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.

Love gives everlasting life

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

The way of deliverance is not to be ascribed to anything in us procuring it (for God might justly have damned us all), but only to the free love of God. Love to lost sinners is not to be thought of as shining only in Christ (who willingly gave Himself to redeem), but also in the Father. The Father loved lost sinners, and sent His Son to suffer and to do the work of a mediator, so that through His mediation He would, not begin to love them, but convey the effects of His love in a way agreeable to his justice. God loved the world, and that preceded Him giving Christ, and was the cause of it.

Every one who believes in Christ is not only delivered from perishing by Christ’s undergoing wrath for him, but is instated in a right to eternal blessedness. This eternal blessedness the believer shall certainly attain, here in the pledge and bud, and hereafter in full enjoyment.

The blessedness which Christ purchased to believers is the only thing that really deserves the name of “life.” All other life is only a kind of death in comparison with it. It shall be blessedness eternally and without end.

Life flows out into eternity

Jesus said, “Whosoever drinketh of this water, shall thirst again. But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst: but the water that I shall give him, shall be in him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:13–14).

The water of life, although Christ purchased it, yet it must be His free gift to us (who cannot buy it), and His offer includes a promise of giving it to every one who will receive it in the due order. The promise is made indifferently, i.e., without respect of persons. He does not say, “I can give,” but, “I shall give him,” i.e., if he receives my offer, indefinitely, whoever he may be.

Anyone who partakes of the true grace of God in this way, it will refresh and satisfy him, so as to quench his thirst after vanity and earthly delights, and make these things tasteless. “Whosoever drinks of this water shall never thirst.”

The Spirit and grace of Christ in believers is not a stream or a pond, that may run dry, but “a well,” and a “springing” well, of inexhaustible fullness, virtue and refreshment. It is not the kind of well which may rot and make water taste bad, but a springing well, constantly fresh. It is not only a spring which keeps within its banks, but a well of water leaping up, and watering all around. The Spirit and grace of Christ flows out in all the activity of those who receive them, making them fruitful. It flows out also on others, to their good and edification.

As the truly godly have no limit to religion but eternity, and their desire is to keep fresh till the end, so, where the Spirit of Christ is, He will still be pouring out His virtue and riches from day to day, and letting out more and more to the sinner till eternity comes. Then, when all the banks of incapacity, sin, distance, ignorance, mortality, etc., have been broken down, and the windows of heaven have been opened, this stream and well becomes an ocean, and grace, smothered here under corruption and infirmity, gets leave to spread itself out freely in glory.

Life comes by hearing

Jesus said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall life” (John 5:24).

The promises of eternal life are absolute in Christ’s intention toward His own people, and He undertakes to perform all the conditions which He requires of them, when they are humble and flee to Him.

Whatever remainders of the image of God people may have, and whatever excellencies, yet they are spiritually dead till Christ comes to them. They are destitute of spiritual life and of the favour and peace of God. They are dead, by a sentence of the law passed against them, unconscious of it and unable to help themselves.

But such is the power of the gospel, being the voice of the Son of God, that not only will it speak to those who have ears, but it will raise dead souls to life by conversion, and give them an ear to hear, and make them believe.

Those who are regenerated and raised from the dead by the Word of the gospel, and who embrace it (and Christ in it) by faith, the life that is begotten in them shall be cherished and nurtured and carried on by the enjoyment of the beginnings of conformity and communion with Christ, until it is perfected with glory. “They that hear (or, those who, being regenerated, are made to hear so as to believe) shall live.”

Jesus gives life more abundantly

Jesus said, “The thief cometh not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

Those who make themselves out to be the Messiah, or who run unsent and bring in corrupt doctrine, Christ declares to be enemies, and not shepherds. They come only to do the flock harm. But His business is to give them life, and life in great abundance.

Christ is the kind of shepherd who will be so far from destroying His flock that He will “give life,” even to those of them who are dead.

Christ’s great aim in coming to the world is to purchase and confer life on His own elect people. However He treats them, yet it all tends towards this great aim. When they think it otherwise, it is their own mistake, “for,” He says, “I am come that they might have life.”

By His coming, Christ intends not only life to His flock, but “more abundant life.” He will not only give the life that will simply supply the basic needs of His people, but such a super-abounding measure that it will testify to His fullness, and completely refresh them.

Once He has conferred this abundant life in conversion, He will make it grow more and more while they are within time (1 Thess. 4:1–4). Yet all this is but a drop, in comparison of the abundance of life that is reserved for His people in glory. In these respects He says, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”

Jesus gives us life by His death

He said, “I lay down my life for the sheep” (v.15, v.17–18).

Christ, held out with His ignominious cross, is the great stumbling-block of the world. Yet, although the shame and ignominy joined to the cross add to its grievousness, it could not hold Christ back from undergoing it, and indeed He provides various considerations to make it appear lovely.

He declares that the Father loves Him because of this suffering. The Father is so well pleased with the reconciliation of lost sinners that He both loves Christ for taking on the work, and is fully satisfied with how His suffering attains that goal.

Also, He declares that He was to lay down His life, not to continue as the prisoner of death, but so that, having paid the ransom, He could take His life again, with the Father’s approval.

Finally, He declares that He did all this in obedience to the Father’s command. The way of accomplishing our redemption was agreed on between the Father and the Son in advance.

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