THE BLESSING OF ETERNAL LIFE
The Spirit, beloved friends, of the Lord Jesus had reached the very end of His sojourn here; it is in this chapter that, speaking to the Father, He says: “I am no longer in the world ... I come to thee”. Not only has His public ministry and all His connection with the people closed, as we know in chapter 12, but from that point the Lord is seen exclusively in the company of His own and occupied with them; there has been the Passover supper and what we speak of as the Lord’s supper (though it is not brought to light in John) in that upper room, and the Lord has washed the disciples’ feet, and has spoken to them in a very wonderful way. We have what is recorded in chapters 13, 14, 15 and 16 of John’s gospel. He has no more to say directly to His own, and now just before they leave that upper room and start across the brook for the garden of Gethsemane the Lord turns to the Father; and here, though He is not speaking, as we have said, to His disciples, He speaks to the Father in their presence, they are privileged to listen while He pours out His heart to the Father; so that I have no doubt the Lord intended, not only those who personally surrounded Him at that moment to hear what He said to the Father, but He intended that we should hear it. The very fact of the Spirit of God having put these wonderful words on record is proof that the Lord intended that we should hear them, and I have no doubt, beloved, that He intended that we should understand them, and that our hearts should be greatly impressed by them. What a wonderful privilege for us as Christians here together to be thus permitted to take account of these utterances from the lips of the Lord Jesus! It seems to me the very fact that He addresses the Father gives a peculiar, a unique significance and importance to His words. I cannot conceive that anything could be of greater importance for us as Christians than to know the very heart of the Lord Jesus and to know the desires of His heart as poured out to His Father, and I trust there is desire in our hearts at this time that we may not only know what the heart of the Lord Jesus is, but that we may really desire to respond to His heart.
The opening words—not yet His own utterance, but the words of the Spirit of God, as recorded for us, are significant: we are apt to read lightly or carelessly; our poor minds are not always under the direct power of the Spirit of God; we have our life and interests here, and these things occupy our minds too much, but let me just call your attention in a very simple way to the beginning of the chapter, “These words spake Jesus” ... We often sing, ‘How sweet the name of Jesus sounds’, and the heart does delight in the music of that precious Name.
We must not forget that we are speaking from the Gospel of John. At the close of the gospel—chapter 20 (chapter 21, though just as much inspired as any other chapter, is in the nature of an appendix), referring to the signs, of which there are seven recorded in the book, the apostle John says, “But these are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life in his name”. The Spirit brings Jesus before us in the Gospel of John as the Christ and as the Son of God. It might perhaps be said that as the Christ it brings Him before us in a certain official way, in connection with His wonderful office and character as Messias, Christ, anointed Man, God’s Messias, God’s Christ, God’s anointed Man; but when it adds “the Son of God” I think it brings Him personally before us as a Man in relation to God ... “Son of man” (and that is personal too) speaks of Him as a Man in relation to man, but as “Son of God”—while He is still a Man, it is His relation to God; that Man is God’s Son. I want to bring this before your souls, because I think it is very important that we should see that in this wonderful outpouring of His heart to the Father, the Lord is speaking as a Man. You will understand, I trust, there is no question in our mind with regard to His being a divine Person; I love to think of chapter 1: 18, it is such a wonderful testimony to His glory as a divine Person in the Godhead: “No one has seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”. Well, He was ever that, never less than that; He could not be (may I say it reverently) more than that, and He was never less than that; but still, here in chapter 17, He is speaking to the Father as a Man, and He says, “Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee”. Now, as a divine Person, how could He ask to be glorified? As a divine Person He is God equally with the Father and with the eternal Spirit; nothing could be given Him as a divine Person, because as a divine Person everything was His necessarily; but He says, “Father, glorify thy Son”; He asks the Father to glorify Him as a Man. It is true He was entitled to it, but the wonderful thing in John is that He will receive nothing, except from the hands of the Father; so He says, “Father, glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee”. From the very first step of His path here to the last step His heart had been set on the glory of the Father, as He says a little further down, “I have glorified thee on the earth” ... He had come forth from the Father and had come into the world, and He was now about to leave the world and return to the Father; but, beloved, He is just as much set upon glorifying the Father now that He is glorified by the Father, as He was in the days of His flesh down here; so He says, “Glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee”. Then He continues: “As thou hast given him authority over all flesh”—and the word means more than authority, it means one who has the right and title as well as the power. The Lord in His death has established His right and claim, though He speaks of it as given to Him of the Father, and that is in perfect keeping with this gospel. Has He not by the grace of God “tasted death for everything”? Did He not give Himself a ransom for all? Has He not died for all? Yes, He has; and He has the right, title and claim, based upon that wonderful death, yet He attributes it to the Father. He says, “As thou hast given him authority over all flesh, that as to all that thou hast given to him, he should give them life eternal”—not to everybody, it is to “all thou hast given to him”; it is in principle, I might say, what answers to Matthew 13. He buys the field, but it is in view of the treasure hidden in the field, and so He has got power over all flesh, but it is in view of giving eternal life to as many as the Father has given Him.
