In Acts 3:15 Jesus Christ is called “the Prince of life.” Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10b). John 1:4 tells us, “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” 2 Peter 1:3 declares of Jesus that “His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life” (3a), and in reference to Jesus, Acts 2:28 proclaims, “You have made known to me the ways of life; You will make me full of joy in Your presence.” Jesus is the “author of life” (Acts 3:15, NIV), and it is of utmost importance that we realize that the origin of abundant life is Jesus Christ; and His abundant life is everlasting and eternal.
Pastor Jack Hyles once wrote, “When the average person thinks of eternal life, the first thing that would enter into his mind is endless life. Certainly endless life is included in eternal life, but there is far more than endlessness to eternal life. It is not only endless, but it is boundless . . . It means life all the way on, all the way back, all the way up and all the way down . . . Eternal life is more than duration or longevity . . . It is a quality of life that we have now.”(1) We will discover this morning that life in Jesus Christ is everlasting, both now and in the age to come.
Jesus is Called the Bread of Life (vv. 47-51)
47 “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. 50 This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”
Jesus stated here, “He who believes in me has everlasting life” (v. 47). In John 3:36 Jesus said, “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life.” If we believe in Jesus we have “everlasting” life. The word everlasting means, “Lasting or continuing for an indefinitely long time.”(2)
Whenever I hear the word “everlasting” I am reminded of Everlast boxing gloves. I recall living near Moberly, Missouri where the Everlast Boxing Equipment company is located. The building where the company first began production has been abandoned for a new facility; however this presented a bit of irony. I remember driving past this old building countless times, with the glass broken and weeds growing between cracks in the parking lot, and seeing the huge logo “Everlast” worn and faded by the elements. Nothing about that run down building appeared to be “everlasting.”
It is hard for us to imagine anything lasting forever – especially life – because our fragile human bodies perish so quickly; but Jesus tells us we can have a life that never ends (I will speak in greater detail about this in a moment).
Next Jesus said, “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die” (vv. 49-50). We find here that right after Jesus referred to everlasting life He also spoke of never dying. For many years, beginning in A. D. 1513, Spanish explorers started a quest in the New World to locate the Fountain of Youth (first explorer was Juan Ponce de León), for its fabled waters were to contain restorative properties regenerating one’s youth, thus resulting in remaining forever young. Life in Jesus is like finding a fountain of youth.
In John 4:14 Jesus stated, “Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” It is a travesty that countless people wasted their lives in search of the fountain of youth, when it is found in Jesus. In Jesus we never die.
Jesus mentioned the “manna in the wilderness.” Manna was the substance God sent from heaven to sustain His people Israel while they journeyed and wandered in the wilderness after leaving Egypt. The manna only sustained the Israelites physically, and it was temporary. The shelf life of the manna was only one day. The manna helped the people make the lengthy journey through the wilderness, but whenever they grew old, or whenever they got sick, they still died. The manna did not give them everlasting life. Jesus says, however, that when we partake of Him we will not die, for He is “the bread of life” (v. 48).
Jesus also stated, “The bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world” (v. 51). Jesus came to give life to the world. In John 8:12 Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” The reason Jesus came for the world is because the world is in dire need of life, for the world is dying and people are devoid of abundant and everlasting life.
Death, and loss of life, is the result of sin. In Romans 6:23 we are told, “The wages of sin is death,” and in Romans 3:23 we read, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” For all have sinned! – meaning each and every person in the world, or upon the face of the earth. If all have sinned then all are destined to die. The world is dying and Jesus came to give life to the world.
Each and every person will die – both physically and spiritually. Hebrews 9:27 tells us, “It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment . . .” Jesus came and gave us His “flesh,” or His “body,” as a substitute to take our place in death. He gave His own body upon the cross as a sacrifice so that we might have life. He paid the penalty for our sin because He wants us to have true life in Him. He did not come to spare us from physical death; He came to save us from spiritual death.
When we die a physical death without Jesus as Lord of our life, then when we face judgment we will be sentenced to spiritual death, which is spending eternity in hell; but when we die physically and we know Christ as Savior, then when we face judgment we will be spared spiritual death and enter into everlasting life.
Without Jesus You Have no Life (vv. 52-55)
52 The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?” 53 Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.”
Jesus stated, “Unless you eat the flesh . . . and drink His blood, you have no life in you” (v. 53). Eating flesh and drinking blood sounds like the Lord’s Supper or Communion, where Jesus spoke of the bread as His body and the cup as His blood (Matthew 26:26-28). Warren Wiersbe tells us, “I do not believe that Jesus had the Communion in mind when He spoke these words . . . Jesus made it plain that this eating and drinking were ‘absolutely essential’ for eternal life. He made no exceptions. If, then, He was speaking about a church ordinance, then everybody who has never shared in [the Lord’s supper] is spiritually dead and is going to hell.”(3) Therefore, Jesus was not speaking of the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper is not essential to eternal life.
