WHAT IS ETERNAL LIFE?

JOHN 17:1-3

FEBRUARY 16, 1997

 

John Brown of Edinburgh, while expounding this chapter in the 19th century, stated, "All that is peculiar and wonderful in Christianity is here" [An Exposition of our Lord's Intercessory Prayer (Minneapolis: Klock & Klock Christian Publishers, 1978 from 1866 edition) viii].  I believe he hit upon a marvelous truth that God's great riches to us in Christ are found unfolded in our Lord's high priestly prayer.  In John 17 we find a concise explanation of the redeeming work of Jesus Christ, God's electing grace, the security of our salvation, and the manifold work of sanctification.  It is a mini-course in New Testament Christianity.

 

Chief among God's gifts to us through Christ is eternal life.  Here we do not so much see a definition of eternal life as a description of it.  Just as a definition of physical life as "a living being," cannot aptly define life, so this text offers us more of a vivid picture of eternal life rather than a sterile definition of it.  It is important that we have a good understanding of eternal life for at least two reasons:  (1) so that we will know that we possess this gift of God ourselves and (2) so that we can walk in the fullness of this life from God.  

 

So many people have a distorted view of what it means to be a Christian.  Ask a typical person on the street to describe a Christian and you may get anything from 'an American citizen' to 'a very religious person' to 'a good moral person' to 'a dull, lifeless person'.  Yet none of these describes true Christianity.  

 

Jesus used the word "life" to describe Himself and what He gives to those He redeems.  "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me" (John 14:6).  "For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself" (John 5:26).  "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies" (John 11:25).  When we begin to describe Christianity we must not think of it in organizational terms but in organic terms.  It is a life!  It is life in Jesus Christ (Colossians 3:4).

 

That is why our text is so very important to understand, for in it Jesus Christ describes eternal life as He prays to the Father.  The greatest need any person has is the need for eternal life through Jesus Christ.  Our greatest need is not to have wonderful moral lives or an enjoyable religious experience or a good feeling about ourselves.  Our great need is eternal life.  Do you have this eternal life?

 

Through Jesus Christ we have eternal life in all of its glorious dimensions.  What does this mean?

 

I.  A Gift of God through Jesus Christ

 

We must be clear in our minds that eternal life is not manufactured by the human imagination nor is it something which we ourselves earn.  So many people think that the good deeds they work will merit eternal life for them.  I received a letter this week from my good friend, Paul Lamey, a student at the University of Mobile.  He told me that another Christian college student, who attends Spring Hill College in Mobile, gave a copy of my Way to Life booklet to a Jesuit priest who teaches at the college.  He sent me the letter the priest wrote in response to it, essentially denying the saving work of Christ at the cross and faith alone in Jesus Christ, instead opting for "the life of charity" or good works as the way to salvation.  What this priest believes is not uncommon!  The Apostle Paul wrote that "the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23).  The gift of God continually gets by-passed for the merits of sinful man.  Such merit is worthy only of eternal death!

 

1.  Priceless in its cost

 

I would assert to you that eternal life is a gift, but not a cheap one.  It was not bought upon the bargain counters of the world with currency.  The gift of God is priceless in its worth and priceless in its cost.

 

We see this clearly in Jesus' opening words to the Father, "Father, the hour has come."  You may recall numerous times in the gospel when Jesus said just the opposite, "My hour has not yet come" (John 2:4; 7:6; 30; 8:20).  By this He meant that the time of His becoming sin on our behalf and enduring the wrath of God for us at the cross had not arrived.  The word for "hour" is used in this case as a point in time or a particular event, i.e., the cross followed by the resurrection and ascension.  

 

Now Jesus focuses upon "the hour" before Him.  After the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, Jesus told His disciples that "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified."  He expressed His soul anguish in the words, "Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, 'Father, save me from this hour?  But for this purpose I came to this hour.  Father, glorify Thy name" (John 12:23, 27-28a).

 

Here we see the wonders of the divine will unfolded for the redemption of God's children.  The counsel of the Godhead before the worlds were created comes to its great climactic point in human history.  The God-Man, Jesus Christ, receives in His own body the judgment and wrath of God toward sinners.  At the cross the white-hot wrath of a thrice holy God levels His holy justice upon His own spotless, blameless Son, so that those at enmity with Him might be brought into a right relationship with Him.  "Father, the hour has come."  That was the hour of our redemption!  It was there, at the cross, where divine justice and human sinfulness collided with the shedding of the priceless blood of Christ in an atoning death.  All that was necessary to save sinners was paid at the cross.  There is no more payment to be made.  Jesus declared, "It is finished!" or "Paid in full," at the completion of His redemptive work on the cross.  The resurrection was a resounding, AMEN! to the work of the cross!

