8 January
What is the will of God? (part 4)
Eternal life – John 6:40 (ESV) For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
God’s will for each one of us is eternal life. What does eternal life mean? When the Bible speaks of eternal life, it refers to a gift of God that comes only through Jesus Christ our Lord. This gift contrasts death, that is the natural result of sin.
The Bible tells us that everyone will exist eternally—it is the quality of that existence that separates us. For those who accepts the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord, it is Life Eternal. For those who rejects God’s gift, remain in rebellion with Him, that eternity is described as Death.
Romans 6:23 (ESV) For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
A common New Testament word for eternal is aiónios, which carries the idea of quality and quantity. Eternal life is not associated with calendar years at all, as it is independent of time.
Eternal life can be thought of as something that Christians experience now. In the Scriptures, eternal life is strongly connected to and associated with Jesus Christ. It is only through Him that we can experience and receive eternal life.
Eternal life is found in Jesus. John 3:36 (ESV) Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
Read carefully and note that the believer has (present tense) this life (the verb is present tense in Greek, too).
John 5:24 (ESV) Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment but has passed from death to life.
John 6:47 (ESV) Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.
Eternal life is found in believing in Jesus – John 3:14-17 (NIV) “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Eternal life is knowing God. Many people believe Jesus died to forgive their sins, but they still don’t have a close, personal, intimate relationship with their Father God.
Philippians 3:10-12 (NIV) I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
We have Eternal Life now – John 5:24 (ESV) Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
Today, I conclude with this quote by DL Moody – “All the churches in the world can’t save a soul. It is not to have faith in this church or that church, this doctrine or that doctrine, this man or that man, but it is to have faith in the man Christ Jesus at the right hand of God. That is the only faith that will ever save a soul.”