Christ Our Life (1 John 5.11, 12)

D. Scott Meadows

The apostle John in this epistle aimed to strengthen his Christian readers’ assurance of having eternal life (1 John 5.13). He also intended to expose some people without eternal life who had formerly been considered believers among them (2.19). John gave three specific tests of Christian authenticity: the doctrinal test (e.g., 4.6), the moral test (e.g., 2.3, 4), and the social test (3.14, 15).

But there really is one even more basic test encompassing these three that distinguishes those who have eternal life from those who are still in spiritual death. Do we have the Lord Jesus Christ? That is what matters more than anything else. In language that is simple, profound, and momentous, John establishes, with divine authority, this ultimate spiritual test of having Christ.

Since Christ is our life, those without Christ are without life.

In the context of 1 John, this truth is meant to convey the radical distinction between the community of persevering Christian believers from the apostates who had abandoned them. Those former friends had proven heretical, immoral, and unloving. And yet the great divide was fundamentally not that the Christians were more doctrinally discerning, nor more godly, nor more loving. If these things were what ultimately made the difference, we would be strongly tempted to pride as if we were better people than the apostates. True Christians in fact hold some doctrinal errors, commit sins against God’s moral law, and fail to some extent in charity toward our fellow Christians. Truly, all people are very sinful, both real Christians and apostates.

The most basic difference dividing people into two great spiritual groups is whether Christ has been given to us as our Savior, or not. God gives Christ to His elect as our everlasting portion, and to none others.

I. The Gospel Testimony (11). “And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”

The word “record” (noun) has been used in a very special sense since about AD 1300 to mean a “testimony committed to writing, fact or condition of having been recorded” (online etymology dictionary). Modern translations often favor the word “testimony” instead (e.g., ESV). The original term means the verbal evidence of a witness by which something is affirmed to be true (LBSL). It is often associated in the New Testament with the gospel, the good news about the Savior Jesus Christ and eternal life through believing in Him. That testimony given by Jesus Christ about Himself, and by the apostles afterward about Him, had been committed to writing in the gospels and Acts and many epistles by the time 1 John was written (c. AD 85-90, PNTC, Kruse, p. 28). John summarizes the substance of that inspired record in two declarations here.

First, “that life eternal God gave to us” (closer to the Greek word order). “Life eternal” is so emphasized as what “we” have as real Christians, in contrast to all others who are, in fact, without this life. The connotation of “eternal life” is not mainly that it lasts for ever but that it is a certain quality of life, a spiritual life of reconciliation and fellowship with God. We had been alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that was in us because of the blindness of our hearts (Eph 4.18), but God loves us eternally, gave Christ upon the cross for our reconciling atonement, and illuminated us in and by His Spirit and gospel truth. Thus God reconciled us to Himself and made us spiritually alive, to enjoy this blessedness of being loved by Him and loving Him in return as the fruit of His saving grace to us.

Second, “this [eternal] life in His Son is” (again, closer to the Greek word order). This wording emphasizes the source and stream of eternal life to us, even our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Fountain and the channel by which we stand in union and communion with God, and there is eternal life no where else than in Christ. This is one of the most climactic gospel truths John writes. “We are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life” (1 John 5.20, the next to the last verse in this epistle). It is the gospel testimony and the foundation for the entire church of Jesus Christ.

A cosmically-important corollary inexorably follows from this gospel testimony that has relevance to the distinction between authentic Christians and the censurable counterfeits. It is a spiritual test.

II. The Gospel Test (12). “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”

The almost exact repetition of the axiom with the only material difference being the two-fold insertion of the word “not” gives it the precision of a scalpel and the forcefulness of a sledgehammer. Every single person either has the Son of God, Jesus Christ, or has Him not. There is no in-between, no neutral demilitarized zone between the church and the world. There is only this stark, thin boundary line, this black-and-white difference. The church has Christ; the world has Him not. Particular Christians possess Christ by faith as their own Lord and Savior. Everyone else stands opposed to Christ in spiritual death.

This accounts for your distinction as a true Christian from all others. God has given you eternal life by uniting you to His Son, pure gifts of free and sovereign grace that you nor I deserved at all. And God has not given Christ our life to others, whether they are apostates from Christ or ordinary, unconverted sinners. We have no basis for pride in spiritual superiority, but every reason for praises to the God who has raised us from spiritual death to a condition of sweet fellowship with Him. And the moment God gives Christ to them, they are “of us.”

You see, what unbelievers need more than anything else is not to turn over a new leaf, or to agree to orthodox Christian views of things, or to make friends with Christians. You need Christ as your Savior, for in Him is life everlasting. And this gracious Christ is presented to you in the gospel we preach. He will be yours if you will receive Him by faith. That’s the difference that makes all the difference. Amen. Ω