Our text for this morning comes from the Gospel of St. John, chapter 17 looking specifically at verse 3: “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I went on vacation with two of my friends from seminary last year to Kentucky. While we were there, we had the chance to meet a couple of guys who lived and worked there in Kentucky. We met them in the hotel while playing cards in the lobby, and as we got to know them we realized they all had some pretty rough pasts. Two of the three had been married, had kids, and had been divorced, and all three of them had spent at least a year of their lives in jail. All three of these guys were 22 years old or younger. The one guy who had spent most of his teenage years in either juvenile detention or actual prison told me something I had never thought about before. You see I have always been slightly interested in prison ministry because I figured these men and women who were serving sentences for their mistakes would take great comfort in hearing that when it comes to sin and our eternal mistakes, we have a Lord who paid our sentence for us. However, I have been warned that prison ministry is tough because the person you are ministering to only wants to prove their innocence to you rather than listen to the message you are actually trying to tell them. This guy told me that men or women who are serving sentences in jail do not hear the message of God as a positive thing. He told me that people in jail generally do not hear the message of God as a positive thing because it is one more thing to wait for. You see they are already spending the entirety of their day waiting for that day they are released. All of their thoughts and hopes are directed towards getting out of jail and being free again. So to come in and tell them that if they only believe they will one day be free from all sin and spend the rest of eternity in the presence of the one true God, in their minds it is just one more thing they have to wait for. Already sick of waiting to just simply be out from behind bars, they are not interested in waiting for the day they are free from sin too.
When he told me this, it opened my eyes and I completely understood why that would be a hard message to get excited about in their situations. I mean none of us like to wait for things; we are very impatient as human beings. Maybe you’re a child waiting to be that certain correct age to do the next big thing, or you’re waiting to find the right job, or a significant other, or to have children, or finally retire, whatever you may be waiting for in your life, these situations not only make us very unhappy, but can ever cause extreme amounts of stress in our life. We simply do not like to wait. So it makes sense that for these convicted men and women who are already waiting for one thing do not want to have to wait for another thing, no matter how great a thing it may be.
Our text for today is in a way a conclusion to the previous four chapters of John. In chapters 13 to 16 Jesus has been teaching his disciples some very important truths that they will need to know as they are about to witness His death, resurrection, and ascension. Then in chapter 17, as a conclusion to these teachings, Jesus looks to heaven and prays to the Father. He prays out loud so that the disciples have the opportunity to hear exactly what He is praying for. First, He prays for Himself, knowing what He is about to endure, then He prays for His disciples, and finally He prays for all believers. There is so much in this prayer that we could focus in on, but today I want to focus in on verse three. Verse three is in the first part of the prayer where He is actually praying for Himself, but it is clearly meant for all believers to hear. Now this verse is a little unique in the fact that Jesus refers to Himself in the third person, calling Himself, Jesus Christ; nevertheless, it is a magnificent and amazing verse of pure Gospel. In this verse we hear our Lord define how and when we have eternal life.
Because just like the men and women in jail who do not want to have to wait for one more thing, I think we too, too often think of our eternal life as something that we will gain or inherit sometime in the future. We think only after we die and have gone to heaven, then we have our eternal life. We will begin our eternal life when we come into His presence, but only then at that point in the future. So we are waiting for heaven or waiting for Christ to return, because then at that point somewhere way down the line, then starts our eternal life. And we either take this one of two ways. We either don’t want that day to come for a long time from now because we like our life here and we want to spend as much time here with our loved ones as we can before we go to be in our eternal life. There is even an entire country song sung by Kenny Chesney that says “Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody want to go now.” We get this attitude towards our eternal life that we know it is there waiting for us, so we are in no hurry to be there right now cause we are happy here for now. We avoid this idea of waiting for our eternal life by convincing ourselves we are happy here so we don’t have to be anxious about waiting for eternal life. Or on the other hand, we want to be there in our eternal life right now. We wish God would just call us home and take us out of the pains and sufferings of this world and take us to our eternal life as soon as possible. We are tired of waiting for it, we are ready for it now and want it to happen right now.
