What did Jesus say about eternal life?

"That whosoever [or every one] that believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." We have seen that the propitiatory death of Christ must have the first — the foundation place in the Gospel of God. "Even so must the Son of man be lifted up." The cause of this, was, "God so loved." We now come to the purpose of God in all this. Surely this is a deep and wondrous theme. God has His own eternal purpose respecting us poor sinners. It was no after-thought when sin had come in, and surely no subsequent thought when Christ had died or we had believed. No, the greatest gift ever given in the countless ages of eternity, the gift of His only begotten Son, was according to purpose. "That whosoever believes in him." Mark, this purpose was not limited now to Israel, as a nation. No, "whosoever believes in him." This is a message for you, to you, because to every one that believes. The only limit or distinction is faith, "That believes in him."

Will you believe in Him? I ask you, Will you believe in the Son of Man? I think you will feel an awful fool by-and-by, when the Lord has to say of you — There is a man who would not trust Me, there is a man who would not believe in Me. Note that Gods says that "whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Mark, it is an absolute present possession, the possession of faith. Eternal life is the gift of God. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). Oh, that is a beautiful verse, the 16th verse of John 3. Look at it. It begins with God, and ends with life. You cannot get life save from God, but "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but HAVE everlasting life." You may have it. I have it. You have in this verse God's side of the action, and man's side also. God's side, loving and giving; and on man's side — my, and your side — believing and having. Really, my dear fellows, the gospel is wonderfully simple. God, loving, and giving; and man, believing, and having. I believe His love, I believe His grace, I believe what He says, I believe on His Son, and what is the result? I get eternal life as His own free gift.

John 10:28-30. Not only does the Lord give us the marks of His sheep but He also declares His loving care for His sheep. He gives them eternal life, eternal security, and assures them of divine care. Already the Lord has said that He came to give life to the sheep, and that abundantly; now we learn that the life that He gives is "eternal life", the life that was with the Father and manifested in the Person of the Son on earth; a life that the sheep possess in Christ, to be manifested in the sheep and enjoyed now, if only entered upon in its fulness when with Christ in life's eternal home (cf. 1 John 1:1-2; 1 John 5:11-12; Galatians 2:20; 2 Corinthians 4:10-18; Romans 6:22).

Life. — And now He, who had the authority to judge, and the power to enforce the execution of His sentence, speaks in a different key, unfolding teaching about grace and salvation, prefacing it with those words, which as to their repetition is restricted to this Gospel, and throughout it are the utterance of the Lord Jesus Himself. "Verily, verily, I say to you, He that hears My word, and believes Him that sent Me, has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment [not, condemnation]; but is passed from death to life" (24). He had spoken of all judgment being committed to Him. Now He would have every one hear what is the way of escape from it. How fitting and how encouraging is this! The Judge Himself tells us how we may escape the judgment. Who so fitting as He thus to speak? And if He thus speaks, what sure ground we stand upon, when we take Him at His word, and do what He says! To hear His word, He says; then it will not do to oppose Him. To believe Him (not, on Him) that sent Him. That takes us to the written Word. These are the conditions set before the creature. To have, 1st, as a present possession everlasting life; 2nd, never to come into judgment; and, 3rd, to have passed from death to life, — these are the blessings here offered without money and without price.

184 It is also the Father's will that whosoever sees the Son, and believes in Him, has eternal life: and the Lord will raise him up at the last day (v. 40). The Son is presented to all, that they may believe in Him, and whosoever believes has everlasting life. Here, again, it is not a question of the Messiah and of promises, but of seeing the Son, and believing on Him, of eternal life and resurrection. Before, it was the Father's counsels that could not fail; here, it is the presentation of the Son of God as the object of faith; if, through the humiliation of the Lord, one saw the Son, and believed upon Him, one would have everlasting life, and the result would be the same. In the first case it is a question of the Father's counsels and of His acts, as well as of those of Jesus in raising them: the Father gives them, Jesus raises them, not one of them is lost Next, we have the presentation of the Son in connection with man's responsibility: if a man believed, he would have eternal life, and would rise again. These are the two aspects, brought together, in which these great truths are presented.