 

So we see that the gift of God through Christ is priceless in its cost.    But it is also...

 

2.  Particular in its distribution

 

The hour has come for a purpose:  to accomplish God's redemptive work so that He might "give eternal life."  Eternal life is not something we give as a church or as individual Christians.  This is "the gift of God" bestowed according to His pleasure and authority.  Now Jesus speaks of this divine authority for bestowing or distributing the gift of eternal life.

 

He begins by referring to His Pre-Incarnate authority which was His before the foundation of the world.  There are three uses of the word "give" [Gk. didomi] in this verse, all referring to the idea of giving something as a gift.  "Even as Thou gavest Him authority over all mankind..."is the first use.  God the Father gave His Son authority or "absolute power" over humanity.  This is what we might call the Sovereignty of Jesus Christ over humanity.  It is an authority that certainly should be His by virtue of Him being God.  But this verse points out something more specific.  The Father Himself gave Jesus sovereign authority over mankind "on the basis of the Son's prospective obedient humiliation, death, resurrection and exaltation.  It is nothing less than the redemptive plan of God...[Don Carson, The Gospel According to John, 555].

 

This brings us to the next use of this word "give."  "Even as Thou gavest Him authority over all mankind, that to all whom Thou has given Him, He may give eternal life" [italics added].  The first use of "give" is simply a statement of something that took place before creation. God gave all mankind to the Son to be under His sovereign authority.  This means that all of humanity has the responsibility to obey Jesus Christ and bow the knee to His authority.  But we know that due to the depravity of men's hearts, they will not do this apart from a divine work of regeneration.  So the next use of "give" points to an act by the Father that has a distinction and permanency to it.  He uses the Greek perfect tense to distinguish this giving from the other two usage's of give.  The Father's gift to the Son is a gift of a people who will be redeemed and sanctified to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.  This is a gift by which the Son is glorified in His death and resurrection, since it is through His own sacrifice that these people are given a new life and new nature and will consequently, be like Jesus Christ (I John 3:1-3).

 

Notice Jesus' response to the Father's gift of a people, "...that to all whom Thou hast given Him, He may give eternal life" [italics added].  Here is one of the clearest statements of what is called "particular redemption."  It points to a particular people being given the gift of eternal life.  These are the elect of God.  The Father gives them to the Son and the Son is glorified by giving them the eternal life which He secured for them by His death and resurrection (John 10:11).  This is precisely what Jesus spoke of in John 6.  "All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out....And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day....No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day....For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father" (John 6:37, 39, 44, 65).  The Father gives to the Son a particular people for His redemptive work.

 

I pointed out in our introduction to this prayer that it is chiefly a mediatorial prayer, that is, it expresses the work of Jesus Christ as our Mediator.  His three-fold offices of Prophet, Priest, and King are exercised as our Mediator before God.  His mediation was not for potential redemption.  It was not a shedding of His blood to give man the potential to be saved.  It was an actual death for actual sinners to bring them into an actual redemption!  You might ask, "What is the value of knowing this?"  In the knowledge that Jesus actually died for me I have confidence before God and assurance for eternity.

 

John Piper, a Baptist pastor in Minneapolis, expressed this truth like this:

...in sending Christ, God has the salvation of his "children" especially in view.  It is true that "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son" (John 3:16).  But it is also true that, in sending his Son, he was especially gathering "the children of God who are scattered abroad" (John 11:52).  God's design was to offer Christ to the world, and to effect the salvation of his "children" (see I Timothy 4:10 ["For it is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers" {italics added}]).  [Future Grace, 355]


Our responsibility is not to try to decide who the children of God are, but to proclaim the gospel to "whosoever will may come."  But, personally, we have our assurance of salvation in knowing that Jesus' death was an actual death for us on the cross to save us in particular.  "Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!"

 

II.  A Relationship with God through Jesus Christ

 

Notice how Jesus further explains this gift of God being a relationship with the Godhead.  "And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."  The emphasis in the word "know" is not upon mere knowledge of facts.  We should never undervalue knowing facts or truths concerning God, yet that is not the ultimate objective in eternal life.  Instead, it is a knowledge that is best described in terms of relationship.

 

1.  An identifiable relationship

 

Jesus tells us that this relationship is with "the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."  In other words, when we truly receive eternal life as God's gracious gift to us, then we enter into a genuine relationship with the members of the Godhead.  Lest we misunderstand and think that this is merely a philosophical statement, our Lord states very clearly that our relationship is with the only true God.  

