FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. – John 1:4.

Eternal Life

There are two more truths that should be mentioned. First, the life that God gives through Jesus Christ is not merely an earthly life or a life of such quality that it can be lost, but it is eternal life. It can never be lost. Therefore, the life that we receive from God in the moment of our belief in Jesus Christ is the same life that we will be living with God in eternity in what we would call unending millions and billions of years from now.

Again, you may be asking, what is eternal life? Simply put, it is life without end, the life of and in God. If it could be lost, as some persons think is the case, then it would not be eternal life. For instance, what would eternal life be if it could be lost at the end of one million years? It would not be eternal life. It would be one-million-years life. But if God said that it was going to last for one million years, then it could not be lost before the expiration of that period. If God said that He was going to give us one-thousand-years life, then the life could not be lost before the end of one thousand years. If He said that it was one hundred-years life, it could not be lost before one hundred years had expired. But we thank God that He has not given us merely one-hundred-, one-thousand-, or even one-million-years life. He has given us eternal life. It is truly eternal or everlasting, it is infinite; infinity has no end or expiration! Thus, the apostle John writes, “And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son” (1 John 5:11).

The second truth is that God has not only given us eternal life (which no one can take from us); He has also given us a life that is meant to be abundant even in our present circumstances. As stated previously, the Lord Jesus Christ once said, “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

It is unfortunate that many Christians, though they have eternal life, nevertheless do not seem to manifest a life abundantly. This was not meant to be. Instead of living a miserable life and always complaining, Christians are meant to live lives of such joy and exuberance that their lives will be a blessing to others and a glory to the Father through Christ Jesus.

There is a magnificent picture of this abundant life in the first verses of the beloved Twenty-third Psalm. “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake” (Psalm 23:1–3). I believe that the reason this psalm has been so beloved by Christians throughout all the ages of church history is that it sets forth as something quite practical the abundant life that is ours because of God’s care for us. We know that we were once sheep that were lost. Even now we sometimes wander and stray away from Christ’s fold. But still we are His, and we know that the abundant life is ours whenever we will leave our wandering and lie down in the company of our Shepherd.

Did you know that a sheep will not eat or drink when it is lying down? Most people have never heard this. But it is a fact, and it gives special meaning to the phrase, “He makes me to lie down in green pastures.” If a sheep is lying down, even in the greenest of pastures and even with the most tender morsel of grass within an inch of its nose, the sheep will not eat the grass. Instead, if it is hungry, it will scramble to its feet, bend over, and then eat the morsel that was much easier to reach before. Thus, when the psalm tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ, our Shepherd, makes us lie down in green pastures, it means that He is able to satisfy us so completely that we cannot possibly yearn for anything more.

Oh, the joys of living out the abundant life of Christ! They are the joys of increasingly finding Him to be the Bread of Life that satisfies all our hunger and the Water of Life that quenches our deepest thirst.

Adapted and modified excerpts from James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of John: An Expositional Commentary.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. – John 1:4.

Spiritual Life

However, this is only the beginning of our understanding of what John intends by the use of the word “life” in the Gospel. He is speaking of Christ’s role in creation, in one sense. But this is only the groundwork for the spiritual interpretation of the word that he unfolds in the pages of the Gospel. It is true that John speaks of physical life here, but as the book goes on he speaks increasingly of spiritual life. And the point is that just as Jesus is the source of physical life, so is He the source of the spiritual life that we receive when we believe in Him.

To appreciate the importance of the gift of spiritual life, we must realize first that apart from it we are dead spiritually. Or you might say, we are as unresponsive to God as was the dust of the earth before God breathed His Spirit into it.

We can say this, of course, because God says it. Take the verses from the second chapter of Ephesians for an example. Here Paul writes to the Christians at Ephesus, reminding them that before God made them alive they were totally dead in everything spiritual and were in rebellion against Him. “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” (Ephesians 2:1–6; emphasis mine).

What a past is described in these verses! And what a horrific condition! In our natural state we can do nothing to improve ourselves spiritually. Apart from Christ no man has ever breathed one breath toward God, nor had even one spiritual heartbeat. Man is dead in sin. He needs a new life. That is why we must be born again. Being born again means receiving a new life from God through the Lord Jesus Christ by faith in Him.

