10. Life
JOHN HAS A GREATER INTEREST IN LIFE THAN OTHER New Testament writers, at least insofar as his use of the “life” terminology goes.1 He has the verb zaō 17 times (Romans has it 23 times, but next is John, then Revelation with 13), and the noun zōē 36 times (next is Revelation with 17). If we combine the totals for noun and verb, Romans has 37 occurrences and Revelation 30, but these are well behind John’s 53. Clearly for John life is a major topic. It is worth noticing that nearly half of his references to “life” qualify it as “life eternal” (17 out of 36). Even when he does not use this adjective, the context often shows that eternal life is what he has in mind.
Physical Life
Sometimes life seems to mean the ordinary physical life of the here and now, though even then there may be something very unusual about it. For example, when the father of a seriously ill boy in Cana came to Jesus in Capernaum for help, Jesus said, “Your son lives” (4:50),2 and as the word of power was spoken the boy’s physical life was restored. The repetition of the essential expression (4:51, 53) gives emphasis to the fact that it was a word of power and brings out the truth that Jesus is Lord of life, physical as well as eternal. Death cannot defeat him.
But when this ordinary physical life is in mind, John mostly employs the word psychē (he uses it ten times).3 More often than not, he uses this term when he is speaking of laying down his life and the like. It is this word that we encounter, for example, in the references to the Good Shepherd laying down his life (10:11, 15, 17). In this passage there is no question of the term pointing to “eternal life” or the like: Jesus is saying that he will die to bring salvation to his sheep. He is referring to the end of his earthly life, an end that would be accomplished on the cross. And it is this same death that is in mind when Jesus says, “No one has greater love than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (15:13). The statement is quite general, but there can be no doubt that Jesus is referring particularly to the death he would shortly accomplish on the cross.
It is this word that is used in the discussion about Peter’s readiness to die for Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you” (13:37). He gives the word emphasis by putting it first in its clause, “My life for you I will lay down.” Jesus responds by using Peter’s word and Peter’s emphasis, “Your life for me will you lay down?” after which he goes on to prophesy Peter’s threefold denial (13:38). That Peter did not in fact die in this way for Jesus is beside the point. The fact is that it is the surrendering of the physical life of which the two are speaking.
This term occurs also in the passage in which Jesus says, “He who loves his life (psychē) loses it, and he who hates his life (psychē) in this world will keep it into life (zōē) eternal” (12:25), a strong statement with parallels in the Synoptic Gospels. The thought here is that the person who concentrates on his own success in the here and now loses life in all that matters, whereas the person who does not seek personal advantage (who trusts the Lord?) has that life which is life eternal.4 The use of the two words for “life” is interesting. The first and second occurrences plainly refer to this ordinary physical life with its varied interests and opportunities. The person who concentrates his efforts and his interests on this life, who lives in and for himself, in the end loses it all. It is the person who is ready to lose all that this life means for Christ’s sake who comes into the possession of the life that matters, life eternal.5 John uses the word once more, namely when he tells us that Jesus said, “Now is my soul troubled” (12:27). This is a reminder that in his human life Jesus could be troubled just as we can, and indeed more, for we never know the trouble of soul he experienced as he contemplated his death for sinners. But the word is here used in the sense “soul” rather than “life”, so it is not directly relevant to our present inquiry.
Jesus Is the Life
Of major interest is the way John links life with Jesus. Twice he tells us that Jesus said that he is life. To Martha Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life” (11:25), and to the disciples in the upper room, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (14:6). Both sayings link life with Jesus in the closest fashion, but it is not easy to go beyond this.6 To say that someone is living is easily understandable; to say that he is life is not. Since in both passages “life” has the definite article, “I am the life”, we may possibly say that this points to the truth that he is the real life, the genuine life, over against all false claimants to being or having life. There have always been people who have claimed that those they despise are not really living, but that they themselves are really vital, genuinely alive. Sometimes they have been religiously inclined and have held that their particular way is the way to a life for God, though interestingly they have often been worldly-minded folk who dismiss faithful men and women, alleging that they live narrow and circumscribed lives and miss out on the debaucheries and the like which in their opinion make life worth living.
