3449 — Eternal Life and Immortality
I have been under the impression that we receive eternal life when Christ comes. I find in my Bible that God only hath immortality. 1 Tim. 6:16. How can I harmonize this passage with 1 John 5:11, 12? Kindly explain this to me. Subscriber. Thus writes a Bible reader eighty years of age. It is not a hard question if we do not confound eternal life and immortality. The first is God's uncorrupted life given of God and received and held by faith, the second is God's seal on the physical man of incorruptible character. Before man sinned he had the life of God; the Creator breathed within his nostrils "the breath of life." This was the eternal life of the eternal God; for we could conceive of His having no other. That life came into man according to the law of God's character. "The commandment . . . was ordained to life." Rom. 7:10. "In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death." Prov. 12:28. But when man sinned, he perverted that law in his own being, and thus perverted the life; and death resulted. So Paul found that the commandment "ordained to life" was to the sinner "unto death." The sinner, therefore, does not possess eternal life. It flows out from God as such, but the carnal mind perverts the channel, and the life issues in death. But because the law was no longer a channel for life, "the Righteous One" "gave Himself" in order to bring to man the righteousness and eternal life the law could not give. Rom. 8:1-3. Therefore he who accepts Jesus Christ receives in Him eternal life. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life." John 3:16. "He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life." John 3:36. "He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life." John 6:54. "He that believeth hath eternal life." Verse 47. What more power has the Christian than other men unless he has more and divine life? Let faith grasp and hold the precious, mighty boon. "These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life." 1 John 5:13, A.R.V. This is the life which Paul had. Gal. 2:20. This is the life which quickens and heals this mortal body. Rom. 8:11. But if we sin, we pervert its channel, and die. If we use God's life in overcoming sin to the end, God will stamp upon our complete being at His coming His own image and the glorious seal of immortality, incorruptibility, deathlessness, forever. Now eternal life is conditional; then it will be absolute, blended with the glorious immortality given at our Lord's second coming. Then rejoice in "eternal" life now.