Now I am coming to my present point. I am going to attempt to show from scripture what eternal life is. You may say it is a bold attempt. I do not know that we should think so; surely we may well believe what the Lord says, and He tells us what it is. He says, “this is the eternal life, that they should know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent”. You may hear even God’s people sometimes talking about what they feel, or what they are trying to do, or what they are aiming to be, but that is not it. “This is the eternal life, that they should know thee, the only true God”. No doubt that personal pronoun—“thee” goes back to the word “Father” in the first verse. He is speaking to the Father as such, and that word “thee” stands for the Father, who is “the only true God”. If we speak of divine Persons in distinction we may speak of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Christian baptism is in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Ghost is God; but note the expression, “the only true God”. It is not here a question of distinction between divine Persons in the Godhead; the Son, of course, speaks to the Father in the consciousness of His own relationship with Him, but as regards men generally He is “the only true God”; it is a question of the manner or character in which God has been pleased to reveal Himself. Referring for a moment again to chapter 1: 18, it begins “No one hath seen God at any time”, then it goes on, “the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father”; that distinguishes Him as a divine Person in the Godhead, distinguishes Him from the Father. He is said to be in the bosom of the Father, hence the One who is in the Father’s bosom is viewed in distinction from the Father in whose bosom He is. But it is not that here. “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”. Who has He declared? He has declared God, and if He, as Man, has declared God, He has declared God according to the relationship in which He stands to the Father in the Godhead, but also according to the relationship in which He stands as Man here to the God whom He has declared; so, He says: “And this is the eternal life, that they should know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent”.
I would like to endeavour, for a few moments, to speak very simply and as plainly as the Lord may enable me, about eternal life—what it is. It is the knowledge of the Father as the only true God, and it is the knowledge of Jesus Christ—that blessed Man, who is ever viewed in this gospel as a Man here, the One sent of the Father. The word for “know” here (I add a word, because I understand there are three Greek words translated as “know” in our King James’ Version) is not the word which expresses “consciousness”, but it is the word which expresses certain objective knowledge. For instance—“I know whom I have believed” (2 Tim 1: 12); there is implied there a certain intimate acquaintance with the person. So here: “And this is the eternal life, that they should know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent”.
