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LIFE AND LIGHT

John 1:4

In him was life and the life was the light of men.

IN a great piece of music, the composer often begins by stating the themes which he or she is going to elaborate in the course of the work. That is what John does here. Life and light are two of the great basic words on which the Fourth Gospel is built up. They are two of the main themes which it is the aim of the gospel to develop and to expound. Let us look at them in detail.

The Fourth Gospel begins and ends with life. At the very beginning, we read that in Jesus was life; and at the very end we read that John’s aim in writing the gospel was that everyone might ‘believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name’ (John 20:31). The word is continually on the lips of Jesus. It is his wistful regret that people will not come to him that they might have life (5:40). It is his claim that he came that men and women might have life and that they might have it abundantly (10:10). He claims that he gives people life and that they will never perish because no one will snatch them out of his hand (10:28). He claims that he is the way, the truth and the life (14:6). In this gospel, the word life (zōē) occurs more than thirty-five times and the verb to live or to have life (zēn) more than fifteen times. What then does John mean by life?

(1) Quite simply, he means that life is the opposite of destruction, condemnation and death. God sent his Son that everyone who believes should not perish but have eternal life (3:16). Anyone who hears and believes has eternal life and will not come into judgment (5:24). There is a contrast between the resurrection to life and the resurrection to judgment (5:29). Those to whom Jesus gives life will never perish (10:28). There is in Jesus that which gives security in this life and in the life to come. Until we accept Jesus and take him as our Saviour and enthrone him as our King, we cannot be said to live at all. Those who live Christless lives exist, but they do not know what life is. Jesus is the one person who can make life worth living, and in whose company death is only the prelude to fuller life.

(2) But John is quite sure that, although Jesus is the bringer of this life, the giver of life is God. Again and again, John uses the phrase the living God, as indeed the whole Bible does. It is the will of the Father who sent Jesus that everyone who sees him and believes in him should have life (6:40). Jesus is the giver of life because the Father has set his own seal of approval upon him (6:27). He gives life to as many as God has given him (17:2). At the back of it all, there is God. It is as if God was saying: ‘I created human beings that they should have real life; through their sin they have ceased to live and only exist; I have sent them my Son to enable them to know what real life is.’

(3) We must ask what this life is. Again and again, the Fourth Gospel uses the phrase eternal life. We shall discuss the full meaning of that phrase later. At present, we note this. The word John uses for eternal is aiōnios. Clearly, whatever else eternal life is, it is not simply life which lasts forever. A life which lasted forever could be a terrible curse; often the thing for which many people long is release from life. In eternal life, there must be more than duration of life; there must be a certain quality of life.

Life is not desirable unless it is a certain kind of life. Here we have the clue. Aiōnios is the adjective which is repeatedly used to describe God. In the true sense of the word, only God is aiōnios, eternal; therefore eternal life is that life which God lives. What Jesus offers us from God is God’s own life. Eternal life is life which knows something of the serenity and power of the life of God himself. When Jesus came offering men and women eternal life, he was inviting them to enter into the very life of God.

(4) How, then, do we enter into that life? We enter into it by believing in Jesus Christ. The word to believe (pisteuein) occurs in the Fourth Gospel no fewer than seventy times. ‘Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life’ (3:36). ‘Whoever believes’, says Jesus, ‘has eternal life’ (6:47). It is God’s will that those who see the Son should believe in him and have eternal life (5:24). What does John mean by to believe? He means two things.

(a) He means that we must be convinced that Jesus is really and truly the Son of God. He means that we must make up our minds about him. After all, if Jesus is only a man, there is no reason why we should give him the utter and implicit obedience that he demands. We have to think out for ourselves who he was. We have to look at him, learn about him, study him and think about him until we are driven to the conclusion that this is none other than the Son of God.

(b) But there is more than intellectual belief in this. To believe in Jesus means to take Jesus at his word, to accept his commandments as absolutely binding, to believe without question that what he says is true.

For John, belief means the conviction of the mind that Jesus is the Son of God, the trust of the heart that everything he says is true and the basing of every action on the unshakable assurance that we must take him at his word. When we do that, we stop existing and begin living. We know what Life with a capital L really means.