Jesus Christ – the Source of Life and Eternal Life

By Robb Brunansky

Published February 27, 2023

Our society is consumed with unlocking the secret to longer life on this earth with countless people looking for life and eternal life apart from Jesus Christ our Lord.

LeBron James is one of them. He spends $1.5 million a year to keep himself as young as he can so that he can continue to play NBA basketball and feel like he did at the start of his career. $1.5 million a year to try to prevent aging!

A tennis player, Novak Djokovic, doesn’t want to age either, so he gives his glasses of water pep talks, hoping that the “positive vibes” will translate into the liquid’s purification levels before he drinks.

There’s a tech billionaire, 45 years old, who sold a payment processing company to e-Bay a few years ago for $800 million. His goal is to reverse the clock on his body so that he has all of the internal organs and fitness of an 18-year-old again. He spends $2 million a year in medical procedures and other efforts to reverse the aging of his organs.

People spend millions and millions of dollars, desperately looking to try to stay young, but the reality is that they’re all going to die anyway.

This isn’t a condemnation on people looking to use the resources that God has given them to keep their bodies and minds in the best shape and state possible at that stage of their lives. After all, 1 Corinthians 6 reminds us that our bodies are “a temple of the Holy Spirit.”

But it’s clear that many people don’t have this Spirit-filled goal in mind, nor do they acknowledge that there is only One who can give both life and eternal life. What these people fail to realize is that they can have eternal life, and they don’t have to spend a cent or expend one second of worry, because Jesus shed His blood so that those who believe in Him and receive forgiveness for their sins can have it.

In 1 John 1:1, the apostle John tells us that Jesus is the Word of Life, combining two key images from the opening of his Gospel to describe our Lord. Jesus was the Word who became flesh, but He was also Life – as John says in John 1:4. Jesus is the Word who is the source of all life. We are alive today because the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, keeps us alive and has given us life.

But more than our physical lives, Jesus is the Word who alone can give eternal life as John points out in 1 John 1:2. Jesus is the eternal life, and that means there is no eternal life apart from Him. That’s why Jesus could say truthfully, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.”

When Jesus speaks, He imparts life to the dead. He creates where there is nothing. He brings into existence what did not exist.

We might think of the Word of Life in relation to when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead – by speaking! At His Word, life returned to that lifeless corpse. John MacArthur once said, “…if He had just said, ‘Come forth,’ that might’ve been the final resurrection. So He had to put a limit on it. ‘Lazarus. The rest of you, stay where you are.’”

Jesus addresses this in John 5:25-26, and we read that the Word of Life, Jesus Christ, is solely able to save sinners from their sins, out of death into life. This is why we are called to preach Christ today – because when the Word speaks, sinners are made alive to God!

Jesus continues in John 5:28-29, revealing that His voice will speak on the great day of judgment, causing everyone throughout all of human history to rise from their tombs, summoning them to the judgement seat of God Almighty. How critical it is that we hear His voice before that awesome day. And how critical it is that we have life now through His name; so when that day comes, when His voice echoes throughout all the earth and calls all the dead to stand before Him and give an account, we rise to a resurrection of life rather than judgment.

We, as believers, are surrounded by people of all different walks of life, who are terrified of getting older, their bodies deteriorating, and what lies beyond the grave – no matter what they say they believe about God or religion. That’s why we have such a great and urgent opportunity to proclaim the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to those around us. He, our Savior and King, is the only one who can give life and eternal life to all who call upon His name.