Matt Pavlik

What exactly is eternal life? If you’re thinking about living your current life forever, you probably have the wrong idea. Your current life has pain and suffering mixed into it. True eternal life is improved in both its quality and its quantity (see here).

Beyond this, Jesus speaks a clear definition as He prays to the Father.

And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

John 17:3

This makes sense, doesn’t it? Only a few chapters earlier Jesus proclaimed He is life.

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

John 14:6

To know Jesus is to have eternal life: Life to the fullest. Abundant life. Life you can begin to experience now but won’t fully experience until this time on earth has passed. In this context, we can say that knowing Jesus is having an ongoing relationship with Him. In other words, you don’t have to know Him completely to have eternal life. You only need access to the way. You’ve received eternal life (it’s done); you’re receiving eternal life (as you know Jesus more and more), and you’ll receive eternal life (when you leave your current physical body).

If you know Jesus you have eternal life, not temporary life. Eternal life is unending in duration but it is more. You have abundant life, not insufficient life. Eternal life is the fullest sense of life. You can live the high life. The worldly definition of high life is an extravagant or luxurious style of living.

Jesus is inviting you into the spiritual high life. The spiritual high life is to have spiritual eyes which enable you to see and know God’s spiritual realities. You can grow in knowing God’s goodness, experiencing the full depth and breadth of eternal life.

As you go about life, do you feel more condemned, punished, or disciplined? If you feel condemned, you’re feeling hopelessly abandoned. If you feel punished, you might not believe your situation is permanently hopeless, but in the day-to-day living, you feel overwhelmed. The consequences of life bring you to despair.

The one who punishes is selfish but the one who disciplines invests in a positive outcome. When you’re disciplined but not punished or condemned, you’ll experience a curious mixture of sorrow and hope.

God always disciplines those who are His children. Discipline requires an investment. As God disciplines you, He accepts the responsibility to see you become something more and better. God is on your side. God will never abandon you.

You can have eternal security and endure strong discipline from God at the same time. If fact, you can’t have one without the other.

“For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

Hebrews 12:6-8

God’s discipline is for your eternal benefit, not eternal condemnation. When you can feel the difficulty of life weighing on you, you can simultaneously recognize God is working to help you become better. God’s correction leads to hope. God cares about your life; He wants you to swim not sink.

God won’t simultaneously condemn you to hell and invest in your future. Sensing God’s discipline in your life is yet another way to validate your eternal security. You can confidently say, “I’m a child of God. God cares about me enough to correct me and keep me on the right path.”

The Bible contains several stories that may cause you to question whether God is for you or against you. You might feel like one day He is on your side, and the next, He is working to thwart your success. Why would God allow Joseph’s brothers to betray him? Why would He kill Uzzah for touching the ark? Why did He kill Ananias and Sapphira for lying?

Anyone who deliberately goes against God’s purposes can’t expect to have a positive outcome. In the case of Joseph, it was his brothers who suffered because of the famine. They lived with guilt for years. Joseph suffered too, but he didn’t act against God. Uzzah directly disobeyed God’s command. Similarly, Ananias and Sapphira intentionally tried to lie to God.

In all these situations God’s purposes always prevail. Some people are examples to others for what not to do. These are exceptions for the most part. Furthermore, God’s discipline might lead to physical death but not spiritual death. The important take away is, no matter what happens, you must continue to trust God.

God isn’t a trickster. God is for us, not against us. We believers are God’s elect, chosen and justified by Him. God is on our side, working for His purposes which includes our prosperity. And furthermore, God is “kind to the ungrateful and the evil” (Luke 6:35). God is patient and kind to us. The greatest virtue is love.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?

Romans 8:31-35

If nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, we always have reason to hope. If you can lose your salvation, and believing you’ve lost it, how can you continue to feel hope and connection with Christ? You couldn’t.

The Gospel changes everything. When you accept God’s salvation, He no longer sees you as an unworthy sinner. But I often encounter Christians who hold onto their old self-image.

You must see yourself through God’s eyes. God considers you as sanctified and perfected, even though His work in you is an ongoing process:

We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

—Hebrews 10:10, 14

Therefore, you are both perfect and being perfected. You’re becoming perfect in a way that you can’t reverse the process and become imperfect.

Jesus is Lord and He lives forever to intercede for all believers. Previous sacrifices by human priests had no power to save. But through Jesus, you are perfect for all time. That means your sanctification is a done deal. Jesus paid the price for your perfection. He paid it one time, for all time.

Then later in Hebrews 10, there is a hint of a warning to not fall away from your faith.

but my righteous one shall live by faith,
and if he shrinks back,
my soul has no pleasure in him.”
But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

—Hebrews 10:38-39

When you read Hebrews 10 you must decide who you are. Are you of the people who don’t shrink back? You preserve your soul through your believing faith. Put your faith in Jesus. Keep your faith in Jesus. You are truly saved, safe, and secure when you entrust your life to Him. Where there is faith and the Spirit of God, there is freedom and there is no longer condemnation for sin. Your sin can’t prevent you from keeping your eternal life.

What assurances of eternal life do you have? I recently wrote that you need to be careful how you view yourself when you interpret scriptures. To the degree you doubt whether you are saved, you increase the chance that you’ll interpret the Bible incorrectly.

The way to be saved is believing that Jesus is the Christ. If you have doubts about your salvation, you’re probably not saved. But if you’ve made this declaration and you know in your heart it is true, by faith, then you have been born of God.

1 John says clearly that once you cross over to being a believer, you can know you have eternal life, with confidence. Chapter 5 drives this point home. But even earlier in Chapter 1, John provides the formula for having complete joy: to have eternal life and fellowship with the Father and the Son (verses 3 and 4).

John says he is writing so that your joy may be complete (1 John 1:4). Later he writes so that you may know you have eternal life.

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.

We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.

1 John 5:1, 13, 14, 18

I’ve skipped over a difficult passage about a “sin that leads to eternal death.” I will address it in a future post. For now, focus on the positive. Reread the verses I did select. Verse 18 is especially reassuring. 1 John 3:6 makes it clear that those who keep on sinning (with hardness of heart and without repenting) never had salvation.

No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.

1 John 3:6

If you have any doubts also consider verses 5:1 and 5:13. If there is a way to lose salvation, the only way would be not believing and trusting in Jesus Christ. God promises you eternal life as long as you keep in your heart the gospel message which you heard when you became a Christian (see 1 John 2:24-25). This should be the very thing we as believers are eager to do.