One might add here, however, that when the Bible declares that all men are dead spiritually, it does not imply that all are in an identical state of corruption. In his book, In the Heavenlies, Dr. Henry (Harry) A. Ironside points to three instances in the life of Christ that illustrate clearly what the Bible is saying. He writes:

“The beautiful little maid, the daughter of Jairus, had been dead only a few minutes when the blessed Lord reached her father’s house, but she was dead, she was lifeless. Fair to look upon, lovely and sweet, no doubt, in the eyes of her beloved parents, like a beautiful marble statue, but although there was not the corruption that there might have been, she was dead nevertheless. Turn over to Luke’s gospel and you find that as the blessed Lord came to the village of Nain they were carrying a young man out to bury him. He was dead. Dead perhaps a day or two. . . . This young man was dead longer than the little maid, but life was just as truly extinct in her case as in his. Then you have the blessed Lord at the grave of Lazarus. The sisters told Him not to roll the stone away, for their brother had been dead four days and would already be offensive. Corruption had set in, but the Lord Jesus brought new life to that man as well as to the others. In the same way, we are all genuinely dead apart from the life-giving Spirit of Jesus Christ. There may be degrees of corruption so that relatively speaking some men are far less offensive than others. But all men are dead spiritually. All need the divine life.”

Where does that “divine” life come from? It comes from Jesus Christ. He is the life of the world. Because we were dead in our sins, God sent Jesus Christ to give us new life. Because we were guilty of sin, God sent Jesus to be the propitiation for our sins by bearing them in His own body on that cursed tree.

To Be Continued

Adapted and modified excerpts from James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of John: An Expositional Commentary.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. – John 1:4.

Physical Life – Continued

From last lesson: We read in Genesis that “the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7).

All the terms in this verse from Genesis are important. In the first place, we are told that God formed man of the dust of the earth. When God does a work in human history He uses common substances or common people so that the glory might be to His name alone and not to man’s. We see this in His choice of Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets, Mary and Joseph, John the Baptist, and the disciples to do certain things. The Apostle Paul states in 1 Corinthians 1:26–29, “For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise . . . that no flesh should glory in His presence.” We have the same principle in the opening chapters of the Bible.

When God formed man, what did He use? Did He use gold, silver, iron, uranium, platinum? No, He used dust, dirt, a common substance. But He breathed into it the breath of His life. Thus, even though we may be “fearfully and wonderfully made,” as the psalmist says (Psalm 139:14), nevertheless, the glory is God’s and there is nothing in us about which man can boast. I remember I once read that, “So low is the dust, that God gave it to the serpent for the food of his curse. Job uses the word twenty times to describe the littleness of man in his misery. It is to dust that all bodies return in death. But we can look up to the Lord in confidence because ‘He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.’ (Psalm 103:14).”

There is a lesson for us in the dust; but we must remember that it is the breath of God that makes the dust live. However, you  may be asking, “What is God’s breath?” Simply put, it is that which goes forth out of His mouth. It is His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and it is associated with His spoken word. When we speak about these three terms in English, breath, Spirit, and word, they seem to be unrelated. But this is not true in the Hebrew language. In Hebrew the same word that is used for Spirit is also used for “breath.” It is the word ruach, and what is more significant, is that in Hebrew it is thought the breath of God or the breath of a man is associated with the person’s spoken words. For a man speaks, as we know, by means of it. When we put these ideas together, we find that God brought forth life in man by speaking the word of life (which John has already identified with Jesus Christ) in such a way that the Spirit of life (which is His Holy Spirit) passes into man and causes him to breathe. In other words, these terms provide an illustration of the role of each member of the Trinity in creation.

The significance of man’s created nature is seen most clearly when he is contrasted with the Lord Jesus Christ. In the great resurrection chapter, 1 Corinthians 15, there is a verse toward the end that says, “ ‘The first man Adam became a living being.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” (1 Corinthians 15:45). In other words, even though we live by the breath of God, we do so only by inhaling. Christ lives by exhaling. Thus, we know that we are His creation and that He is the Creator.

To Be Continued

Adapted and modified excerpts from James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of John: An Expositional Commentary.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.