LIFE AND ETERNAL LIFE
[p. 113] LIFE AND ETERNAL LIFE
Although life and eternal life are used interchangeably, especially by the apostle John, yet in Romans they present different ideas. Eternal life is an end in view, whereas life (chapter 8) is connected with the Spirit: “the Spirit life”, and so present. Life in this sense is power — it involves ability to be free from the flesh, so as to fulfil righteousness here. There is also the “springing up into eternal life”. The latter is clearly objective and outside (above, morally) the present condition. I do not think it right to connect eternal life with our present mortal conditions, and therefore I regard it as wrong to place it in the wilderness. It is the life of God’s purpose for man and is necessarily the other side of death. The fact that it is said to consist in the knowledge of God and of Christ as the sent One only shows that the moral element is possessed by those who have it — that is, they know God as the supreme Object of veneration, and a Man, tested in every way and found, in contrast to Adam, to be infinitely obedient. The cross (all that entered into it) was essential to this obedience being fully expressed; to apprehend rightly what “sent” involved, we have to ponder Gethsemane and the cross, and the light thus acquired has a great effect upon us, both as regards God and Christ, and relatively as regards the world. So that clearly eternal life belongs to another order of things — “in the coming age life eternal”.