John 6:35-47 [NLTse]
35 Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in Me will never be thirsty. 36 But you haven’t believed in Me even though you have seen Me. 37 However, those the Father has given Me will come to Me, and I will never reject them. 38 For I have come down from Heaven to do the will of God Who sent Me, not to do My Own will. 39 And this is the will of God, that I should not lose even one of all those He has given Me, but that I should raise them up at the last day. 40 For it is My Father’s will that all who see His Son and believe in Him should have eternal life. I will raise them up at the last day.”
41 Then the people began to murmur in disagreement because He had said, “I am the bread that came down from Heaven.” 42 They said, “Isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph? We know His father and mother. How can He say, ‘I came down from Heaven’?”
43 But Jesus replied, “Stop complaining about what I said. 44 For no one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draws them to Me, and at the last day I will raise them up. 45 As it is written in the Scriptures, ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from Him comes to Me. 46 (Not that anyone has ever seen the Father; only I, Who was sent from God, have seen Him.)
47 “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes has eternal life.”
Sermon
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the entire creation was good. Everything lived in perfect harmony together – from quarks to koalas and from microbes to manatees – with the entire cosmos drawing its life-energy from the living breath – the Holy Spirit – of God. But all too quickly Adam and Eve showed that they didn’t want to be dependent on God. They wanted to know good from evil themselves, apart from Him, and they sinned, and so the cosmic harmony was broken: Life was broken; sin had entered the world, and through sin, death. And the Bible tells us that, because Adam and Eve had put themselves under the power of sin, and because every human being is descended from Adam and Eve, that every human being is born under the power of sin, as well. And because everyone sins everyone will die.
[Would opening the sermon talking about gene-o-grams and how we can get gifts from people that we don’t want be helpful?]
But Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes has eternal life.”
The Lord Jesus is a little more specific earlier in John, chapter 3, verse 36, when He says, “Whoever has the Son has eternal life.” And in John 5:24 He’s more specific still, saying, “I tell you the truth, those who listen to My message and believe in God Who sent Me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life.”
Do you notice the timeframe for this eternal life Jesus offered and is offering us? “Whoever has the Son has eternal life”; “I tell you the truth, those who listen to My message and believe in God Who sent Me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life.”
Now, when you hear about and think about “eternal life”, don’t you (for the most part) find yourself thinking about life after death, life in Heaven, life in the resurrection, in the New Heaven and New Earth, when all things are new, that Jesus said He will bring with Him when He comes back for us? And yet the Lord Jesus is making clear here that the Kingdom of Heaven is now; that eternal life has already begun here and now; that it all began the moment we accepted Him, when we listened to His message and believed in the God He revealed to us. So, our focus on eternal life should not be in the future but right here and now in the present. Eternal life has begun!
In John 17:3 the Lord Jesus makes eternal life even easier to understand when He says, “And this is the way to have eternal life—to know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the One You sent to earth.” And, perhaps, we think this is obvious because of course we know Jesus: We know all about Him!
Except that the Lord isn’t speaking, here, about us getting to know about Him, that is, getting to know a bunch of facts and figures about Him; getting to know Him in an intellectual way. No, Jesus wants each of us to get to know Him personally.
We know this is true because in the Old Testament when a man got to “know” a woman the result was a baby being born! So the biblical idea of knowing someone is highly personal and deeply experiential. The Lord Jesus illustrates such “knowledge” in Matthew 7:21, when He says, “Not everyone who calls out to Me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of My Father in Heaven will enter.” (Matthew 7:21)
And that’s why the person of Jesus Christ is so very crucial. Critics want to say that Christians make too big a deal about Jesus, and that He divides Christianity apart from all that we have in common with other faiths. But only Jesus fully and accurately reveals the Father. The entire Old Testament is all about God, but when God was born, Himself, in Jesus Christ, those who knew the Old Testament best didn’t recognize Him!
