ETERNAL LIFE

ETERNAL LIFE

(Notes have been added on pages 43 and 45 because of questions raised)

I doubt if the truth of eternal life in its connection with either christians or Israel can be rightly understood without an apprehension, on the one hand, of the general force with which the term is employed in Scripture, and on the other, of its modifications in connection with dispensations. To use the term, in the literal meaning of the words, would convey little definite idea, since we are conscious that every living soul has an eternal existence with God or without God. But if we first look at the subject as referred to in the Old Testament we shall be helped in apprehending its moral force. The Old Testament, though it may give us glimpses of resurrection and heavenly hopes, in general occupies us with the world as the scene of man’s responsibility and God’s moral government; hence, as to the judgment and penalty of sin, whatever may have been involved, it did not go beyond death, i.e., the cutting off of man’s life here; and that death was thus dreaded by saints we find with Hezekiah, “I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave: I am deprived of the residue of my years. I said, I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord, in the land of the living: I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world” (Isaiah 38: 10, 11), and so continually in the Psalms. Now it is in the Old Testament that we have the first allusions (prophetically) to eternal life. They are contained, as has been often pointed out, in Psalm 133, “For there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore”; and in Daniel 12, “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt”. I do not think it can be contested that the thought in these expressions is of a life of continued blessing here on the earth in the favour and under the government of God consequent on the power of sin being broken, and creation delivered from the bondage of corruption. Now we know that this will be brought about by Christ as the fruit of redemption (the creation awaits the revelation of the sons of God), and will be enjoyed by the godly remnant in Israel, they being born again of water and of the Spirit, and the law written in their hearts, and by many among the Gentiles. They will be in the conditions of human life down here, while the foundation of their moral being will be the new birth. Christ will be the source of their life as of all life for man. The ministry of all earthly blessing will be to them through Christ as David’s Son, and consequent on His having entered within the veil, as the High Priest, and come out to them. Heaven will pour out by the Spirit its blessings on the earth. Under such conditions will eternal life be known by the earthly saints. I have referred to this because it seems to show that eternal life stands in contrast to human life marred by sin and under the power of death which is its present condition here.

^[p. 42] When we come to the New Testament we find the thought of eternal life evidently having a certain place in the minds of the Jews; and in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) though connected by the Lord with the coming age, the testimony as to it does not generally go, in its scope, beyond life and blessing in this world. I have said ‘generally’ because the Lord spoke in Matthew 19:29, and parallel passages, not only according to what had been predicated in the Old Testament, but according to His perfect knowledge of the fulness of the words.

But when we come to the later writings of Paul (Timothy and Titus) we not only find peculiar prominence given to the truth of eternal life, but a scope and bearing connected with it, such as is not found in the Old Testament or hardly even in the synoptic gospels, though the same thought remains of a life and state of blessing in contrast to man’s transitory life here under the power of sin, and liable to death. It is shown as promised of God that cannot lie before the world began, connected with a purpose and grace given to us in Christ Jesus before the world was, and Paul speaks of himself as apostle according to the hope of it. But what gives to it its peculiar and distinctive character, and even contrast to the thought in the Old Testament, is that it is life ‘in Christ Jesus’ — the risen, glorified Man, the heavenly Man in contrast to the earthly, the new man in contrast to the old. Eternal life is to be known and enjoyed in Him in the glorious scene into which He has entered as Man, in the virtue and power of redemption. “As he is, so are we in this world”. The consequence of this is that we must connect eternal life now with the new and heavenly condition of man in glory, as is seen in Christ glorified, instead of (as will be the case hereafter) with man in human life and circumstances down here.

Now when we consider the application of this to the believer we must bear in mind that the new and ^[p. 43] heavenly Man, with which eternal life is connected, is distinct and apart from the life and circumstances of men down here. This is clearly seen in Christ, whose life is taken from the earth. It is as the risen glorified Man He is said to be the true God and eternal life.^† Hence new birth, always necessary if man has to say to God, does not wholly bring in that of which I have spoken. Christ, the heavenly Man, must be received, and that too through the testimony to a work by which He has removed, as before God, all that we were morally in the flesh that every one believing in Him might not perish but have eternal life. Thus we begin in Christ, having received Him, and live in Him where He is, in the Spirit, not in the flesh — we begin thus as babes, and by the ministry of Christ to our souls, increase and grow up in Him, and Paul always looks to our being full grown in Him; but it is evident that this, in itself, is distinct from human life, circumstances and relationships here below. It is a life which has its source and spring and seat in Christ, and in which the believer, in the power of the Spirit, realises by faith the new and heavenly being which he is in Christ for God, in which he grows from the babe to the man, and in which he will be perfected in glory according to the image of the heavenly. It is Christ.

But there still remains to be considered the way in which eternal life is presented to us in the writings of John. I doubt if a complete idea of what eternal life is can be gathered from any single statement, as very often two sides of a truth are shown separately in Scripture, and this appears often to be the case in John’s gospel. For instance, in John 3, we have the statement that the Son of man must be lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, pointing

^†So declared to be in full revelation, but ever such as to the essential glory of His Person.

