This is eternal life
This is eternal life.
Jesus tells us exactly what it is—though it may not exactly be what we’d expect. We’re looking at John 17:3 among other gems in the Bible today. So, join us, as we break it down, read the context, and see how the beauty of God’s Word changes our lives.
Having an Evergreen Relationship with God is a time for women and teen girls to seek the one thing that can’t be taken away from us—God’s Words—and to let it light our path, so we can be with God all the days of our lives and purposefully live our lives for him.
This is eternal life… It’s so clear!
There’s no confusion, we know that the words that follow that statement is going to be the definition of eternal life. It’s kind of like what we look for in textbooks to find the definition. But Jesus doesn’t say “eternal life is being in heaven with God after we die.” Although most would agree that’s what we’d all expect.
Instead, Jesus says something mind-blowing: “This is eternal life, that they may know God.” To know God—that is eternal life! Not only that but he makes sure we understand who it is that we know: the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent. It’s not about knowing who God is. Eternal life is actually knowing him.
So let’s break it down:
Eternal life. What is it? We’re not the first ones to ask.
It’s been a question from mankind to God for centuries. In fact, when Jesus was on earth teaching, at least twice he got asked the same question. The first time is in Luke 10:25 by a lawyer who called Jesus a teacher, but was actually trying to put Jesus to the test. When Jesus told him to go back to the Law, the lawyer gave the answer: “love the Lord your God with all your heart and will all your soul and with all your strength and will all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” To which Jesus replied, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
We will live. If we truly want to live, not just survive, in life, our hearts, our souls, our strength and our minds should be fully devoted to God. And with our everything focused on him, we then love our neighbor, which is what Jesus then teaches the lawyer. That loving our neighbor isn’t always the easy way out but sometimes reaching out to those who seem the least worthy of love in our eyes (though seeing with Jesus’ eyes, we’re all unworthy of love, but love endlessly all the same).
Another person to ask Jesus, the Teacher, about eternal life was later in Luke, chapter 18, someone else in authority, a ruler. He even asked in a very similar way: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
And Jesus’ answer again went back to the commandments. But, after the ruler thought he had already accomplished everything, Jesus then explained it all by saying, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and then you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” In a nutshell? Follow the commandments and follow me.
Jesus gave him the same answer that he gave the lawyer—the commandments are to love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind. As Jesus says in Matthew 25:35-40, the greatest commandment is “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” If the ruler really wanted to follow the commandments, he could sum it all up by focusing on loving God and loving his neighbor.
These commandments that God put in place, what the ruler said he had kept since his youth, was never intended to just be a set of rules. It goes so much deeper.
1 John 5:3-4 says “In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world.” They’re one and the same.
The greatest commandment is to love God and our neighbor and the way we show God love is to follow him commandments. It’s not burdensome- it’s a beautiful way of living! It’s supposed to make sense that we would be eager to do whatever God would ask of us because of our overflowing love for God.
But if we truly love God with all of our hearts, souls, mind and strength, then nothing can compete with him. Whatever is in our way that is keeping our hearts divided, keeping our hearts from loving God and following him—those things need to go.
And for the ruler it was his riches. Like all of us, he was given the freedom of choice. He could’ve set aside his riches. But if he decided not to, and as far as we know he didn’t, then he couldn’t truly follow Jesus.
So the answer to both the lawyer and the ruler concerning eternal life was about loving God by doing what he asks of us, loving our neighbor, and putting aside all other things to follow,, Jesus.
Their answer was speaking to them.
Eternal life didn’t just come up when mankind started asking about it. God planned it for us from the very beginning! He promised this hope of eternal life to us before the ages began, as it says in Titus 1:2. A promise! Again in 1 John 2:25: “And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life.” It’s not just an afterthought. It’s a solid vow. He had a plan for eternal life before we even knew we needed it.
And his name is Jesus.
But when Jesus came to earth, the authorities were asking him all of these technical questions and missing the whole point! Jesus said in John 5:39-40, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”
“No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.” John 1:18. God wanted us to have eternal life—to know him. And the only one who could let us know who God truly is is was God himself. So he came in the flesh. For us.
