True life in Jesus
“In him was life, and that life was the light of humanity. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
- John 1:4–5
As we end the year, I would like to remind us of one fundamental truths. This truth is important for all of us to grasp because it affects us all. Whether you are a Christian or not, we all need to be reminded that Jesus is the source of life.
In the gospel of John, we are introduced to the Word. The Word - who was from the beginning, was with God in the beginning. He is God and the creator of everything (1:1-3). John goes on to say in the verse above, that in Him (i.e the Word) is life, and that life was the light of humanity. Before we unpack the meaning of all this, let us look at who does Him in the beginning of the verse we are looking into.
Verse 14 of this same chapter describes the Word as full of grace and truth. In verse 17, John says grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. From this we can see that the Word is Jesus. In the passage that we are looking at we can say that in Jesus there is life. That means is that Jesus is the source of life both physical (through creation) and spiritual (through His death on the cross).
Jesus is the source of both the physical and spiritual life. However, in the passage above, John is speaking about the latter than the former. We see that the life Jesus possesses is the light of humanity (v4). The light shines so brightly that the darkness can not overcome it. In the gospel of John, John uses darkness to either mean to sin (John 3:19) or the world we live in (John 8:12). All which Jesus overcame by his death and resurrection so that all who believe in him will have true life: the eternal life (John 3:16).
We see here, that, Jesus being the source of life has eternal implications for us all.
The first implication, without Jesus there is no life. Jesus says “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Jesus is making an exclusive statement claiming that no one can have access to God, a relationship with God except through knowing Jesus. Jesus presents himself as the only one who gives life i.e fellowship with the holy Father. This means that apart from trusting in Jesus to be in a relationship with God we are dead in our sins (Ephesians 2:1).
We may look alive as we carry on with our day to day lives but the reality is we are spiritually dead and devoid of a relationship with God who created us. That is because all life lived apart from Jesus - the source of life is no life at all.
The second implication, for Jesus being the source of life is that life to the full is only found in Him. We see this as Jesus outlines one of the reasons he came to the world, “I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance” (John 10:10). As people, we are all looking for fulfilment and purpose in life. We all want to live life to the fullest. We strive for good paying careers, perfect families and making and impact in the world. All this is not bad in and of themselves, yet they will not fulfil us. Fulfilment is not found in these things. We can only live life to the fullest by coming to Jesus, the source of life.
So as the source of life, what kind of life does Jesus offer us? Well Jesus offers us an everlasting life. John refers to it as eternal life. Eternal is the the quality and the quantity of the life that Jesus gives. Nothing else promises such. This life is a life that we were created by God to live. This life is the gift from God which we receive by trusting in Jesus.
This is how Jesus himself defines eternal life:
“This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent —Jesus Christ”.
- John 17:3
Eternal life is a privilege of knowing God by being in a relationship with him which is what we were created for.
In the passage above, John wants us to see that Jesus is the source of eternal life and to believe in Him (John 20:31). This is very important because we all want to have life but sometimes we look for it in wrong places. We think that by doing certain things or by being part of certain group we will have eternal life. Well, here is a reminder from John that we can only have eternal life through Jesus because he alone is the source of life.
