John's Interesting Perspective On Eternal Life

Reframe your purpose

One of the central features of the good news of Christianity is the promise of eternal life.

However, that term has a bit more depth than we often think.

When we say the words “eternal life,” it is almost always in reference to the promised reward of being with God forever after the judgment. It’s “life” because we’ll be raised again, and it’s “eternal” because we’ll never die again.

John, on the other hand, doesn’t speak of eternal life the way we do.

Throughout his Gospel and into his epistles, John repeatedly refers to eternal life as something the Christian has—as in, present tense. Here and now, we have eternal life.

The phrasing comes from Jesus Himself (John 5:24, 6:40, and 6:47, for example), but in the other Gospels He uses “eternal life” to speak of it as a future promise. It is only John who captured this idea of eternal life as something we can possess now. In the purpose statements of both his Gospel and his first letter, respectively, he says we “believing may have life in his name” (John 20:31) and “may know [we] have eternal life.”

Obviously the Bible isn’t contradictory, so for the different uses to fit together, John must have been using a different definition than those used by his New Testament colleagues and the one we think of most often today. That change can best be summed up by saying that John is speaking of “eternal” as quality and not just quantity.

This is also not to say that there is no future eternal life as we typically think of it. Obviously John believes in Jesus’ glorious return (1 John 2:28). And we would do well to hang onto that hope of our resurrection and an eternal dwelling place with our God.

But what I love about John’s definition of eternal life is that it shows the Christian life isn’t just an exercise in delayed gratification.

As Dawes once sang, “If heaven was all that was promised to me, why don’t I pray for death?” I think this kind of ethereal thinking can also be a challenge for Christians—not that we’re praying for death, but that what we do in this life doesn’t matter much at all unless it has a direct connection to the eternal.

Yes, heaven is important. But the old phrase about those who are “so heavenly minded they’re of no earthly good” can be a fair critique. Gnostic tendencies have made strong inroads into common Christian teachings on the home, money, governance, health, and more.

This might be why John was so quick to underline the nature of our current eternal life. As he fought those early Gnostic influences that cast the physical world as something evil to be overcome on the path to the spiritual, his readers needed to know that their reward already began in this life. They weren’t to be biding their time until they could shed this fleshly facade. We shouldn’t be, either.

The question is, then: how do we have eternal life?

How we get it—believing in the One sent from the Father (John 3:16, 3:36, 5:24, 6:40). What it is—knowing the Father and the Son (17:3).

Jesus came to show us the Father (John 1:14-18, 14:7), and by believing in Him we can truly know our God. This is the eternal life that we can have right now. The more we appreciate God’s love, His goodness, and His holiness, the more we realize what a big deal it is that we can know Him. And the more we know Him, the more rich life becomes.

This is closely connected to the living water concept (John 4:13-14), which is the Holy Spirit whom He has given us (7:38). Eternal life is knowing the Father and the Son, which is received by believing the Son whom the Father sent, and is enjoyed in the form of the Spirit dwelling within as living waters. And, it’s what Jesus was talking about when He said He came to give us life “abundantly” (10:10).

In other words, the Christian life is eternal life.
We died to sin, but in Christ we rose again out of the waters of baptism, never to die again should we continue on in our life-giving belief in the Son. Everything that we do should be aimed at knowing God more closely, because we genuinely believe that is the prize Jesus gives us.

That’s how we enjoy our eternal life: by building our lives around our understanding of what will help us know God best. The spouse you are, the parent you are, the employee you are, the citizen you are, the church member you are, the leader you are, the follower you are, and whatever other roles you may fill, are all things you are executing in a way that helps you know Him more, or pushes Him away.

Believe in the Son, which means you do things His way, and you’ll sense the eternal life you have more all the time.

And as you do, you will give thanks for this eternal life and enjoy it for the blessing it is. Yes, there will be an even greater day ahead where faith becomes sight and we will be fully like Him (1 John 3:1-2), but right now we have the living water of eternal life springing up within us. We have God’s presence with us night and day in ways the Tabernacle- and Temple-worshiping saints of old could never imagine.

The more we believe this and tap into the strength it gives, the more peaceful, joyful, hopeful lives we’ll lead. You have eternal life.

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