However, when we go back to our verse today, where Jesus Himself is speaking about eternal life, He doesn’t include anything about death, heaven, or waiting for that time when we will gain our eternal life. Notice what Jesus says about eternal life: “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Eternal life is not waiting to die so we can be in heaven, it is not something that happens when we have done everything we wanted to do in this life time, it is not something that is there waiting for us like a prize if we make it to the end. Eternal life is knowing the one true God. It has nothing to do with waiting, and that is something I think we as Christians need to do a better job of expressing both with our words, but also with our lives. We are not waiting to inherit or gain this eternal life, we already have it right now. We are living our eternal lives right now.
The one true God has revealed Himself to us through His Word and His Word made flesh in the incarnate Son of God. Through the power of His Holy Spirit He has called us with the Gospel, enlightened us with His gifts, and sanctified us in the one true faith. He has brought us into the faith of believing in one true God, maker of heaven and earth, and His Son Jesus Christ, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. On the third day He rose again from the dead and ascended into Heaven. We know this one true God because He has revealed Himself to us through His Son. That is why it is not really that odd that Christ refers to Himself in the third person in this verse because it is through Jesus Christ we know the one true God. All of Scripture points to Christ because He is the Word made flesh. Through His death, resurrection, and ascension, we know Christ truly is the incarnate Son of God. And yet all of this, His death, His resurrection, and His ascension is what Christ is about to go through as He prays this prayer of our text today, and yet before any of it happens, He includes eternal life. Our eternal life is knowing who our God is and what He has done for us, which He has made very clear to us through His Word.
So we have our eternal life right now, we are living our eternal life already. From the moment He called us into the faith and revealed Himself to us as the one true God and Jesus Christ, we have been living our eternal life. It is not something we have to wait for, it is not something that only comes through death, and it is not something we have to worry about if it will come too soon or not soon enough, it is ours right now, it is yours right now, and it has been yours as long as you have been in the faith. There is no such thing as a life or death situation for a Christian other than to turn away from the faith you have been called into. You are already living your eternal life and no one can take that away from you.
Eternal life is knowing the one true God and Jesus Christ. Now I do need to make one very important clarification about this. When we hear the word “Know”, we automatically assume it means intellectually which can lead to a lot of uncomfortable ideas. It can lead us to wonder if we know enough, do we know everything we have to know and how do we know we know enough, can infants know God, can those with mental disorders or sicknesses really know God? If we try to make “knowing God” an intellectual thing then it becomes something that we are doing and has limitations. However, the Greek suggests one way to better translate it and I really like this translation is not “to know God”, but “learning to know God”. It is not something we can learn once and be good for the rest of our lives, or something that we know about God, it is about learning to know God, in a constant ongoing process. You see that same guy from Kentucky told me he had read the entire Bible cover to cover twice while he was in jail and yet said He didn’t get it or understand it. He could quote passages or stories and knew the Bible, but he did not know God. He did not have a relationship with God where learning the Bible was learning about who his God was and what his God had done for him, instead it was just a book that he was trying to learn the facts of.
When we understand this as learning to know God, it is in a relational way. Just like when you start dating someone or make a new friend, the more time you spend with that person the more you learn about that person. And not just things about them, but who they really are, things about their character, their personality, their habits, their deep fears and needs. This is true with God, the more time we spend learning to know our God in this relationship with Him, the more we learn about Him and everything He is and has done for us. This learning to know God is a constant ongoing process because we will never know everything about our God in this life time, but that doesn’t mean we don’t strive to continue to learn everything in Him we can. Because it is in this learning to know our God that we truly have our eternal life and we have it now. But it is only because He called us into the relationship with Him, He revealed Himself to us through His Word and His Son so that we can always continue to learn to know Him. Through Jesus who died for you, who rose from the dead for you, who ascended into Heaven to reign over you, He gives you the opportunity to learn to know Him who is the one true God. He gives us our eternal life and He gives it to us now through this relationship He called us into and the ability to learn to know Him through His Word and Son. We do not have to wait for it because it is ours now and for the rest of eternity because through the grace and mercy of the one true God, and the death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, He freely gives us our eternal life now and for always.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in whom we have our eternal life now and forever, Amen.