 

What an amazing statement!  We who are sinners, who are at enmity with God are now, by the gift of God, brought into a relationship with the one true God.  This God who is holy and cannot look upon sin, this God who is just so that He 'will by no means clear the guilty', this God who is righteous so that He alone upholds His perfect law brings us into relationship to Him.  

 

He affirms that this relationship is with Jesus Christ, our Mediator, as well.  The emphasis is upon the fact that Jesus has been "sent" to us.  The word used for "sent" implies that Jesus came as the personal, authoritative representative of the Godhead.  An angel did not come for he would not be qualified to redeem us.  But the Son Himself came.  James P. Boyce, Southern Seminary's first president, gives one of the clearest explanations of this in his Abstract of Systematic Theology.

This one person [i.e., Jesus Christ, the God-Man] was, therefore, able to suffer and bear the penalty of man's transgression, because, being of man's nature, he could become man's representative, and could also endure such suffering as could be inflicted upon man; yet, being God, he could give a value to such suffering, which would make it an equivalent, not to one man's penalty, but to that of the whole race [p. 291].


It is with this great God, the only true and living God, that we enter into relationship.  But we must see that this is not a formal relationship or merely a relationship on paper only.  It is...

 

2.  An intimate relationship

 

"And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee...."  The word "know" is a present tense verb, which means that our knowledge of Him continues and continues.  He is referring to a personal, intimate relationship with the living God, which grows as the years press on.  He does not mean that we know about God, rather we know God.  It is an experiential knowledge of God, a subjective experience of God grounded in the objective truth concerning God which He has given to us in His Word.  This intimate relationship develops by our trust, obedience, worship, prayer, meditation and study in His Word, our contemplation of God, our sensitivities to the prompting of His Spirit bearing witness in our own hearts.  Brethren, we are on holy ground with such a thought, for the living God has effected our redemption so that we might be brought into a relationship with Him.

 

Let me try to explain what I mean by way of contrast.  There are those who profess to be Christians who have a knowledge of the Bible but do not know God.  They can tell you Bible stories and even Bible doctrines.  They can talk of the good things that God does in this world.  They may give themselves tirelessly in service to God.  They may use all sorts of religious symbols and pageantry in the worship of God.  They may drastically alter their lifestyles because of God.  But God Himself is unknown to them.  Prayer is a formal part of their religion or an escapism rather than a time of communication with God.  Their reading of God's Word fills their minds with facts and figures, but there's no life and passion in it.  Their worship may work them into a frenzy but it does not affect their character or spiritual passions.  Their service to God is legalistic, doing various acts of good and charity because that's what they are supposed to do rather than out of a heart of devotion and delight.  They know about God but they do not know God intimately.

 

On the other hand you have someone who may not have near the knowledge of the facts and figures from the Bible as the one I just mentioned, but what he does understand breathes life into his soul.  He finds the Bible to offer him soul-nourishment and the window to understanding the glories of his God.  His heart is warmed at the proclamation or teaching of God's Word.  He hungers and thirsts for God's righteousness to be radiant through him.  When he calls to God in prayer, "Father," it is more than just formal sounding words; it is the knowledge that God is actually his Father and he is actually God's son through Christ.  His behavior is affected because of his desire to love and obey the Father and His Son.  When he sins he is grieved and ashamed, crying out for forgiveness, pleading for help to walk in obedience.  He longs to live in obedience in all things.  His passion is to be like Jesus Christ in everything.  He finds great delight in talking about his Lord and the Word of God.  He serves without the need to be patted on the back because his reward is  simply expressing his love to the Father and Son through acts of service.  His desires have changed because the Holy Spirit has breathed life into his sinful, dead nature.  He sees the hand of God at work in the circumstances of his life, he gives thanks to God for His faithfulness, he glories in the Lord.  He knows that clear, inner-witness of the Holy Spirit testifying to him that he is a child of God.  He knows about God, yes, but much more, he knows God intimately and satisfyingly.

 

My friend, does this describe you?  Certainly there will be variations in the depths of our relationship with God, but is there reality in your life that you truly know Him?  Are you one with the hymn writer who wrote,

 

 

Jesus, I my cross have taken, all to leave and follow Thee;

       Destitute, despised, forsaken, Thou from hence my all shalt be;

Perish every fond ambition, all I've sought, and hoped and known;

       Yet how rich is my condition, God and heav'n are still my own! 

[Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken, Henry F. Lyte]

 

III. A Life with God through Jesus Christ

 

Jesus called our relationship to Him, this thing we term "Christianity," eternal life.  "And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."  Eternal life is two-dimensional.

 

1.  A full life

 

The idea of eternal does not simply refer to one day going to heaven.  Yes, it includes this, but Jesus spoke of eternal life as a present reality:  "...this is eternal life," not "this shall be eternal life."  There is much more to come, indeed, but there is so much now that if we could stay awake every day for 1000 years we could not begin to fathom the depths of eternal life.

 

Eternal life demands that we see our relationship to Christ in terms of a reality; a life of fullness.  "I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly," Jesus tells us (John 10:10b).  The Apostle Paul had something of this in mind when he expressed his prayer for the Ephesian believers.

For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man; so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fulness of God.  Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.  Amen [Ephesians 3:14-21].


The essence of it is that in eternal life Jesus Christ is giving us something of His life which He experienced in perfect fullness while upon earth.  He lived as a Man in dependence upon and delight in the Father.  The same joy, peace, and life which He spoke of is that same fullness which He gives to us.  That grace, faithfulness, and gratitude He lived out in the face of suffering, He gives to us as we face the demands of life.  As John wrote, "For of His fulness we have all received, and grace upon grace" (John 1:16).  By the continual supply of divine grace, He gives us more and more of His glorious life and fullness.  He is bringing some of heaven into our own souls so that we might get a foretaste of the glories ahead.

 

Brethren, we really cannot make it in this life without His life being imparted to us day by day.  Apart from Him we will find ourselves wrapped in self-dependence, clinging to the vain hopes of the world, desiring those things that cannot satisfy, chasing after the wind of futile dreams.  

 

Think of the many terms which describe the life we have and the relationship we enjoy with Christ:  "children of God" (John 1:12), "born of God" (I John 5:1), "born of the Spirit" (John 3:8), "partakers of the divine nature" (II Peter 1:4), "begotten again" (I Peter 1:3).  All of these terms describe something that overflows with life and fullness.  We have not simply 'made a decision', we have been given a new nature, a new life, new desires, new character, new delights--all through the gift of God in Jesus Christ!

 

2.  An enduring life

 

Eternal does not have only the idea of quality but also quantity or duration.  Eternal life implies that what God has started He will never stop!  The blessed hope of the child of God is that though we face untold ills in this world, life is not over for us!  Our bodies may be racked with pain or disease, but life is not over for us.  Our life does not consist simply in the 70 to 80 years we walk upon this earth.  We go on forever in the presence of our blessed Lord.

 

Jesus gets to this point toward the end of His high priestly prayer.  "Father, I desire that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, in order that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me; for Thou didst love Me before the foundation of the world" (v. 24).  Someone may ask, 'Pastor, what is heaven like?'  I can only fumble for a few thoughts, but one thing I know about heaven, my Lord Jesus Christ is there in all of His glory and I will behold Him for eternity!  We grapple with the limitations of human vocabulary to describe heaven.  John kept using similes, 'Well, it is like..., it is like...'.  One day the similes will be gone and we will see all the magnificence of heaven and eternity.

 

I must admit that I'm often grieved by the 'hoot-nanny' ideas of heaven put forth by some of the gospel music writers.  Some of them have a man-centered, worldly view of heaven.  My friend, whatever heaven is like, you can guarantee that it is the most God-centered, God-glorifying, God-consuming, God-honoring, God-focused place in eternal existence!  God's throne is the center of it.  The Father and the Son illuminate it with their glory.  And we shall see Him as He is.  We will not be floating around like a cartoon character ghost.  We will have human bodies that have been fitted for glory, just like the body of our Lord Jesus Christ (see I Corinthians 15).  We shall bear the glorious image of Jesus Christ upon us forever (I Cor. 15:49).

 

Conclusion

 

The most important question that I can ask you, in light of what we have studied today, is this:  Do you have eternal life?  I did not ask if you will one day have it.  Do you, at this moment, have eternal life abiding in you?  To have eternal life is synonymous with saying that Jesus Christ dwells within you.  My friend, if you do not have that assurance, then I exhort you to seek the Lord this day, admit to him your desperate need for Him and His forgiveness of your sins, lay aside your self-seeking and self-dependence, and rest in the merits of Jesus Christ who died for you and rose from the grave to give you eternal life.

 

My Christian friend, in light of our Lord's words, can you live with one foot in the things of the world and one treading upon the threshold of glory?  Let us repent of any sins He has exposed and let us find our greatest delights in simply knowing Him.

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