“On a certain occasion, Christ pronounced it necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up, ‘that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life’ (John 3:15)—ἔχῃ ζωήν αἰώνιον. Ζωὴν αἰώνιον, says Meyer, who is, perhaps, the best commentator on the New Testament, of modern times, ‘signifies the eternal Messianic life, which, however, the believer already possesses—ἔχῃ—in this αἰὼν, that is, in the temporal development of that moral and blessed life which is independent of death, and which will culminate in perfection and glory at the coming of Christ.’ And Lücke, whose commentary on the Gospel of John is one of the most thorough and attractive in the German language, says that the ζωὴ αἰώνιος, which is the exact opposite of ἀπώλεια (destruction), or θάνατος (death), is the sum of Messianic blessedness. It is plain, we think, that the life here spoken of as the present possession of every believer in Christ is more than endless existence; it is life in the fullest and highest sense of the word, the free, holy, and blessed action of the whole man, that is to say, the proper, normal living of a rational and moral being. The germ, the principle of this life, exists in the heart of every believer; it is a present possession. ‘Whosoever,’ says Christ, ‘drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a fountain—πηγὴ—of water, springing up into everlasting life.’ (John 4:14.) In another place our Saviour utters these words: ‘He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath eternal life, and shall not come into condemnation, but has passed from death into life’ (John 5:24)—μεταβέβηκεν ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου εἰς τὴν [pg 299] ζωήν. Here, again, the believer is said to have eternal life, even now; for he has passed from death into life. Ingens saltus, remarks Bengel, with his customary brevity and graphic power. We translate a part of Lücke's ample and instructive note on this important verse.
“ ‘The words, “Has passed from death into life” determine that ἔχει (hath) must be taken as a strict present. For the verb μεταβέβηκεν (has passed) affirms that the transition from death into life took place with the hearing and believing. Only if an impossible thought were thus expressed, could we consent, as in a case of extreme necessity, to understand the present ἔχει and the present perfect μεταβέβηκεν as futures. And then we should be compelled to say that John had expressed himself very strangely. But if a higher kind of life, a resurrection process prior to bodily death, is represented by “hath,” and “hath passed,” then ζωὴ and ζωὴ αἰώνιος are not to be understood of a life commencing after bodily death, but of the true and eternal Messianic life or salvation, beginning even here. This life does not, to be sure, exclude natural death, but neither does it first begin after this death. (Cf. 5:40.) Even so θάνατος cannot be understood of bodily, but only of spiritual death, of lying in the darkness of the world. This interpretation would be justified here, even if θάνατος elsewhere in the New Testament denoted uniformly nothing but bodily death. But the metaphorical idea of death stands out clearly in 1 John 3:14; 5:16, 17; John 8:51, 52; 2 Cor. 2:16; 7:10. Similar, also, is the use of the words θανατοῦν (Rom. 7:4; 8:13), and νεκρός, νεκροῦν, ἀποθνήσκειν (Matt. 8:22; Eph. 5:14; Heb. 6:1; Col. 3:5; Gal. 2:19).’
“With the passage now examined may be compared a statement of the apostle John to the same effect, namely: ‘We know that we have passed from death into life, because we love the brethren; he that loveth not abideth in death.’ (1 John 3:14.) This language, explained with a due regard [pg 300] to the preceding context, speaks, evidently, of spiritual death and life, of a passing from one moral condition into another and opposite one. To say that this new moral condition and blessed state is to endure and improve forever, may doubtless be to utter an important truth, but one which does not conflict in the slightest degree with its present existence. It begins in this life; it continues forever and ever.
“Again: we find our Saviour saying, ‘He that believeth on me hath everlasting life;’ ‘Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you;’ and, ‘The words that I speak unto you are spirit, and are life.’ (John 6:47, 53, 63.) By these verses we are taught once more, that the Greek terms which denote life and death, living and dying, were applied by Christ to opposite moral states of the soul. For, observe, (1.) he more than intimates that his words, his doctrines, are the source of present life to those who receive them, and that, by eating his flesh and drinking his blood, he signifies a reception of his words, and so of himself as the Lamb of God. And, (2.) he declares that one who believes has eternal life; that one who eats of the true bread shall not die, but shall live forever; and that one who does not eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man hath not life in himself.
