This Is Eternal Life

 

 

“This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:2).

 

How does the Son give us eternal life? By bringing us into a relationship with our Father. We may have different perspectives and language to describe this, but whatever that might be, we ought to be wise enough to understand that the Bible uses expansive language for this relationship, so expansive that it takes 66 books and numerous authors over centuries to express it. Even within the Gospels, we see actions and language that refuses to be confined, refuses to be codified, and frankly refuses to be systematized – for God is God and we are not, and the purpose of the Bible is to reveal God and bring us into a relationship with Him, into the Nature of the Divine, that we might be “partakers of the Divine Nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

 

As Tozer writes in The Pursuit of God, “The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts” (page 10).

 

Do we use the language of relationship, or do we use the language of the classroom when we speak of Scripture and of the Trinity? Do we use the language of relational knowing or the language of knowing data and information when we speak of God?

 

What Jesus says about the apostles in John 17 makes no sense. How can Jesus say that they have kept the Father’s word (17:6)? How can He say that they “truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent me” (17:8)? These men will shortly abandon Jesus and will lock themselves in the Upper Room – this time not to share bread and wine with Jesus, and not to hear the glorious words of Jesus drawing them to the Father – but they will cower in this very same room for fear. These are hardly the actions of men who fit Jesus’ description in verses 6 and 8.

 

These statements make no sense unless we learn to see as Jesus sees, hear as Jesus hears, and receive the wisdom of God that makes no sense to the world, including the religious world (1 Cor. 1:17 – 2:16).  

 

Somehow, some way, these men, did indeed have eternal life and did know the Father; that relational knowing of Jesus and the Father would carry them through their fear and anxiety and doubt and uncertainty and momentary unbelief.  There was no real doubt about this (17:12).

 

We have eternal life in knowing the Father and Son, not in simply knowing about them. We can know the Scriptures and not know Jesus, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me” (John 5:39).

 

Seminary graduates can know the Scriptures and not know Jesus. Elders, deacons, Sunday school teachers, seminary professors, pastors, bishops, metropolitans, and popes can know the Scriptures and not know Jesus. Longtime church members can know the Scriptures and not know Jesus.

 

On the other hand, an illiterate man or woman may very well know Jesus and know Him deeply.

 

As my old friend George Will used to point out, but which I didn’t understand at the time, the position of those with head knowledge toward those who are not “educated” is often that of the synagogue leaders toward the blind man Jesus healed, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you teaching us?” (John 9:34).

 

I know I have written this before, but more likely than not, when I am in a small group or Sunday school class and am listening to the group, I hear people talking about God as if they are talking about George Washington, they are talking about someone they study and read about, but not about someone they actually know and are in a relationship with. The idea of the Holy Spirit revealing Jesus Christ to them through the Word of God is about as foreign to them as thinking that the picture of Colonel Saunders will jump off a KFC box and ask them how they like his recipe.

 

Yet, John writes that to have koinonia with him and his companions is to have koinonia with the Trinity (1 John 1:3)! How far we have fallen from Biblical Christianity. Why have we rejected Jesus’ invitation, indeed His call and command, to enter the Holy of Holies of intimacy with the Father, Himself, the Holy Spirit, and with one another?

 

When we know the Father, we know Him as “the only true God,” and we have some sense that He has sent Jesus Christ. I write that we have “some sense” that the Father sent the Son, because the depth and mystery of that reality ought to be ever dawning upon us – if we think we can encapsulate the Message of the Incarnation into a statement or two, we are foolish. Yes, we can and ought to appreciate the Nicene Creed, perhaps no finer creed has ever been produced and if we actually saw what it says we would be a better people in Christ, but the Creed is a framework for unfolding mystery, it is a highway with guardrails, it sets the stage for greater glory and travel, it keeps us safe and also points us onward and upward and deeper. The inside of the Creed is greater than the outside.

 

When we know the Father and the Son and the Spirit as the only true God, then we look to no other god and no other message, no other gospel. This singularity of devotion, this true Monotheism (Mark 12:29 – 30), sets the person who knows God apart from those who know only religion, including “Christian” religion. This is one reason why a church setting can be an uncomfortable place for a Christian to be, for she or he can be in a place where people talk about God but who do not speak of Him as if they actually know Him. They may identify as members or adherents of a particular brand of Christianity, but they do not identify as disciples of Jesus Christ, as those who belong to Him and whose lives belong to Him and to Him alone.

 

If we understand that the Father sent the Son, then we must grapple with the fact that the Son sends us as the Father sent Him (John 17:18; 20:21). Are we living lives of obedience to this calling? Are our lives cruciform as that of the Incarnate Son?

 

Perhaps there are two types of people in a church building, those who live as if their lives are their own, and those who live as owned by Jesus Christ, those who are the property of Jesus Christ.

 

To recognize that the Father sent the Son, to truly “see” this, must mean that at some point we confront the fact that Jesus sends us as the Father sent Him, and that our lives are not our own, we have been bought with a price (1 Cor. 6:19 – 20).  This necessarily means that we embrace the Cross and the Way of Suffering for Christ and others. We learn to exchange our cushioned pews and seats and coffee bars and Sunday morning entertainment for the Cross of Christ with its rough-hewn wood and nails and mockery – so that others may live in Jesus. Make no mistake, we must die so that others may live.

 

Eternal life is knowing the Father and the Son, and sharing the Gospel is bringing others into this eternal koinonia, bringing them home to the Father’s House. O the joy of the Father’s House! The joy of living every day with Jesus! The joy of the Holy Spirit! The joy of the koinonia of the saints!

 

It is said that we don’t know what we don’t know.

 

Well, now we know.