Tag Archives: Jesus Christ

Eternal life – John 17:3

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In John 17:3, as Jesus prays, he says,

And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

What Christ is saying is that the eternal life that we receive by faith in him is more or less defined by the new relationship that we have with the Father and the Son.  We know God and his Son Jesus Christ, and that in in itself somehow is eternal life. This life needs to be understood as both a quantity and a quality of life.

First of all, eternal life can be described everlasting or never-ending or using some other such term that means it will just keep on going and will not stop.  I emphasize this point first because I sometimes hear Christians focus on eternal life as a quality of life as opposed to a quantity of life.  I understand why.  It is possible to misunderstand eternal life as being much like the life we have now, complete with its troubles and our imperfections, just without end.  That is surely not what Jesus means.  But if we say it is a quality of life rather than a quantity, then we are not doing justice to the term eternal, for which Jesus could have substituted some other term unrelated to time (most excellent or super wonderful?) Why confuse us by calling it “eternal” if he didn’t mean for time to be involved at all? 

So this seems to be a false dichotomy.  It is not an either/or situation; it is a both/and.  God is eternal; that is one of his attributes, but we are not, since we are created beings.  He can, however, give us life everlasting if he wishes, and he does if the Bible is to be believed.  This life is acquired by an intimate connection with him, facilitated by the Holy Spirit who regenerates us and gives us new life in Christ.            

Second, we must speak of this new life as qualitatively different from the mere earthly life we were born with.  We have come to know the only true God and Jesus Christ, his Son, the One sent here for our salvation.  Prior to this we did not know God at all.  We may have known of him, in a fact-knowing kind of way.  We may have believed that there was a God in a less personal way. This is often true of people who later come to know God personally.  They come to believe in God in the abstract on the way to a personal faith.  It was certainly true in my case.  But to know God personally and to know him as our Father is a very different thing indeed. 

If we really know God and his Son Jesus Christ, we can no longer live as if that does not matter. We need to bask in the warmth of their fellowship. We need to learn from their wisdom and rejoice in their love. Life can never be the same. Eternal life is ours and this life lived in the very presence and power of God will never end.

We are not orphans – John 14:18

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“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”

The more we allow ourselves to think about this remarkable truth, the more utterly amazed we should be.  Christ was once with his disciples, as was the Holy Spirit.  Now, by means of the Holy Spirit’s presence, they both dwell within all disciples as part of our new life in Christ. 

“Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us” (1 John 3:24). 

Or, if you prefer it with more pronouns,

“Now he who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us (NKJV).” 

Either way, God is with us and in us, and he has no plans to leave.

He will not leave us as orphans; nor will he leave us at all.  We can count on his comforting, empowering presence right up until that day when we see him face to face.  That day is not so far away. 

“Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.  The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Rom 13:11-12). 

The time is short, and as Jesus has said,

“And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20).

A Prayer Prompted by John 11

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Our Father in heaven,

You have your own perfect plans for us.  You know exactly how best to form us and shape us, how to mold our character and bend our will. Help us to trust you as you do your perfect work.

Cause us to always keep looking toward Jesus as the perfect example of humanity. He perfectly understands us in all of our trials and our weaknesses because he live through such things himself.

We receive him also as the perfect Savior, who died for us, rose again, and is the source of eternal life for all of us who believe.

With Martha we can respond to Jesus by saying, “Yes, Lord; we believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who has come into the world.”

Amen.

Love and waiting – John 11:1-6

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Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. 3 So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” 4 But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” 5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. 

Lazaraus was sick and near death. Jesus loved Martha Mary and their brother Lazarus. So why did he wait. It would seem to make more sense to say that Jesus loved them, “so her hurried to get to Bethany.” But this is Jesus, and he is right, and he waited two days longer.

I am something of a failed bonsai hobbyist. I’ve tried to grow the little tress and have at times succeeded, even for years at a time with a single tree. The trick is to keep them growing almost indefinitely, like trees in the wild. The longer they live the more your work pays off, and the work tends to be mostly toward the beginning.

In order to properly train a bonsai tree you have to be patient. You bend a branch or guide the trunk to a certain angle and then you wire it in place. Then you have to wait weeks or months to bend it more. To try to bend too much at once can break the branch. Eventually, you get the desired shape and then you leave it. The tree will mature, but adapting to the careful training you gave it right from the start.

God knows how to train us. He knows how to bend us into shape. And that does not always come all at once. Martha and Mary had to wait for Jesus while watching their brother die. Jesus loved them and somehow knew that it would be better for all concerned if Lazarus was in the grave for four days before Jesus arrived. I’m not sure what was going on in the hearts of the two sisters during that time, but we may speculate that the waiting did them good.

The same goes for us. As we wait for the answers to unanswered prayers, sitting patiently when there is little else that we can do, that may be evidence of the love of God. He is forming our character, testing our faith, and building our strength to persevere under trials. This is all for our good. Love and waiting are often intimately tied.