Wiersbe tells us that what Jesus was saying was, “Just as you take food and drink within your body and it becomes a part of you, so you must receive Me within your innermost being so that I [can be a part of you and] give you life.”(4) Jesus was speaking about “partaking.” Jesus is the bread of life only to those who partake. To have life you must ingest the bread of life and make it a part of you. You are what you eat. Whatever you partake of spiritually, is what comes out of your heart and appears in your life (Matthew 15:17-18). If you partake of life in Jesus and make Him part of you then true life will issue forth from your heart. In 1 John 5:12 we read, “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” Have you partaken of Jesus?
Jesus goes on to say that the person who partakes of Him “has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” Earlier I mentioned a life that never ends. This life that never ends is more than life on this earth; it is “life that goes on and on in heaven for all eternity.” Everlasting life entails abundant life that never ends. It keeps on lasting in the here and now, and it continues to last even after we have left this earth and enter God’s presence where we truly experience life to the fullest. When our bodies perish, Jesus Himself will raise us up into eternal life at the last day (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17).
W. B. Hinson, a great preacher of a past generation, spoke from his own experience just before he died, and he said, “I remember a year ago when a doctor told me, ‘You have an illness from which you won’t recover.’ I walked out to where I live 5 miles from Portland, Oregon, and I looked across at that mountain that I love. I looked at the river in which I rejoice, and I looked at the stately trees that are always God’s own poetry to my soul. Then in the evening I looked up into the great sky where God was lighting His lamps, and I said, ‘I may not see you many more times, but Mountain, I shall be alive when you are gone; and River, I shall be alive when you cease running toward the sea; and Stars, I shall be alive when you have fallen from your sockets in the great down pulling of the material universe!’”
In John 6:40 Jesus said, “And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” We obtain this life by believing in Jesus. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
Abide in Jesus as He Abides in God (vv. 56-58)
56 “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. 58 This is the bread which came down from heaven – not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.”
Jesus said here that he who partakes of Him “abides in Me, and I in him” (v. 56). In John 5:21 and 26 Jesus said, “For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will . . . For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself.” Jesus obtains from the Father the power to grant life, because he abides or dwells in the Father.
In John 17:21 Jesus prayed this: “That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.” Abiding in Jesus is being one with Him – dwelling in Christ as He dwells in us. In John 15:5-6 Jesus said to His disciples, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.” Abiding in Jesus leads to fruit, or new life; not abiding in Jesus leads to being burned, or death. We must abide in Jesus in order to have life.
The word “abide” means, “to remain in a place,” and “to dwell, or sojourn.”(5) This is an intimate term conveying a similar idea to the joining of a man and woman in holy matrimony. In abiding, we enter into a deeper level of intimacy as we become one in spirit with Jesus. We should desire and hunger to draw near to Jesus each and every day through prayer and reading of the Word; however, the good news is that we become one in spirit with Him at the moment of salvation through the Holy Spirit who lives inside us and establishes His home in us (see John 3:3-6).
Next, Jesus said that he who partakes of Him “will live forever” (v. 58). Living forever means to escape “spiritual death,” and to enter “spiritual life forever in heaven.” In John 5:24 Jesus stated, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.” Jesus used the phrase “judgment” and spoke of passing “from death to life.”
I already quoted Hebrews 9:27 which says, “It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.” When our body perishes and we stand before the Lord, then if we do not know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord we enter judgment, condemnation, and eternal spiritual death. If, however, we do have a relationship with Jesus Christ then we will have “passed from death to life” and gain life forever in heaven.
Also, in John 5:24, Jesus revealed how to gain eternal life in heaven through Him. He stated, “He who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life.” If we listen to Jesus as He calls to us, and believe in Him with all of our heart we will be saved from spiritual death. Romans 10:9-10 declares, “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”
In John 11:25 Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live,” and in Colossians 3:4 Paul stated, “For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory” – and when we appear with Him in glory, the abundant life we now have in Christ will continue in all its fullness for eternity.
Time of Reflection
Let me ask you, do you desire true, abundant and everlasting life? In Revelation 21:6, Jesus declared, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts.” Revelation 22:17 says, “And the Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ . . . And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely.” The water of life is in Jesus Christ, the power source of the tree of life (Revelation 22:1-2), and the source of all life in the universe (John 1:1-4). Jesus truly is the author of life (Acts 3:15, NIV), and He offers life to anyone who hungers or thirsts.
In order to obtain everlasting life in Jesus, we must freely partake of Him and the life He offers. We partake of life by our confession of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and by confessing Him as the only way to God the Father. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Confess Jesus as the only way, the only truth, and the only life, and receive everlasting, abundant life today; and then on the day you cross over into eternity you will pass from death into life to abide forever in heaven before the presence of God the Father.
NOTES
(1) Jack Hyles, Salvation is More than Being Saved.
(2) “Everlasting,” Dictionary.com Unabridged, v. 1.1, taken from the Internet in July of 2007 at http://dictionary.reference.com/.
(3) Warren Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, New Testament (Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1989), p. 313.
(4) Ibid., p. 313.
(5) “Abide,” American Heritage Dictionary, taken from the Internet in July of 2007 at http://dictionary.reference.com/.