Over against all such claims Jesus is the life. When we reflect that after so many centuries he still inspires people of a wide variety of races and social stations in almost every country in the world to give him their supreme loyalty and use their whole lives in his service, we perhaps glimpse a little of the vitality, the life, that Jesus is. We could say the same about those countless numbers who, in his name, delight to serve in thankless tasks in lowly places throughout the world’s mission fields, in the slums of the world’s great cities, and among the outcasts of society.
From a very different point of view half a century back Beverly Nichols made much the same point. Replying to a radical New Testament critic who would say no more about Jesus than “the outline of a man and the traces of an individual activity are still to be distinguished”, Nichols wrote:
Ye gods! If you have ever done any writing you may have a faint idea of the immense difficulty of making a character live even for a single publishing season, in a single language. And if you have ever done any reading, the remotest acquaintance with European literature will inform you that there are no “characters”, not even Don Quixote (the most lifelike evocation of an individual in literature) which are more than tiny shadows against the immense reality of the character of Jesus.
You cannot deny the reality of this character, in whatever body it resided. Even if we were to grant the Professor’s theory that it is all a hotch-potch of legend, somebody said “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath”; somebody said “For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul”; somebody said “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the Kingdom of God”; somebody said “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God”; somebody said “All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword”.
Somebody said these things, because they are staring me in the face at this moment from the Bible. And whoever said them was gigantic. And whoever said them was living, because we are in the year 1936 and I am “modern” and you are “modern”, and we both of us like going to the cinema and we can both drive a car and all that sort of thing, and yet we cannot find in any contemporary literature any phrases which have a shadow of the beauty, the truth, the individuality, nor the indestructibility of those phrases.
And remember, I have only quoted five sentences at random.7
I am not, of course, suggesting that Jesus lives simply in the sense that a character in a literary work lives. I am saying that Nichols, from a point of view rarely considered in theological circles, brought out the truth that Jesus is “living”; there is a vitality about Jesus which we do not encounter elsewhere and to which John gives special emphasis. Jesus is life.
Jesus Gives Life
And he is the source of life. Right at the beginning of his Gospel John says, “In him was life” (1:4), a statement that follows an earlier affirmation that it was the Word through whom all creation took place. We may fairly deduce that he is the source of all life on earth, though John does not develop that thought. He is much more inclined to talk about Jesus as the source of spiritual life, as when he quotes him as saying “I give them life eternal” (10:28) or “I came in order that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (10:10).8 He tells us that in his great high-priestly prayer Jesus prayed, “… even as you have given him authority over all flesh, in order that all that you have given him, he may give to them life eternal” (17:2). This last passage links the Son with the Father in a way with which we have become familiar in our earlier studies. There is a sense in which the Son gives life, but there is also a sense in which life belongs to the Father.
In an earlier discourse Jesus spoke of the Father as having “life in himself” and as having given to the Son “to have life in himself” (5:26). This unusual expression is rendered by Goodspeed “the Father is self-existent”, while GNB has “Just as the Father is himself the source of life, in the same way he has made his Son the source of life.” Clearly John is telling us that Jesus does not have the same relationship to life as we do. Our life is contingent, whereas his is necessary. Our life has a point of origin, while his does not.9 Elsewhere Jesus refers to God as “the living Father” (life is his characteristic), and goes on, “and I live on account of the Father (dia ton patera)” (6:57). Such statements make it clear that Jesus does not see his life as on all fours with the life that the rest of us live. He came where we are, certainly, and lived our human life. But that does not tell the whole story. In his essential being he shares the life of the Father. But because of what he is, he is able to make a gift of life to those who come to him: “because I live, you will live too” (14:19).
Earlier in the discourse after he healed the lame man Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you that an hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live” (5:25). It is possible to take this in the sense that Christ will call the dead from their graves at the last day, a thought which he goes on to express (vv. 28–29). But at this point he seems to be speaking rather of life here and now, as the words “and now is” indicate. Jesus is saying that right now he calls the spiritually dead out of their lost state and gives them life. Life in this sense is not a natural possession: it is a divine gift. He has just said that the believer “has passed out of death into life” (v. 24), and, while the saying has eschatological overtones as is indicated by the assurance that he will not come into judgment,10 Jesus is surely saying that the life he gives will be effective even on the great day of judgment. The recipient of his gift need not fear that it will be found wanting on Judgment Day. Even there and even then he will have life.
