What is eternal life?

What is eternal life? Is it a place that you are going to when you are dead? Is it a peculiar feeling inside? If you were to ask a normal congregation, or any sort of Bible class or Sunday school in an evangelical church to define eternal life, you would be amazed at the strange answers you would get!

What is eternal life? When does it begin? I noticed just the other day, in a hospital chapel where I was speaking, a tablet on the wall in memory of one of the previous chaplains, and in giving the date of his death it said, “He entered into eternal life.” Is that true if he was a Christian? Is it right to imply, as did that tablet on the wall, that eternal life begins when a man is physically dead? No, indeed!

“And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (I John 5:11,12).

Jesus Christ and eternal life are synonymous terms, and eternal life is none other than Jesus Christ Himself, of whom it is written in John 1:4: “In Him was life; and this life was the light of men.” If you have eternal life at all, it simply means that you have the Son, Jesus Christ, now! Jesus said, “I am the Way, I am the Truth, I am the Life” (John 14:6)

Eternal life is not a peculiar feeling inside! It is not your ultimate destination, to which you will go when you are dead. If you are born again, eternal life is that quality of life that you possess right now, at this very moment, in your own physical body, with your own two feet on the ground, and in the world today! And where does this life come from? Of Him! He is that Life!

So if you have eternal life, it means that you have Somebody, Jesus Christ, and the life that you possess is of Him.

From The Saving Life of Christ by Ian Thomas, 1961.