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I went on vacation with two of my friends from seminary last year to Kentucky. While we were there, we had the chance to meet a couple of guys who lived and worked there in Kentucky. We met them in the hotel while playing cards in the lobby, and as we got to know them we realized they all had some pretty rough pasts. Two of the three had been married, had kids, and had been divorced, and all three of them had spent at least a year of their lives in jail. All three of these guys were 22 years old or younger. The one guy who had spent most of his teenage years in either juvenile detention or actual prison told me something I had never thought about before. You see I have always been slightly interested in prison ministry because I figured these men and women who were serving sentences for their mistakes would take great comfort in hearing that when it comes to sin and our eternal mistakes, we have a Lord who paid our sentence for us. However, I have been warned that prison ministry is tough because the person you are ministering to only wants to prove their innocence to you rather than listen to the message you are actually trying to tell them. This guy told me that men or women who are serving sentences in jail do not hear the message of God as a positive thing. He told me that people in jail generally do not hear the message of God as a positive thing because it is one more thing to wait for. You see they are already spending the entirety of their day waiting for that day they are released. All of their thoughts and hopes are directed towards getting out of jail and being free again. So to come in and tell them that if they only believe they will one day be free from all sin and spend the rest of eternity in the presence of the one true God, in their minds it is just one more thing they have to wait for. Already sick of waiting to just simply be out from behind bars, they are not interested in waiting for the day they are free from sin too.
When he told me this, it opened my eyes and I completely understood why that would be a hard message to get excited about in their situations. I mean none of us like to wait for things; we are very impatient as human beings. Maybe you’re a child waiting to be that certain correct age to do the next big thing, or you’re waiting to find the right job, or a significant other, or to have children, or finally retire, whatever you may be waiting for in your life, these situations not only make us very unhappy, but can ever cause extreme amounts of stress in our life. We simply do not like to wait. So it makes sense that for these convicted men and women who are already waiting for one thing do not want to have to wait for another thing, no matter how great a thing it may be.
Our text for today is in a way a conclusion to the previous four chapters of John. In chapters 13 to 16 Jesus has been teaching his disciples some very important truths that they will need to know as they are about to witness His death, resurrection, and ascension. Then in chapter 17, as a conclusion to these teachings, Jesus looks to heaven and prays to the Father. He prays out loud so that the disciples have the opportunity to hear exactly what He is praying for. First, He prays for Himself, knowing what He is about to endure, then He prays for His disciples, and finally He prays for all believers. There is so much in this prayer that we could focus in on, but today I want to focus in on verse three. Verse three is in the first part of the prayer where He is actually praying for Himself, but it is clearly meant for all believers to hear. Now this verse is a little unique in the fact that Jesus refers to Himself in the third person, calling Himself, Jesus Christ; nevertheless, it is a magnificent and amazing verse of pure Gospel. In this verse we hear our Lord define how and when we have eternal life.
Because just like the men and women in jail who do not want to have to wait for one more thing, I think we too, too often think of our eternal life as something that we will gain or inherit sometime in the future. We think only after we die and have gone to heaven, then we have our eternal life. We will begin our eternal life when we come into His presence, but only then at that point in the future. So we are waiting for heaven or waiting for Christ to return, because then at that point somewhere way down the line, then starts our eternal life. And we either take this one of two ways. We either don’t want that day to come for a long time from now because we like our life here and we want to spend as much time here with our loved ones as we can before we go to be in our eternal life. There is even an entire country song sung by Kenny Chesney that says “Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody want to go now.” We get this attitude towards our eternal life that we know it is there waiting for us, so we are in no hurry to be there right now cause we are happy here for now. We avoid this idea of waiting for our eternal life by convincing ourselves we are happy here so we don’t have to be anxious about waiting for eternal life. Or on the other hand, we want to be there in our eternal life right now. We wish God would just call us home and take us out of the pains and sufferings of this world and take us to our eternal life as soon as possible. We are tired of waiting for it, we are ready for it now and want it to happen right now.