Now the difference between Paul and John is this—Paul always speaks of “God and Father”, but John speaks of “Father and God”. It is just the difference between the two sides of the truth, and characteristic of the ministry of each respectively. For instance, take 1 Corinthians 8; it says, speaking of the heathen: “For and if indeed there are those called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are gods many, and lords many), yet to us there is one God, the Father ... and one Lord, Jesus Christ”. As has often been said, it is not a question there of the divinity or the true deity of the Lord Jesus as such, it is a question of the wonderful way in which God has come out in the revelation of Himself, and the relative position taken by God on the one hand (the Father), and the Lord Jesus Christ on the other hand—there is one God, even the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ. Now that is the truth here, only John reverses Paul’s order, or you may say Paul reverses John’s order. Paul, as we have said, speaks of God and Father: John of Father and God. Here it is the Son of God, and it is the One of whom God said when He was born in this world, “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee” (Ps 2: 7), and so in John the Father comes first always. Take the language of the Lord in John 20, in the message He sent through Mary Magdalene: “Go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”. Take the language of the Lord in John 20: 17, in the message He sent through Mary Magdalene: “Go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”. So that eternal life (let me repeat it again) is the knowledge of the Father as the only true God, and it is the knowledge of Jesus Christ the sent One of the Father; it is not the knowledge of divine Persons as such in their relationship to each other as in the Godhead. I have always had a difficulty in my mind with regard to statements of that kind, and we have the words of the Lord Himself in Matthew 11, where He says, without any qualification: “No one knows the Son but the Father”; and what do you and I know of divine Persons as such in their relationships to each other in the Godhead? We know what has been brought out in revelation in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ; we know there is the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost in the Godhead, but the Lord says (we refer again to Matthew 11), “nor does anyone know the Father, but the Son, and he to whom the Son may be pleased to reveal him”. How can He say that of the Father? Because it is the Son who has come into incarnation, and it is in the Son incarnate that the Father is revealed and made known. Again, in John 10: 14, the Lord says: “I am the good shepherd; and I know those that are mine, and am known of those that are mine, as the Father knows me and I know the Father”. Do not think, beloved, that these precious words bring you and me into Godhead. Do not think even that it brings us into that circle of knowledge subsisting between divine Persons as such in the Godhead. It does bring us into a marvellous circle—we are brought into the circle of knowing the Father as that Man—the Son of God—knows Him, and we know that Son of God, that wonderful Man, as the Father knows Him. What a marvellous circle! That is eternal life. It is the knowledge of the Father as the only true God, but it is more than that, it is the knowledge of Jesus Christ as the Father’s sent One. Why? Because in Jesus Christ as the Father’s sent One you have not only the light of the perfect declaration of God, the perfect revelation of God in Him, as Man, but you have more than that, you have the perfect answer to it in Him as Man.
Now I apprehend, beloved (it is a very interesting point, though I can only just mention it, and it is peculiar to John), that salvation in John is a consequence of eternal life—that is, salvation from the order of things here. Let me give you a very well-known passage, John 10: 9; “I am the door: if any one enter in by me, he shall be saved, and shall go in and shall go out and shall find pasture”. What do you enter into when you enter in by Him as the door? I should say that you enter into the sphere of eternal life. You enter into the knowledge of the Father as the only true God, and more you enter into the knowledge of Jesus Christ, the sent One. I have not time to prove it by many quotations from John’s writings, but you will find it to be so; salvation in the gospel of John follows in the train of eternal life. I think our brother Mr Raven said, as it has often been said as to the gospel, that salvation follows in the train of righteousness3. Well, that is true; but in John’s gospel salvation follows in the train of eternal life. Take chapter 3: 14, 15, the Lord’s allusion to the lifting up of the serpent in the wilderness: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son of man be lifted up, that every one who believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal”. Then verse 16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal”. Not a word about salvation yet, but now read verse 17: “For God has not sent his Son into the world that he may judge the world, but that the world may be saved through him”. It is not a strange doctrine to scripture that salvation is the result of knowing God. There is a sort of intimation of it in the conversation of the Lord with the woman at the well in chapter 4. He said: “Ye worship ye know not what”. There was no true knowledge of God; what did their whole system of worship amount to? Nothing. It had no basis. Then He says: “We worship what we know, for salvation is of the Jews”. There was the true knowledge of God there, hence there was salvation there. Take the Old Testament scriptures, Psalm 27: “Jehovah is my light and my salvation”; it is not that I am going to reach Jehovah as the result of light and salvation, but Jehovah is my light and my salvation. Take the Old Testament scriptures, Psalm 27: 1: “Jehovah is my light and my salvation”; it is not that I am going to reach Jehovah as the result of light and salvation, but Jehovah is my light and my salvation. Salvation lies in the knowledge of God; it is as you come to know God that you enter into all the blessed results and consequences of knowing God. So with regard to eternal life, what you find in John’s gospel is—that those who have eternal life “shall not perish”. The perishing is not future, but here and now. Eternal life guarantees you against perishing here.
