is that we are created holy by the regeneration of the Spirit, through our being joined to Christ by faith, and so sharing in Christ's resurrection. This does not change our bodies on earth which remain until death the cause of failure and sin, and brings the continual conflict between the flesh and the spirit in our lives. Being in Christ we are risen with him, and are restored to fellowship with God as we sit in heavenly places with Christ. This new life has created a new person which is described by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 4:24 as "created to be like God in righteousness and true holiness." This is the new person which Jesus has made us. Whereas we were dead in trespasses and sins, now we are alive unto God. This new resurrected person has been created. This person is entirely new. The old one died with and in Christ, and is no more. The old person died because of sin with Christ upon the cross. A new creation was brought into being. This new creation is holy as God is holy and righteous as God is righteous. It can never sin again, even though it dwells in the temporal sphere within a corrupt and fallen flesh which does sin. In this new creation we really know God and have fellowship with him, and even now, as we put on this new self as Paul encourages us to, we enjoy the delights of the presence of God which is real life, and the full contentment of our being. This eternal life experience causes the believer to triumph over the trials of this earthly life. It is because of this new creation that we have these blessed characteristics of eternal life, which are to pray and be able to talk to God, and to hear God speaking to us in his Word in accents all divine. This is not simply an academic understanding of the meaning of the text, but hearing God as his life giving word is applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit and as we know we have had an encounter of love with God. This eternal life granted by the new creation is the love of God shed abroad in our hearts, and the love for God that goes with it. It is the vision of the glory and beauty of God so that we just want, in the words of the song, "to praise you Lord". This new creation brings the experience of eternal life of belonging to the family of God, and knowing and loving our brothers and sisters in Christ, and enjoying their company. There is also the experience given in eternal life of feeling and knowing that we do no more belong to this life, but heaven is our home, for which we long with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Thus even now we know this blessed fellowship with God in ever increasing measure which is the eternal life Jesus has and is giving us. But there is more, for bound up in the gift of Christ is the perfect righteousness through the resurrection of our bodies. Paul cried in pain "who shall deliver me from the body of this death", by which he meant this corrupt and sinful body, which while we are in this life gives the Christian such pain and trouble. Paul's reply was "Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord". He meant by this that he believed in the resurrection of the body; that he believed that Christ's atoning and saving work included every part of us, as well as our bodies, so that we may be completely holy and free from all sin forever, and so have perfect uninterrupted fellowship with God always and all the time. He looked forward to the complete redemption purchased by Christ, when through physical death this body of sin would be finally destroyed, and in the life of heaven he would receive a new resurrection body totally free from corruption. This will be the perfection of the gift of eternal life Jesus gives us. Great will be the day, when having departed this life, we shall stand before the throne not only clothed in the perfect righteousness of Jesus, but arraigned in that new body like Christ's resurrection body, making eternal life now complete in us forever. CONCLUSION How wonderful and blessed is this gift of eternal life which Jesus in pure grace bestows upon us whom the Father has given to him. It is and will be the return of the experience of life creation was meant to give us, which now redemption has won back for us. Let us live in the blessings of eternal life even now as we avail ourselves more and more of the blessed privilege of Christ's doing and dying for us, which is restored fellowship with God. This is the essence and the only real and true Christian experience. Let us also look forward with longing for the day, when our Lord and Saviour calls us home to his eternal glory, for there and then eternal life will be fully complete, and we will have been brought into the fulness of eternal life which is fellowship with God. |