That is eternal life. It all goes back to knowing God. If we know God, we will love him. And if we love him, we will follow him commandments.
So that’s the remaining part of our verse: And this is eternal life, to know God, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.
If we truly hunger after life, real life, then we go to the source— knowing the Creator of life. The Creator of eternal life. He is the one who breathed life into our bodies from the beginning of creation, as it says in Genesis 2:7, that that’s how we became living creatures!
We’ve all heard of the tales of people wanting the fountain of youth or the way to live forever—their version of eternal life. Because if we just know life here on earth, all eternal life means, then, is existing in a world full of sin and struggling between good and evil constantly. That is not what God has promised us! Eternal life is true life, not encumbered by any sin but instead by knowing God, loving him, and following him. Following him home, forever. Long after earth ceases to exist, he has made it that still knowing him, we can be with him forever.
The beautiful part is knowing God doesn’t start after death. It starts now! We are able to know who God is now. Because we are no longer in a time where “No one has ever seen God.” But now “the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” We are now able to know God through Jesus Christ, whom God has sent.
He is the reason we are able to not only have life on this earth, but a chance to have eternal life. He is telling us everything we need to know and follow to know who God is. “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.” 1 John 5:20
The true God. This God we worship is not another so-called deity that mankind made up to fit their need (or what they thought was their need). He is THE God. There is nothing else we can compare him to that would outshine him. All other lowercase “g” gods pale in comparison to the truth. Their glory is short-lived, empty of promises and fading as we get closer to true Glory. There is only One true God.
For “The Lord our God, the Lord is one” as it says in Deuteronomy 6:4. Which interestingly enough, Deuteronomy 6:5 is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” We follow the one who is, was, and is to come. As the Lord God himself says in Revelation 1:8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
Whether we believe it or not, the truth stands that he alone is God, he alone is worth knowing, worthy of any love we can give back to him and our lives to follow.
The way we know that is through his Son, Jesus Christ whom he has sent. Who is in fact the Author of life as it says in Acts 3:15. He is the reason not only for life here on earth, but eternal life.
It goes back to a well-known verse that is so profound it’s probably the most memorized, but unfortunately sometimes means it’s lost its meaning. John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” That is the key! If we don’t know Christ, how can we know God? God showed his love for us in that he sent the only one who could give us understanding, to know him who is true. His Son Jesus Christ—he is the true God and eternal life.
To know him is to have eternal life.
So that was breaking it down. Now let’s look at the context:
When Jesus said this in John 17:3, that eternal life was to know him, it was in the middle of several other things he was telling his disciples.
In John 13, Jesus spent Passover with them, his last one, and washed their feet.
And then after giving them sharing with them much understanding (even if they didn’t quite get it at the time), it ends in chapter 18 when Jesus goes to the Mount of Olives and Judas betrays him to death. The death that would be the real Passover, its completion. The most pure lamb sacrificed to bring us out of spiritual bondage, the one whose blood over us would save us.
In the immediate surrounding context, verse 1-5 of John 17, it says after Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted his eyes to heaven. This was the beginning of a prayer, talking to God! Just like Jesus prayed all night before choosing his disciples (Luke 6:12-13), he again prayed before he went to the cross. Here with his disciples and, as we know, later on in the garden when he says “not my will but yours” to God.
The time for him to die.
Which are the first words of his prayer in John 17:1 “Father, the hour has come.”
He knew what was coming. It was the hour of those who would give him up to death, the time for the power of darkness. Spiritually and then literally reflecting that as the sun stopped shining when Jesus then hung on the cross. But as Jesus said earlier in John 12:27 “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father save me from this hour?’ But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.”
The whole reason Jesus came to earth was for that hour, to give himself up, to glorify God.
Which is the whole rest of our context. It’s almost as if the main verse (about eternal life being about knowing God and Jesus who he has sent) is bookended by glorifying God. See if you can catch it:
John 17:1-5: When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.”
It's all about the God the Son being glorified so that God the Father may be glorified.
Jesus asks for God to glorify him, the Son, in v.2 and then elaborates in v.5 to glorify him in God’s own presence with the glory Jesus had with God before the world existed.