Colossians 1:15 says, “Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.” Colossians 2:9 says, “In Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body.” And, Hebrews 1:3 says, “The Son radiates God’s Own glory and expresses the very character of God.” And in John 17:6, Jesus prays, “I have revealed You to the ones You gave Me from this world.” And in John 14:9, He says, “Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father.”
So, this “knowledge” of the Father and the Son that provides eternal life is not a knowledge based upon the research or study of some common and agreed upon ideas about “god” out there, but is a “knowledge” based on trusting and obeying, and serving and submitting to, God the Father Almighty Who has made Himself known in God the Son, Jesus Christ of Nazareth. It is a “knowledge” that puts Jesus’ needs before our own; a “knowledge” that moves us to lay aside the way we want to live our lives in order to live the way the Lord Jesus wants us to. It’s that kind of “knowledge”: A relationship…
Of course, Christians dying while the Lord has promised us eternal life has been a challenge for some. But we can have troubles in some areas of our lives – mental, emotional, and spiritual troubles – without us ever thinking that our life has ended. And so it is with death: We can be having troubles with our physical bodies even while we’re still vibrant mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
There have been instances where people have had the emotional part of them “die” because of an illness or accident while the rest of them seems quiet whole and “alive”. There have been instances where people have been declared “brain-dead”, and yet their body lives on sound and strong. But, as Christians, we never need be afraid of death because our spirits can never die now that they have been united with God’s eternal Spirit – the Holy Spirit.
So, regardless of what happens to our hearts, minds, and bodies – even if they die – we can know that we will never know complete, everlasting death as long as we live in covenant with the Father, knowing Him through knowing Jesus Christ. Because when our physical body dies we know that our souls instantly join Christ in the Garden of Eden in Heaven. And when Jesus returns to bring the dead back to life in the resurrection to come, we will return with Him, and our hearts and minds and spirits will join together again with our bodies – new death-, aging-, accident-, and sadness-free bodies – and that we will continue in eternal life…
Of course, even as eternal life is real and here and now, eternal death is also real. Eternal death is death that will last forever. It’s not an eternal dying, it’s an eternal death: There’s no coming back; it is the end. And all that is “death” will be an eternal reality for those who experience it: Separation from God; and that means separation from all that God is, like love, and joy, peace and patience, hope and kindness, goodness and generosity, etc…
Of course, that’s where we get our images of Hell, because the absence of love leaves either only hate or, perhaps, indifference. The absence of joy leaves only misery, depression, or woe. Without peace there remains only war and worry and disagreement. Without patience there is only agitation, impatience, and frustration. Without hope there is only despair and fear. Without kindness there’s only hostility and harshness, only intolerance and cruelty. If there’s no goodness then all that’s left is wickedness and meanness and dishonesty and corruption. And if there’s no generosity then all that’s left is selfishness and stinginess and greed.
And so eternal death has come to be pictured as a torture chamber or pitch blackness or all wailing and moaning or pain and suffering. And, of course, it’s all these things but worse: Worse than we can possibly contemplate or imagine, just as Heaven and Paradise and eternal life are better than anyone can possibly contemplate or imagine!
I want to invite the Praise Team up to lead us in singing our next song, “When We All Get To Heaven.” And yet, as we sing, I want us to sing in the understanding that eternal life has begun in us. If you know God the Father because you know and trust His Son, Jesus Christ, then eternal life has begun in you. And knowing the Father comes from knowing Jesus and living your life according to His will: Knowing God’s will, trusting Him, and then doing His will. Because it is as we grow in knowing God’s will better and better, and as we grow in trusting God more and more, and as we grow in doing His will more and more consistently that we truly grow in our relationship with God and truly show the reality of the Kingdom of Heaven, the reality of eternal life. So, as we sing let’s sing for the future! But let us also sing for the here and the now!
In Jesus Christ, Heaven has invaded Earth. And as Jesus’ life gets lived through us by the Holy Spirit, the Kingdom of Heaven is expanding soul by soul by soul. Eternal life has begun! If it’s begun in you sing loud! If eternal life has begun in you, sing hearty! Let’s torture the evil one with our praise!