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ETERNAL LIFE

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 27, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 4.

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ETERNAL LIFE.

Actual, Conditional, Absolute.

A FRIEND writes us relative to a question answered some time ago. The question is asked, “Does 1 John 5:13 teach that we have eternal life now?” and the answer given is, “It does.” Our correspondent seems to think that there should be a proviso attached to our reply. But why? The text reads: “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life.”
God is “eternal.” His Spirit is the “eternal Spirit.” His life is “eternal life,” the “endless life.” It could not be conceived that an eternal Being had any other life than eternal life. And “with Him is the fountain of life.”
That eternal life God gives to all, to bird and beast, to insect and fish, to earth and plant, to angel and man. It all flows out from the great living central Heart of life to every creature. It is received by that creature and operates in that creature according to the law of the being of that creature planted in it by its Creator.
In each life it is perpetuated after its own order. God’s law or righteousness is “everlasting” or eternal. It is absolutely unchangeable, because His character is unchangeable. And the eternal life of the eternal God flows out from the great Fountain in harmony with the eternal law of God. “The commandment was ordained to life.” “In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death.” If all the universe had lived forever in harmony with God’s law, there would never have been any other life known than eternal life. It would have flowed out from the great Fountain, and the life-pulses of God would have beat uninterruptedly to all parts of His boundless dominion.
So far as this earth is concerned, the highest being upon it is man. The earth was made for his home, and he was given its dominion. The law of his being is the highest law, the moral law; abstractly it is the expression of God’s character. If man had been faithful to God, his life would have continued endlessly.
But man sinned, and with sin came death. “The commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.” Why?—Man refused to let that life flow into him according to the true law of his being, the holy law of God. It therefore became death to him, and the life as respects himself came to an end.
As he yielded himself to sin, sin became incarnate. It took up its dwelling in the flesh, where for nearly six thousand years it has perverted and brought to an end in man the eternal life of God. And while that life flows out from God eternal life, it becomes in the sinner, immediately it enters his being, a perverted life, which in a little while, at the longest, ends in the shades of death. As man had dominion over all in the earth, when he sinned, all under him came under the same perverted law. “For the creation was subjected to vanity [death] not of its own will, but by reason of him [the sinner] who subjected it.” R. V. Man—unregenerate man—has not therefore in himself eternal life.
But there is One who has lived God’s eternal life in the flesh, triumphant over sin, namely, Jesus the Son of God. The commandment in Him did not work out death, but life. The law in the sinner means death. In our Lord it was indeed “the law of the Spirit of life.”
He yielded wholly to God’s law. “Lo, I come,” said He, “to do Thy will, O my God; yea, Thy law is within My heart.” Yielding wholly to God’s law, God gave to Him in the fullest sense His own life.
All who will yield to God through Christ will have the same life. All whose hearts are yielded to God’s law by faith in Christ, as that law was manifest in Christ’s life, will receive the outflowing life as it comes from the Fountain,—eternal life. And every such one can truly say: “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of Christ dwell in you. . . . And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” Therefore “he that hath the Son hath life.” “These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God.” R. V.
But may we not lose this life?—Yes, by yielding to sin. We hold it by faith. But, and here is the point, the life is not less actual because it is conditional. Jesus was as actually present in the synagog at Nazareth as He was in the house of Zaccheus. To him who truly yields now is the life actually given now; and it is given that by “the power of an endless life” the sinner may bring every thought, every fiber of his being, into subjection to God’s law and life. If we continue faithful till characters are formed, then when Jesus comes is eternal life bestowed absolutely and forever. Our flesh, our being, will never again pervert God’s law. God’s law molds the man; the man does not pervert the law.
O soul, adrift on the great stormy sea of life, out of harmony with God and dying, will you not yield to the law of life? Will you not live, and not die? Will you not choose righteousness and life rather than sin and death? Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” Do you not wish the abundant life?