Journey to the Cross and Beyond (Part #3)

Text: John 17:1-3

46% of people say they never wonder what will happen to them after death, according to Lifeway Research.

Possible reasons are thinking less about eternity
1. Ignorance
2. Disbelief
3. Preoccupation
4. Shortsightedness
5. Not understanding the blessings of Eternal Life

John 13-17 has more recorded information from the Upper Room just before Christ’s arrest/death than any other Gospel, though he doesn’t mention the institution of the Lord’s Supper.

John 17 specifically records the prayer of Jesus for Himself and His disciples as He prepares to return to His Father. In it Jesus defines one specific aspect of Eternal Life.

In the Hebrew mindset Eternal life is defined as, “Life of eternity, age” (Daniel 12:2). It is an expression used in contrast to temporal life. And, in Jewish thought, life in the age to come is characterized by a restored relationship with God.

In other words...

• Eternal life is QUALITATIVE, not just QUANTITATIVE.
• It is INTENSIVE, not just EXTENSIVE.
• It is EXPERIENTIAL, not just ENDLESS.
• It is COMMUNION, not just REGENERATION.
• It concerns INTIMACY, not just CHRONOLOGY.
• It’s a DYNAMIC EXPERIENCE, not just a STATIC TRUTH.
• It’s an UNENDING RELATIONSHIP, not just an UNENDING EXISTENCE.

As you can see, we need to broaden our understanding of the the concept of Eternal Life.

Let’s distinguish at least four aspects of Eternal Life in scripture:
1. Eternal Life is about...A Future Blessing (Salvation/Justification)

• It is viewed as something we are looking forward to enjoying with God after death.
• We usually view this aspect of Eternal Life as a transaction wherein God imparts to us this “gift” to us (Romans 6:23).
• This aspect of Eternal Life concerns the duration of the Life a Christian has from God...the quantity of that life.
• Because the knowledge of God will require an eternity to fully develop, the life He gives us is eternal.
• How long is eternity?

Picture a parakeet in your backyard next to a sandbox. You take a pail, fill it full of sand, and then let some of the grains of sand fall through your hands. One bucket of sand has thousands of grains of sand. Let’s imagine that you could instruct that parakeet to pick up one of the grains of sand in its beak, fly to the moon and drop it off. Let’s say it takes one million years for the parakeet to get to the moon. He puts the grain of sand down and flies back to earth. It takes a million years for him to get back. He then picks up the next grain of sand and flies back to the moon. He drops off that grain and flies back to earth—a million years there, a million years back. One by one the parakeet takes each grain of sand in your sandbox to the moon. When he is finished, you take him down to Key West, Florida and there you show him the Atlantic Ocean and the beach which runs along the coast. You tell him, "I want you to start clearing off the sand on this beach one grain at a time." He starts there, then works his way up to Miami, then to Jacksonville, Hilton Head, Charleston, New York City, Boston, and up toward Maine. He takes each grain of sand to the moon one at a time, a million years there, a million years back. When he’s done with all of that, you take him out to the West Coast and from Mexico all the way up to California and Oregon, you tell him to take one grain of sand at a time and fly it to the moon. When the parakeet finishes with all of that, you say, I’ve got this other little spot called the Sahara Desert. I want you to clear the sand off of that place one at a time." When he finishes that, you say, "Three-fourths of the surface of the earth is water. Let me drain the oceans dry. At the bottom of the oceans you have a lot of sand. Take all of that sand to the moon, one grain of sand at a time, a million years there, and a million years back." When he finishes, if you could add up all of the millions of years it had taken to remove all of the sand from all of those places, eternity would just be beginning.