Now, it is deeply interesting to turn from Satan's lie in reference to the truth and love of God, to the mission of the Lord Jesus Christ, who came from the bosom of the Father in order to reveal what He really is. "Grace and truth" — the very things which man lost, in his fall — "came by Jesus Christ." (John 1:17) He was "the faithful witness" of what God was. (Rev. 1:5) Truth reveals God as He is; but this truth is connected with the revelation of perfect grace; and thus the sinner finds, to his, unspeakable joy, that the revelation of what God is, instead of being his destruction, becomes the basis of his eternal salvation. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." (John 17:3.) I cannot know God and not have life. The loss of the knowledge of God was death; but the knowledge of God is life. This, necessarily, makes life a thing entirely outside of ourselves, and dependent upon what God is. Let me arrive at what amount of self-knowledge I may, it is not said that "this is life eternal, to know themselves;" though, no doubt, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of self-will go very much together; still, "eternal life" is connected with the former, and not with the latter. To know God as He is, is life; and "all who know not God" shall be "punished with everlasting destruction from His presence."

This leads to the explanation of "the eternal life" in question. Life for evermore, life to eternity, is the blessing commanded by Jehovah on the mountains of Zion (Ps. 133); and of the many Jews that sleep in the dust of the earth, some shall wake to everlasting life, as others to shame and everlasting contempt (Daniel 12). But both these Scriptures contemplate that great turning-point for the earth, the kingdom when it comes in manifest power and glory. The Lord speaks of life as given in Himself to faith now. "And this is the eternal life, that they know Thee, the only true God, and Him Whom Thou didst send, Jesus Christ." If it be distinguished from that which is to be enjoyed in the displayed kingdom by-and-by, it stands as to its character in the knowledge not of the Most High Possessor of heaven and earth, with the true Melchisedec a Priest on His throne, but of the Father and of His sent One, the only true God now plainly revealed in the Son, the one Mediator between God and man. If distinguished from the past, it is no longer the Creator-God giving promises to the fathers protected and lodging as under the shadow of the Almighty; nor yet the sons of Israel in relationship with the name of Jehovah, the moral governor of that chosen nation. But the children of God now possess the revelation of the Father and of Jesus Christ Whom He sent; and this knowledge is identified, not with promises nor government, but with "eternal life," as a present thing in Christ, the portion of every believer. A deeper blessing it is impossible for God to bestow or for man to receive; for it is exactly what characterised the Lord Himself, Who is the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us. Only Christ could be said to be that life; we as believers are not, but we have it in Him; and as by faith alone it is received, so in faith it is exercised, sustained, and strengthened.

Not so, however, with one who knows God as He is revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. Such a one has gotten life eternal. "This," says Christ, "is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." (John 17:3) It is not life eternal to know theology or divinity. A man may sit down to the study of these, as he would to study law or medicine, astronomy or geology, and all the while know nothing of God, and therefore be without divine life, and perish in the end.

It is upon this that Peter asks a question, to which our Lord gives a twofold reply, "Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee: what shall we have therefore?" What Peter states is a fact. He and his fellow-apostles had really forsaken all to follow Christ; and this our Lord in His first answer owns. But evidently there was something of self-importance and self-gratulation at the bottom of Peter's question, "What shall we have therefore?" It was something of the same spirit as had suggested the inquiry in Matthew 18, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" Peter's question would intimate that none could ever evince the self-devotion which they had evinced, or have the claim on Christ which they had. It is as though he would make Christ debtor to himself and his fellow-disciples. "What shall we have therefore?" This our Lord meets in the parable which follows. First, however, let us look at His promise to Peter and the rest. "And Jesus said unto them, Verily, I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Peter asks, What shall we have therefore? and our Lord replies, That is what you shall have. But is it not as though He added, Do not suppose that you are the only persons who have forsaken, or who will have forsaken, all for My name's sake, and who shall be rewarded in the kingdom? "And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life."

Anxious reader, do ponder this. It is of the very deepest importance. It concerns the peace and rest of your soul. We would call your earnest attention to the weighty fact that what you are called upon to believe is not something about yourself, but something about Christ. “Verily, verily, I say to you, He that believes on Me has everlasting life” (John 6:47). Do you simply and heartily believe in Jesus? Do you confide in Him? Are you thoroughly satisfied with Him? If so, you have eternal life, and you should from this moment, know it and rejoice in it. Our Lord does not say, “He that feeleth he is one of My sheep shall have eternal life.” Nothing of the kind, nothing like it, nothing approaching to it. “He that believes on Me.” So also in that well-known passage in John 5. “Verily, verily, I say to you. He that hears My word and believes on Him that sent Me has everlasting life and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death to life.”

Can anything be plainer than this? Every one who hears the word of Jesus and believes in the One who sent Him, is the happy possessor of eternal life, and shall never come into judgment. Hence it follows that if we don't have eternal life, we do not believe on the Son of God, we have not heard His Word, we do not believe in God at all. Thus it stands if we are to be governed by the veritable teaching and authority of our Lord Christ. Every true believer in Jesus has eternal life, and everyone who does not have eternal life is an unbeliever. So speaks the Word of the living God.