The eternity of God has vital views for the truth of who Christ is and then of the Gospel. These things do not always appear at first glance, but the spiritual nature of the truth of Scripture is not always easy to discern. That is why the Holy Spirit must illuminate the text and our minds and hearts in order to teach the mind of God in these matters. We must learn to love God with our minds by training them to think beyond the natural realm and to be instruments to receive truth.
The connection between the eternity of God and Christ and the Gospel must begin with the fact that it is Christ that brings eternal life. In fact, Christ does not just bring something called eternal life, He is eternal life: “For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself; (John 5:26). In this it is clear that the Son has life in Himself and does not have to obtain it from other sources. In John 1:1-4 we see that the Word is God and that nothing has come into being that has come into being. That, of course, would include Christ. But then we are told (in v.4) that “in Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.” In John 14:6 we are told that Christ is “the way, and the truth, and the life.” In other words, as Christ is the outshining of the glory of God (Hebrews 1:3) so one aspect of that glory is the very life of God.
We see in John 17:3 what the definition of eternal life is: “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” Eternal life is defined as knowing God the Father and Jesus Christ. But the only way to know God is through Christ. So what does this mean? Without delving deeply into the issue, we must see that to know God is not just to know about God. To know God is to be in union with Christ and so to receive the flow of life from the Father that comes through the Son by the Spirit. Eternal life is to know God because to know God means to be in intimate communion with God. 1 John 5:20 sets this out with such clarity that it is hard to deny: “And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.” The Son of God has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true, yet we are in Him who is true, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the true God and eternal life.
Other parts of the book of I John set this out as well. In 1:1 Christ is referred to as “the Word of life.” 3:15 has an interesting clue to this as well: “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” Here it is not said that one does not have eternal life, but does not have “eternal life abiding in him.” Eternal life is not just some power that one has; it is Christ Himself and is the life of Christ dwelling in a person. This is why a person must have Christ in order to have eternal life. As can be seen from 1 John 5:12: “He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.” One only has life if he or she has Christ Himself because Christ is eternal life Himself.
This view of the eternal nature of God and how it fits with the Gospel (the eternal gospel of Rev 14:6) is simply beautiful. It is that the eternal God sent His Son who was the outshining of His glory into the world so that His Son could lay down a temporary physical life in order to defeat death and give eternal life. The eternal God does not just give people an eternal existence as such, but He gives them Himself and shares His life with them in order that they may have eternal life. Not only that, but as we look closely at I John 4:7-10 we see that the Father sent the Son so that we might live through Him. What did the Son do so that we might have eternal life in us, that is, that we would be the temple of God and eternal life would be dwelling in us and sharing that life with us? He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. In other words, Christ who was life came in order to cleanse the temple of God so that eternal life could and would dwell in the people of God.
II Corinthians 4:4 sets out that the Gospel is all about the glory of God: “in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” The glory of the eternal God shines brightly in the message of the Gospel that brings eternal life, that is, the very life of God in Jesus Christ to humanity. Without the eternity of God, there is no eternity of Christ and no Gospel of eternal life. As the Gospel says in Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
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