Sermonette for Saturday
And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 1 John 5:11
The apostle John loved the term ‘eternal life’; in his Gospel, his three epistles, and in the Revelation, he uses ‘eternal life’, ‘everlasting life’, and ‘life’ more than 50 times. These words are translated from the Greek ‘zoe aionios’. The term originates not with John, but with Daniel: ‘And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt (Daniel 12:2). But there is a difference. Daniel’s reference to everlasting life is to the future, the afterlife. The other three Gospels in their presentation of eternal life take the same approach as Daniel. But in John’s writings, we find eternal life spoken of in the present tense. It is identified as that which we will certainly enjoy in the future, in the afterlife, but which actually begins in this life, at the very instant of conversion. That makes eternal life very precious to us at this moment.
Our text does not say that God has given to us the promise of eternal life. A promise would refer to something not yet received. In telling us that God has given to us eternal life, our text declares that eternal life is not only a present possession but has also been our possession ever since we trusted in Christ as our Saviour. That is very important, because if God has already given it to us, we can never lose it. If it were merely a promise, something could prevent that promise from being kept, which is what the teachers of the so-called falling away doctrine would have us believe. They say we could lose out on God’s promise if we were to fall into sin or if we were to recant our faith. In other words, they say, our claim to eternal life depends on our ability to hold onto God’s promise. But eternal life is not just a promise; it is a possession.
The security of our salvation is what gives us the confidence to face whatever occurs to us here in this life. Our physical life here on earth is a parallel existence with our eternal life, part of which we experience here on earth, and most of which we will experience in Heaven forever. Consider the words of the Lord Jesus as presented in John 5:24: ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My Word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life’. This life is not in ourselves. Our text declares that it is in God’s Son. That is eternal security! – Jim MacIntosh