Posted at Reformation Scotland:
Our culture offers significance without transcendence — the prospect of finding meaning and fulfilment but in humanistic terms that make no reference to deity or the supernatural. This offer persists, even though by experience it continually founders on the very average, even mediocre, and largely unfulfilling reality of our everyday existence. By contrast, Christianity is unashamed to offer fulfilment outside of and beyond human activities and attainments — in life with Christ. This offer is realistic about our spiritual sickness and inertia, going so far as to identify our basic problem as spiritual death and ever-increasing corruption. But the life of Christ is the ineffable, abundant, fountain of the life of God Himself, and the good news is that this is what dead and dying sinners are invited to participate in. Several times in the Gospel of John, Jesus Christ is said to have life, or claims to be life, or says He will give sinners life. In the following updated extracts, George Hutcheson comments on the life — eternal life — which is available in and from Jesus for otherwise unfulfilled and perishing sinners.Life is in Jesus
“In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4).
Not only does the Lord Jesus have life in Himself essentially from the Father (John 5:26), but the life of all living creatures is “in him.” Life is in Him as in the fountain cause (as the stream is in the fountain, and rays of light are in the sun): and in Him still as the preserver when it is given (as the fountain constantly feeds the stream, so that it does not dry up).
Believers ought to study the Godhood of Christ their head, shining in His giving life to all living creatures, and their having their life still in Him, so that when they observe all the variety of living things, from the least to the greatest, which are fed by that fountain, they may come confidently to Him for life and enlivening, as He is the one who can create life. He is the one who can restore a soul, and bring to life a dead piece of clay. Then they need not be discouraged by their baseness when they come to Him (considering that He does not disdain to communicate life to the basest worm and smallest midgie) and they may hold their spiritual life from Him, abiding in Him in whom life still is, when they get it. Then too, they may not fear that their life will decay, when they dwell in the one in whom is the inexhaustible fountain of life, and the one who preserves and continues the life of all creatures.
He gives eternal life
“Whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:15).
Christ here points Himself out as the Saviour of sinners, having sufficient virtue to cure the sinfulness and misery of those who flee to Him by faith, and to keep them from perishing, and save them. It is only believing in Him, and laying hold on Him by faith, that brings a cure for the guilt of sin, the pain of conscience through sin, and the dominion of sin. Although all without Christ are in a state of perishing, and excluded from heaven, yet by faith in Him sinners are freed from death, and made heirs of life. “They shall not perish but have eternal life,” and this includes remission of sins, reconciliation to God, perseverance in the state of grace, and all the means leading to these ends.
“Whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:15).
Christ here points Himself out as the Saviour of sinners, having sufficient virtue to cure the sinfulness and misery of those who flee to Him by faith, and to keep them from perishing, and save them. It is only believing in Him, and laying hold on Him by faith, that brings a cure for the guilt of sin, the pain of conscience through sin, and the dominion of sin. Although all without Christ are in a state of perishing, and excluded from heaven, yet by faith in Him sinners are freed from death, and made heirs of life. “They shall not perish but have eternal life,” and this includes remission of sins, reconciliation to God, perseverance in the state of grace, and all the means leading to these ends.