^[p. 44] to the judgment in the cross of man’s moral condition in the flesh, and the removal thus of the distance that stood between God and man by reason of sin, so that man might be in the presence of God, revealed in the Son, consistently with divine righteousness. Thus we have one side of the truth connected with the free gift of eternal life, and in chapter 4 we have the other, the water that Christ gives, the well of water in the believer springing up unto eternal life. Christ formed and living in the believer in the energy of the Holy Spirit. Man as in the flesh here is completely set aside. As the fruit of redemption he finds himself in a new and blessed order of things with a new and suited being, and an energy within given of Christ. We have much the same thing in John 20. Redemption being accomplished Christ first announces to the disciples the new and blessed place of association with Himself in the presence of His Father and their Father, and His God and their God, which He had secured for them. He afterwards breathes on them, communicating to them the Holy Spirit, to be the energy of life within them, while they waited for the risen glorious condition in which they would be fully conformed to Himself. Thus again we see the two sides of the truth. It may be added that in John truths are seen in their nature and principle, or as we might say abstractly, rather than in the mode in which they connect themselves with saints in spiritual growth. The blessings which are peculiarly ours, and the divine nature of which we are partakers, are thus shown to us in their own proper characteristics without modification because of the actual condition of saints.

It may be added further that with John eternal life is seen in its essential nature rather than in form, and this, whether as in Christ, or as given to believers — and it is for this reason I judge that we do not find quite the same line taken in regard of growth, though the principles are the same. Eternal life is given, and is ^[p. 45] in the Son, and we have it as having Him. We are in Him, though not yet out of the old condition here, save morally by His death, and we live by Him in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is not so much with John the question of stature, or of our being perfected, as of eternal life in its principle and nature; hence with John it is viewed as present.

Eternal life has been spoken of as consisting in the ‘out-of-the-world heavenly condition of relationship and being’, in which the Lord was here alone in the world. (See ‘Bible Treasury’, 1867.) This condition has its full display and perfection in the Son as the risen glorious Man out of death, in which, as Son of man, He had glorified God. ‘He is the true God, and eternal life’. Eternal life is in the Son. But as to what eternal life is essentially (in relationship and moral being) it was ever with the Father in the Person of the Son, and manifested in Him to His disciples here in the days of His flesh, though they also saw and handled the Lord in His risen condition. It was ever an integral part of the Person of the Eternal Son,^† but such as could according to the divine counsels be connected with manhood and be imparted to men. But we must remember that in addition to this is the incommunicable glory of His Person as the only-begotten Son. The apostles, however dull they may have been as to intelligence, contemplated His glory as of an only-begotten one with a Father. Some of them were eye-witnesses of His majesty on the holy mount. We, real and blessed as is our completeness in Him, worship Him as One in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Further, the Lord prayed for all those whom the Father had given Him that they might be with Him where He is so as to have the unspeakable blessedness of beholding His glory, which the Father had given Him, for He loved Him before

^†In moral qualities and characteristics, but not in itself, involving attributes proper to deity.

^[p. 46] the foundation of the world. All this maintains before the soul the peculiar proper glory of His Person, which every christian heart would cherish above and distinct from all the blessing into which he is himself brought in the Son. ‘He is the true God, and eternal life’.

It is evident that the above statement of what eternal life consists in, involves a wholly new sphere for man, and a new man in that sphere. The garden of Eden would not have suited an ‘out-of-the-world heavenly condition of relationship and being’. It belongs to and demands another scene and order of things. Hence, when for the first time the Lord refers to the subject (in John 3) He speaks of “the Son of man which is in heaven”, though bodily He was then on earth. And when in John 17: 3 He describes its form and character for us now that He is in glory, He says, “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent”. I think the above is sufficient to show how essential the idea of a new sphere, or order of things, is to the consideration of eternal life. In fact, the truth of eternal life as a present blessing cannot be grasped without it. Now eternal life was essentially ever in that sphere in the Son with the Father, nor did it cease to be so when it was manifested here, though there was another side to the Person of Him in whom it was manifested, in that He had entered into human life in its earthly conditions. But now eternal life has its full and perfect expression according to the counsels of God in Him as the risen glorified Man with the Father, and we are in Him there. We see thus with John the two great thoughts, a new and heavenly Man and a new sphere for man, and both to be realised and enjoyed by the soul that has received Christ now, even before he has done with his earthly existence here.

The way in which eternal life is given to us, is not ^[p. 47] yet in the glorified condition which properly belongs to it, but in the power of the Spirit and in faith; we are not yet perfected. It must be remembered that for us eternal life consists in a new man, and not simply in a new vitality. It is a new creation in us by the quickening power of God.

I add a word to show how, in God’s ways, righteousness is intimately connected with life. There is a divinely formed state which accords with the believer’s standing, as may be seen in the expression, ‘justification of life’, in Romans 5. This is manifestly beyond justification from offences.

The latter refers to us as men down here. We are justified in the scene of our responsibility, where we had been guilty, and, as a consequence, have peace with God. But divine righteousness in its fullest sense is seen in that the One that was in death for the glory of God, is now the living Man in the glory of God, in a state wholly suited to that glory. Christ went to the Father, and the disciples saw Him no more. The ministry is now of the Spirit and righteousness in the light of the glory of Christ; and we, for whom He was made sin, have life in Him there, are a new creation in Him, and as such become God’s righteousness in Him. The full expression will be in our being with Him in the same glory from whence the ministry of righteousness has come. We have the justification of life. We are alive to God in Christ, and in being so, are the expression of God’s righteousness in which man has been set in glory.

This is the full height of the gospel, the answer to Christ having been made sin for us.

I might have said something as to the effect and influence of eternal life in the character and walk of the believer — for he that saith, he abideth in Him, ought himself also so to walk even as He walked — but I forbear not wishing to lengthen the paper.

F E. Raven.