Life and Life Eternal.

Eternal Life.  I often phrase it in my teaching as Life Eternal, which is how it mostly reads in the Greek, zoen aionion.  Let me ask you a question.  What’s the nature of this Life in that phrase, it’s what?  Eternal.  And how long is Eternal Life?  It’s not a trick question.  Without beginning or end, existing indefinitely, continuing on forever ...sound about right?

So, if this Life we’ve been given is the Life of God— which neither increases nor diminishes, but is {always and forever}— if this Life we’ve received is eternal in duration, how exactly are we going to lose it?  We didn’t do anything to get it.  It’s a Life which has no beginning point and no ending date.  It cannot come to an end because it never had a beginning!  God, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, has always been; in fact, the idea behind the divine name revealed to Moses in Exodus 3:14 when the Lord told him, “This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you,’” is one of limitless self-existence.  This limitless Life goes on, according to the nature of the word ‘eternal,’ “existing forever” and ever and ever, “without end.”  You could say, ‘eternally.’

Consider the following statements of our Lord.  If it were in any way possible to lose your Life Eternal, the salvation secured by His sacrifice on the Cross and conquest of the Grave, would it be honest, admirable, kind or even realistic, to make these absolute offers?  In the phrasing of the original, these statements read as double negatives meaning “absolutely never— not ever!”  To transfer it to our post-modern idiom, ‘That’s not even remotely possible, it is beyond the bounds of possibility.’  Double negatives in English, ‘not never,’ are neither grammatically correct nor logically sound.  They don’t strengthen the affirmation; they reinforce its opposite!  If someone say’s, “This is never not going to happen,” what they’re actually saying is, “This is going to happen, and it won’t ever stop happening!”  Not so with the Koine of the New Testament.  Double negatives are the strongest statements of utter and absolute impossibility in the language of 1st century Greek.

Jesus answered the woman at the well in Samaria saying, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give him....”  What do we call something given?  A gift, right?  And what do we do with a gift?  We can receive it or we can reject it, but what we cannot do is earn it.  So, receiving the Water of Life from Jesus is as simple as receiving a gift from a friend.  Romans 6:23 tells us, “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God [Charisma is the term, it’s a gift of grace.] is Eternal Life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  John 4:14 finishes by noting the water Jesus freely offers to all, “will become in him [or her who believes] a spring of water welling up to Eternal Life.”

John 6:35, “Then Jesus declared, ‘I Am the Bread of Life.  He who comes to Me will never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never be thirsty.’”  The Greek ou me is used twice.  To come to Jesus in faith is to satisfy the hunger of the human heart ...permanently; to believe in Him as God, and in His Mission as Messiah, is to quench the thirst of the soul forevermore.

In John 6:37 Jesus say’s, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will never drive away [‘I will never cast out,’ NAS.].”  The immediate context of this section of Scripture begins in v. 25 and extends to at least v. 40.  I want you to notice something, and I want you to remember this.  According to our Lord’s own words in John 6:39 it is His Father’s perfect will that He lose not a single soul Abba has given Him, but that “He raise them up at the Last Day”— which is Jewish language for the final Judgment, the transition between Time and Eternity.  Again, according to Jesus’ own words in v. 40 it is impossible for one who “believes in Him” to not have Eternal Life; and it is impossible for one who has— as a present possession— Eternal Life to not be raised up on the Last Day!  Are you seeing this?  Good.  Because this is absolutely critical to the securing of your soul in the Security of the Saints.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
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