Well now, that is how these things are put in John’s gospel; but before I pass on to those who receive eternal life and what is involved in it, I would like to speak a word about the Giver. In the passage immediately before us the Lord Jesus is the Giver; “that as to all that thou hast given to him, he should give them life eternal”; so in chapter 10: 28, “And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, and no one shall seize them out of my hand”, the Lord Jesus as the Son of God gives it, and yet God gives it. Take 1 John 5: 11, “This is the witness, that God has given to us eternal life”; then he adds, “and this life is in his Son”, “He that has the Son has life”. God primarily is the Giver of eternal life, but He does not give it apart from Christ; and speaking again of Christ as the Son of God, He is said in Romans 5: 21 and Romans 6: 23 to be the Giver of eternal life; so that He may be spoken of as the Giver, or the gift may be attributed to God. There is an interesting passage in John 4, in that connection; you remember at the beginning of the conversation, after the Lord had laid the walls of prejudice in that woman’s heart flat to the ground, He said, “If thou knewest the gift of God and who it is that says to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water”; it is not exactly that the living water is eternal life, it is the Spirit; but it is in view of eternal life, because He says again, “But whosoever drinks of the water which I shall give him shall never thirst for ever, but the water which I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life”. That is how it is presented; it is God’s gift, and it is also the gift of the Son of God. He has that distinguishing honour and glory of being the Giver of the living water; you and I may receive it; the living water as such may spring within us, or may flow out from us, as the Lord says in chapter 7; but nowhere are we said to be the givers of it, we are the recipients of it.
Well now, who receives eternal life? The scripture’s answer is this: “whosoever believeth in him”. I apprehend there has been a mistake as to this: people have asserted that because they have believed they have got it. One thing is very certain, that if you have never believed, you have not got it, that is very clear; it is perfectly true that none but those who believe get it; that is, the believer is the kind of person who gets it, and if you are a believer, you have a right—a title to it. I admit that gladly, but let me say, we have got very loose ideas about believers in these days; a believer, as spoken of in the Gospel of John, is one who believes on the name of the only-begotten Son of God. If you read the Epistle of John you are bound to own the distinctions—“whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God” (1 John 5: 1); but what about the man that believes that Jesus is the Son of God? —“this is the victory which has gotten the victory over the world, our faith. Who is he that gets the victory over the world, but he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”, v 5 ?” I just want to say this, lest we should be carried away with taking up scriptural expressions loosely; in the Gospel of John a believer is one who believes in that Person who is none other than the only-begotten Son of God. Of Him as born in time God said, “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee”. It was of that One that the angel Gabriel said to the Virgin Mary, “The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and power of the Highest overshadow thee, wherefore the holy thing also which shall be born shall be called Son of God”. Such a Man this world had never seen, had never known; He was the “second man out of heaven”, 1 Cor 15: 47.”.
Now it is the one who believes on the name of that Man who is the only-begotten Son—the one who has the faith of the Son of God, he is the one who has title to eternal life, he is the one who gets it. How does he get it? What is the great gain of believing on the only-begotten Son of God? It is to get the Holy Ghost. “This he said concerning the Spirit, which they that believed on him were about to receive; for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified”, chap 7: 39. The Lord there anticipates Pentecost. That is the next step.
But we were speaking of how we get eternal life. We have light, and, I say, loose thoughts about this, because we do not give the blessed Spirit of God His place. It is not enough to have received the Spirit; we must give Him place. See what the Lord says about the living water. Speaking generally, we may say that the living water is the Spirit, but it is the Spirit in that special character; so He says, “The water which I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life”. Then see Paul’s language in the Epistle to the Galatians: “for whatever a man shall sow, that also shall he reap, For he that sows to his own flesh, shall reap corruption from the flesh; but he that sows to the Spirit, from the Spirit shall reap eternal life”. chap 6: 8. Every intelligent Christian would surely own they have the flesh in them: “If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1: 8); but having the flesh in me need not issue in corruption; it is he that soweth to the flesh shall of his own flesh reap corruption. But now see the other side: “he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting”. There is not only the indwelling of the Spirit of God, we must leave room for the blessed activities of the Spirit of God. And that is how the believer comes into the present good of eternal life. I am speaking of eternal life as a present blessing, I know there are scriptures about it in connection with the future. We read of the hope of eternal life, but we are speaking now from John, and John speaks of the present gift of it and the present title to it, and the present good of it in connection with the activities of the Holy Spirit. That leads me to the next point—what is involved in it, I mean in the present possession of it. There has been such a way (and we have suffered immensely from it) of assuming that because I am a believer I have got it; but the fact is, while we have loudly asserted our possession of eternal life, we have hardly been able to tell what it is, or to give any account of it. Generally speaking, if people claim to possess things, they are supposed to know something about the things they possess.