It goes back to before the ages began (when God made that promise to us for eternal life) and then when the world was made, when God said “Let us make man in our image.” The plural of God, the three in one—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It’s why Jesus was able to tell the Pharisees, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”
But the way Jesus was about to be glorified further was a whole other level of glory. As it says in Hebrews 2:9 “we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” And he did. And he conquered death.
So now “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” as it say in Philippians 2:9. Jesus’ glory is magnificent. He isn’t just a messenger from God to help us know him more. Jesus is as we said before, the Alpha and Omega.
Just to give a picture of who Jesus really is, this is how John describes him in Revelation 19: “ Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.”
This is the glory of our Savior! His glory (which is magnificence or great beauty, high renown and honor) is breathtakingly. But as the end of Philippians said that matches the rest of our context: it’s to bring glory to God the Father.
“Glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you” as it says in our context in v.1 and then he follows that up in v.4: “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.”
Jesus didn’t do this for his own glory. He accomplished the work that the Father gave him to do. He did it to point everyone to the Father. Something that he did from the very beginning of being on earth.
In Luke 2:20, after the shepherds went to see Jesus as it was told to them, it says they returned “glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.” When they saw even baby Jesus, they glorified God.
In Luke 5:25, years later, Jesus healed a paralytic man—not only physically but spiritually. And it says “immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God. And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe.” When the man saw what Jesus had done for him and when those around him saw the extraordinary thing Jesus had done, they all glorified God.
And later in Luke 18:43, after Jesus went over to a blind man who called out for Jesus, Son of David, to heal him, it says “immediately he recovered his sight and followed [Jesus], glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.”
He accomplished the work God gave him to do. For he did not come on his own, but on behalf of and as God himself. Which is why after Jesus said “But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” in John 12, the next verse, verse 28 says “Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it and I will glorify it again.”
So the last part of our context sums it up at the end: “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.”
Jesus, the one who came for us, the one whose glory is unimaginable, came with the authority over all of us.
He did not to judge us but to save us, as it says in John 12:47. God didn’t sent Jesus into the world to condemn us, but that we might be saved through him, as it says in John 3:17. Jesus came with authority to save us. Authority that made demons declare who he was (Jesus, Son of the Most High God) and then beg him repeatedly for permission to go into pigs because they were too scared Jesus was going to command them to depart into the abyss (Luke 8).
This is the authority of Jesus. And his authority includes the ability to give us eternal life.
Jesus affirms in John 10:28, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”
With the King of kings and the Lord of lords in authority, we need never worry if anyone can us away from him—from knowing him, from eternal life. He gives it to us willingly so we need never be separated from him. Never separated from God the Son, from God the Father, who has given us his Spirit to be with us on earth after God the Son physically left to ascend to heaven with God.
Even with the authority Jesus had, he always made sure we knew where this authority was coming from. As he says in John 8:28: “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.” And this is what the Father wanted: to give eternal life to all whom he had given Jesus.
And this is eternal life, that they know God, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom God has sent.
So that was the verse in context. Now how does the beauty of this part of God’s Word change our lives:
We follow his commandments. The commandments that God gives can be summed up in two: love God and love our neighbor. We put everything else aside, not letting any obstacles get in our way. We give him everything.
So we follow God’s commandments because we love him. A love that requires all our heart, all our soul, all our strength and all our mind. A love that makes us want to naturally love others to guide them to the one we know, the one true God who loved first and loves the most.
So love him because we know him. We knew of him. Like Rahab told the Jewish spies she hid in Joshua 2, she had heard of their God, the amazing things he did, that their hearts melted because they knew that he was God of the heavens and the earth. But “No one had ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.” Not only are we able to know about God. We are able to actually know him— because Christ came. He made him known.
And in so doing, Christ gave us eternal life. Because we know God, we are saved. Because we accept his precious gift of being saved, we can be with him forever. And because we can be with him forever, our lives overflow with gratitude, love, and devotion—because knowing God, eternal life, starts now.
Well, that’s it for this time. I pray this week is a wonderful one as you continually seek the Truth in God’s Word, that by its light we will know the right path to follow to live as children of God- children that have an evergreen relationship with him.
Until the next one- same time, same place. See you soon :)
- Rebecca
John 17:1-5:
When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.