“Is it not plain that the words life and death, as well as the words bread, flesh, and blood, eating and drinking, are here used in a spiritual sense? Is it not plain that Jesus here speaks of something in the believer's soul which is nourished by Christian truth, and which is at the same time called life? But it is the function of truth to quicken thought and feeling, to determine the modes of conscious life, the character or moral condition of the human soul; and hence the rejection of it may involve the utter want of certain spiritual qualities and blessed emotions, but not the want of personal existence. In still another place we read, ‘Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though [pg 301] he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’ (John 11:25, 26.) Christ here affirms that every believer is exempted from death. And it matters not for our present purpose whether the word ζῶν, translated in our version ‘liveth,’ refers in this passage to physical or to moral life. If it refers to physical life, then our Saviour pronounces the Christian to be already, in time, delivered from the power of death, and in possession of a true and immortal life. But if it refers to moral life, Christ declares that whoever possesses this life, whether in the body or out of the body, is delivered from the power of death; that is, his union with God and delight in him, which alone constitute the normal living of the soul, shall never be interrupted: οὐ μὴ ἀποθάνῃ εἰς τὸν αἰώνα—he shall never die....
“ ‘And this is life eternal,’ says the Great Teacher, ‘that they should know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.’ (John 17:3.) The best ancient and modern interpreters hold this verse to be a definition by Christ himself of the expression ‘life eternal,’ so often used by him, according to the record of John. De Wette says, ‘And this is (therein consists) the life eternal; not, this is the means of the eternal life; for the vital knowledge of God and Christ is itself the eternal life, which begins even here, and penetrates the whole life of the human spirit.’ Meyer translates thus: ‘Therein consists the eternal life,’ and says, ‘This knowledge, willed of God, is the “eternal life,” inasmuch as it is the essential subjective principle of the latter, its enduring, eternally unfolding germ and fountain, both now, in the temporal development of the eternal life, and hereafter, when the kingdom is set up, in which faith, hope, and charity abide, whose essence is that knowledge.’[34] The same view, substantially, is presented by Olshausen, Lücke, Bengel, Alford, and many others.”
Eternal life is the gift of God to the soul through Jesus Christ. It is God's life communicated to man—the life of God in the soul of man. This is distinctly stated in the First Epistle of John (chap. 1:1), as the life which was from the beginning, the eternal life which was with the Father, but is manifested to us, giving us fellowship with the Father and with his Son.
The root of this eternal life is in every human being. It is what we call “the spirit” in man, as distinguished from the soul and body. It is the side of each person which touches the infinite and eternal.
Fichte, the most spiritual of German philosophers, says, “Love is life. Where I love, I live. What I love, I live from that.”[35] When we love earthly things, our life is earthly, that is, temporal; when we love the true, the right, the good, our life is spiritual and eternal. Then we have eternal life abiding in us. Then all fear of death departs. The great gift of God through Christ was to make the right and true also lovely, so that loving them, we could draw our life from them. When God becomes lovely to us, by being shown to us as Jesus shows him, then by loving God we live from God, and so have eternal life abiding in us.
The natural instinct of immortality is the spirit, or sense of the infinite and eternal. But it needs to be reënforced by the influence of Christian conviction, hope, and experience, in order completely to conquer the sense of death. It is not by logical arguments in proof of a future existence that immortality becomes clear to us, but by living an immortal life. Dr. Channing says truly, “Immortality must begin here.” And so Hase (Dogmatic, § 92) says, “Any proof which should demonstrate, with mathematical certainty, to the understanding, or to the senses, the blessings or terrors of our future immortality, would destroy morality in its very roots. The belief in immortality is therefore at first only a wish, [pg 303] and a belief on the authority of others; but the more that any one assures to himself his spiritual life by his own free efforts and a pure love for goodness, the more certain also does eternity become, not merely as something future, but as something already begun.”[36]