Well now, I want to speak of what is involved in eternal life. I want to speak most simply. Of course, you will understand that to begin with “you must be born anew”, John 3: 7. You could not speak of any one having eternal life who had not been born anew, that is going far back. “Except anyone be born anew he cannot see the kingdom of God”; he can have no spiritual perception of it, no understanding or apprehension of it. The first thing then is that you are born anew. The next is that you have got faith in the Lord Jesus Christ—the faith of the gospel, that He was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification. To revert again to John—you have got the faith of that Person, the Son of God. “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. You have received the Spirit. But what does that involve? I want to shew you that after the reception of the Spirit there are the activities of the Spirit. There is the springing up; or, to change the figure, turn to Galatians 6, where there is the figure of the sowing and reaping. Now you know that in the figure a great deal takes place between sowing the grain and reaping it, there is the germination down in the ground, which you do not see; then you begin to see the little green shoot coming up from the ground, and you may take account of its subsequent growth, there are all the stages of the growth on to the reaping. The sowing and the reaping are here and now. We may be in the good of eternal life now. May we not know the Father—the only true God? May we not know Jesus Christ as the sent One? Who could surrender that? But I want to shew you now what is involved in these blessed activities of the Spirit. In Romans 6: 226, towards the close we read: “But now, having got your freedom from sin, and having become bondmen to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end eternal life”. If you are a believer on the Son of God no one can question your title, but what about the present enjoyment of it? People want to read a whole lot of time into that word—“end”; but it is not time, it is moral order. So, again referring once more to the first Epistle of John, what characterises the man that believes that Jesus is the Son of God is that he has got the victory over the world. The world, alas! has got the victory over many, but in that man’s case the scales are turned, he is not under the power of the world, he has got the victory over the world. We need to contend for the reality of things. That is what is involved in it. I would not discourage you, beloved, I would that I might be enabled to encourage you, but I would not encourage you in anything that is not scriptural. Have you got the faith? Has God given you His Spirit? Well, you are on the way. But are there now within you the blessed activities of the Spirit? Are you in the present good and light and joy of eternal life? John says, in the beginning of his epistle, “These things write we unto you”, not to make you unhappy, but “that your joy may be full”. 1 John 1: 4. If you want the fulness of joy you may have it; it is all in eternal life; there is not a cloud there; you might be poor or rich; eternal life knows nothing of these things; the very things that naturally we seek to avoid and evade are sometimes very suitable conditions for our realisation of it in all its blessedness.
I only have one more word to say. I have just one more point to touch on, I cannot enlarge on it, but just a word as to the sphere of eternal life. The blessing itself, involving as it does an entirely new order of things, lies outside of everything here; it is beyond death, in the resurrection sphere. It is a faith-sphere “over Jordan” (as we sometimes say). It is a faith-sphere ‘over Jordan’ (as we sometimes say). That is the sphere of it, and as we experimentally reach that sphere in our souls we enter into and enjoy it in the power of the Spirit. “The water which I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life”.
But while this is so, yet it is a blessing that belongs to us while we are on earth as being in a scene where sin and death are, and in which lawlessness and idolatry prevail on every hand, and outside all this eternal life is to be enjoyed here and now. Thus for Christians it belongs more to the present than to the future. I do not say that we shall lose it when we go to heaven. We shall not lose then any blessing that we have here; but the term—eternal life—will have no force in heaven. It is for the present it is given to us, and it is while we are on earth that we are in the enjoyment of it.
It is important and helpful to distinguish the blessing of eternal life from the calling of sonship. The latter belongs to heaven, and for the full enjoyment of it we must go to heaven. We have the light of it now, and we have received the spirit of it by which we may taste the blessedness of it; but still we await the actuality of it, and this will be when we go to heaven.
I do not mean to convey in any way that eternal life is earthly, but only that scripture connects the blessing with us as on earth. Eternal life is not a blessing distinctive of Christianity, for Israel will have it in the age to come. The “righteous” in Matthew 25 “go away into life eternal”. The “righteous” in Matthew 25: 46 “go away … into life eternal”.
Well, I have overstepped the time. May the Lord stir up our hearts, beloved. Have you the knowledge that we have spoken of—the knowledge of the Father as the only true God, and of Jesus Christ, the Father’s sent One? This is life eternal—to know thee—the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”