2. Eternal Life is about...A Personal Relationship

• Eternal Life is described not just in chronological terms, but also in terms of a relationship God.
• “That they may know you [God]...and Jesus Christ” (17:3)
• The word translated “know” (ginosko) is sometimes used in the Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament) and in the Greek New Testament to describe intimacy associated with the physical union of a husband/wife (Adam/Eve). The idea is, “to know by observation and experience--an intimate experiential knowledge.”
• Commentator Stephen Smalley (Word Biblical Commentary) defines eternal life as “a spiritual quality of life” that involves “a sharing of living fellowship with the Father.”
• Illustrate by using the Old Testament Tabernacle/Temple and show the distance maintained between God and Man...until Jesus Christ. (cf. Hebrews 10:19-23)
• “And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom...” (Matthew 27:50-51)
• “Eternal Life is not just unending life in the sense of prolonged duration. Rather it is a quality of life, with its qualitativeness derived from a relationship with God. Having eternal life is here defined as being in relationship with the Father, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom the Father sent.” (The Disciplemaker)
• Author Joseph Dillow writes, “We must remember that eternal life in the Bible is not a static entity, a mere gift of regeneration that does not continue to grow and blossom. No, it is a dynamic relationship with Christ Himself.”
• “The highest kind of life is involvement with the highest kind of environment. A worm is content to live in soil; we need not only the wider environment of earth, sea, and sky but also contact with other human beings. For the complete fulfillment of our being, we must know God.”
• The statement in verse 3 is also strikingly similar in form to the central affirmation of Islam, “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet.” Both religions claim to honor the only true God, a theme from the Old Testament as well (e.g., Ex 34:6 LXX; Isa 37:20), and both speak of the great revealer of God.

But they differ radically in what is said of this revealer. Jesus is a prophet—indeed, the revealer of God par excellence. But this verse, in keeping with the whole of this Gospel, says Jesus is far more than just a prophet. For eternal life is not just a knowledge of God as revealed by the Son; it includes a knowledge of the Son himself. Thus he shares in deity... (Alford 1980:875).

• Because we have Eternal Life we have a Father and a Friend!!

3. Eternal Life is about...A Motivating Influence

• Eternal Life not only affects our future and our focus. It also affects our functioning or (spiritual) fruitfulness for Him.
• “The efficient source of all faith, righteousness, and love is a new life-principle which is nothing else than the Life of God begotten in the centre of the human personality. In this alone the children of God differ from others. It is not because they believe, do righteousness, and love their brother, that they are ‘begotten of God,’ but because they are begotten of God that they believe, love, and do righteousness.” (The Tests of Life, Robert Law)
• The quantitative aspect of eternal life focuses on it as something possessed and as life enduring without end. Its qualitative aspect has experience and expression in daily life in view. (The Disciplemaker)
• cf. 1 John 3:14-15
• “When he says eternal life is not “abiding” in them, he is not saying that they do not possess it. The concept of abiding, again, is that of eternal life influencing, having an effect in the life of, the person...John is not saying that someone who hates his Christian brother is “lost.” Rather, he is saying that hatred for one’s Christian brother proves that he is not experiencing eternal life. God’s life is not having an impact in his thoughts and actions.”

4. Eternal Life is about...A Staggering Abundance

• cf. John 10:1-10
• “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10)
• Illustrated in the shepherd/sheep motif...with the backdrop of Psalm 23 showing abundance.
• The word used for “abundantly”...is related to the word used in John 6:13 to speak of the abundance left over from the feeding of the five thousand.
• Albert Barnes explains it this way, “They shall not merely have life--simple, bare existence--but they shall have all those superadded things which are needful to make life eminently blessed and happy.” (Notes on the New Testament: Luke & John)

• Maybe this aspect of Eternal Life is best understood by its privileges and effects. Some of these are found here in John 17: enlightenment (v. 8), preservation (vv. 11–12), joy (v. 13), sanctification (v. 19), commission (v. 18), unity (v. 22), and fellowship (v. 24).
• The Samaritan Woman: Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:13-14)

• A lot of people in our churches live at..."201 DEPRESSION AVENUE." Too many of us know the place because even though we don’t all live there we spend a lot of time there; it’s at the corner of "Despair and Self-Pity. It’s a place of darkness, gloom and doom, where sounds of complaining, condemnation,and  accusation are frequently heard. The "can’ts" live there, too. You know them, "I can’t do this, and I can’t do that.”

However, JESUS wants us to move in with HIM at HIS beautiful, hillside estate called: ABUNDANT ACRES! You know where it is: it’s on the corner of, "Joy and Thanksgiving" and the estate is surrounded by grace, mercy, and overflowing with love, laughter, light and abundance of every kind.

If you decide to join Him, there’s an narrow gate that leads to His mansion and over it reads the words: WHOSOEVER WILL, MAY ENTER!