However, when we go back to our verse today, where Jesus Himself is speaking about eternal life, He doesn’t include anything about death, heaven, or waiting for that time when we will gain our eternal life. Notice what Jesus says about eternal life: “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Eternal life is not waiting to die so we can be in heaven, it is not something that happens when we have done everything we wanted to do in this life time, it is not something that is there waiting for us like a prize if we make it to the end. Eternal life is knowing the one true God. It has nothing to do with waiting, and that is something I think we as Christians need to do a better job of expressing both with our words, but also with our lives. We are not waiting to inherit or gain this eternal life, we already have it right now. We are living our eternal lives right now.
The one true God has revealed Himself to us through His Word and His Word made flesh in the incarnate Son of God. Through the power of His Holy Spirit He has called us with the Gospel, enlightened us with His gifts, and sanctified us in the one true faith. He has brought us into the faith of believing in one true God, maker of heaven and earth, and His Son Jesus Christ, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. On the third day He rose again from the dead and ascended into Heaven. We know this one true God because He has revealed Himself to us through His Son. That is why it is not really that odd that Christ refers to Himself in the third person in this verse because it is through Jesus Christ we know the one true God. All of Scripture points to Christ because He is the Word made flesh. Through His death, resurrection, and ascension, we know Christ truly is the incarnate Son of God. And yet all of this, His death, His resurrection, and His ascension is what Christ is about to go through as He prays this prayer of our text today, and yet before any of it happens, He includes eternal life. Our eternal life is knowing who our God is and what He has done for us, which He has made very clear to us through His Word.
So we have our eternal life right now, we are living our eternal life already. From the moment He called us into the faith and revealed Himself to us as the one true God and Jesus Christ, we have been living our eternal life. It is not something we have to wait for, it is not something that only comes through death, and it is not something we have to worry about if it will come too soon or not soon enough, it is ours right now, it is yours right now, and it has been yours as long as you have been in the faith. There is no such thing as a life or death situation for a Christian other than to turn away from the faith you have been called into. You are already living your eternal life and no one can take that away from you.
Eternal life is knowing the one true God and Jesus Christ. Now I do need to make one very important clarification about this. When we hear the word “Know”, we automatically assume it means intellectually which can lead to a lot of uncomfortable ideas. It can lead us to wonder if we know enough, do we know everything we have to know and how do we know we know enough, can infants know God, can those with mental disorders or sicknesses really know God? If we try to make “knowing God” an intellectual thing then it becomes something that we are doing and has limitations. However, the Greek suggests one way to better translate it and I really like this translation is not “to know God”, but “learning to know God”. It is not something we can learn once and be good for the rest of our lives, or something that we know about God, it is about learning to know God, in a constant ongoing process. You see that same guy from Kentucky told me he had read the entire Bible cover to cover twice while he was in jail and yet said He didn’t get it or understand it. He could quote passages or stories and knew the Bible, but he did not know God. He did not have a relationship with God where learning the Bible was learning about who his God was and what his God had done for him, instead it was just a book that he was trying to learn the facts of.
When we understand this as learning to know God, it is in a relational way. Just like when you start dating someone or make a new friend, the more time you spend with that person the more you learn about that person. And not just things about them, but who they really are, things about their character, their personality, their habits, their deep fears and needs. This is true with God, the more time we spend learning to know our God in this relationship with Him, the more we learn about Him and everything He is and has done for us. This learning to know God is a constant ongoing process because we will never know everything about our God in this life time, but that doesn’t mean we don’t strive to continue to learn everything in Him we can. Because it is in this learning to know our God that we truly have our eternal life and we have it now. But it is only because He called us into the relationship with Him, He revealed Himself to us through His Word and His Son so that we can always continue to learn to know Him. Through Jesus who died for you, who rose from the dead for you, who ascended into Heaven to reign over you, He gives you the opportunity to learn to know Him who is the one true God. He gives us our eternal life and He gives it to us now through this relationship He called us into and the ability to learn to know Him through His Word and Son. We do not have to wait for it because it is ours now and for the rest of eternity because through the grace and mercy of the one true God, and the death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, He freely gives us our eternal life now and for always.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in whom we have our eternal life now and forever, Amen.
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