The Bread of Life
An important passage on life begins with Jesus saying to his Jewish hearers, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that abides unto life eternal, which the Son of man will give you; for him did God the Father seal” (6:27). These words are uttered when people who had been numbered among the 5,000 who were miraculously fed from the five loaves and two fish sought Jesus out on the other side of the lake. They were looking for Jesus, indeed, but not because of any profound spiritual perception. They had been well fed and apparently looked for a continuation of this kind of expertise on the part of Jesus. They wanted to make him a king.11 He was not prepared to go along with their idea and immediately pointed them away from the material food that had impressed them so greatly. He urged them to look for the food that would sustain them “unto life eternal”. They should be concentrating on eternal life, not on the kind of sustenance they had so recently received from him, no matter how wonderful it was.
In the section on the “I AM” sayings we noticed that Jesus calls himself “the bread of life” (6:35, 48), an expression that draws attention to the truth that Jesus is the sustainer of real life. The first use comes in response to his hearers’ demand for a sign, their reminder to Jesus that “our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness”, and their citation of Psalm 78:24, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat”. Clearly they were saying to Jesus that the Messiah would do much more than they had seen him do. There was a widespread Jewish expectation that the Messiah would reproduce the miracle of the manna,12 and goodness knows what fantasies they had in mind when they spoke of the giving of “bread from heaven”. John is making it clear that Jesus’ hearers lacked spiritual perception: no matter what Jesus did and taught they would find some way of rejecting him. But John’s interest is in what Jesus said, and specifically in what he said about life. This runs through the entire discourse.
We must bear in mind that bread was the most important item of diet for Jesus and his hearers. References to “your staff of bread” (Lev. 26:26;13 Ezek. 4:16; 5:16; 14:13) show its central importance for sustaining life. When Jesus then says that he is “the bread of life”, he is pointing to the truth that without him there is no life worth the name. He gives life and he sustains life, and the saying comes very close to repeating what we have seen elsewhere, that he is life.
Jesus also speaks of “the bread of God” which his hearers had mentioned, and he tells them that the bread of God “is that which (or he who) comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (6:33).14 His hearers doubtless took this to refer to something material like the manna or perhaps even some special variety of the bread they commonly used, for they go on to say, “Sir, always give us this bread” (6:34). It is this that leads up to Jesus’ saying, “I am the bread of life”, so that clearly he understood the words to mean “he who comes down from heaven.…” It is another way of referring both to his heavenly origin and the truth that he and only he gives life to the world. Again there is the claim that it is Jesus and only Jesus who gives life to this troubled world. It will be this that is in mind when he goes on to say, “He who comes to me will certainly not hunger, and he who believes in me will certainly not thirst, ever.” Neither “bread” nor “life” occurs in this expression, but it is the same essential thought that is conveyed, with the addition that the life he gives is infinitely satisfying.
The Jews proceed to mutter about Jesus (the word usually seems to convey the meaning of a hostile utterance spoken in a low voice which would make the actual speakers difficult to identify). They maintain that he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven” (6:41). This is not an exact quotation of anything that Jesus is recorded to have said, but that need not worry us since it reproduces the gist of his claim. John’s insertion of this saying into his narrative keeps the focus on Jesus’ heavenly origin, and we should not miss the implication that the life he gives is not a superior version of the best life on earth but something different, the life of heaven, or, as John prefers to put it, “life eternal”.15
Towards the end of the discourse Jesus repeats the saying that he is the bread of life (6:48), and goes on to remind his hearers that their fathers “ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died” (6:49).16 They had been insistent in drawing his attention to the manna and implying that what he was doing was nothing wonderful, certainly nothing like the giving of the manna to a whole generation of people for 40 years. But Jesus was concerned with much more than sustaining this physical life, which was all that the manna could do. He is talking about “the bread that came down from heaven, in order that one might eat of it and not die” (6:50).17 This brings him to the point where he says plainly, “I am the living bread who came down from heaven” (6:51); there is to be no doubt that he himself is the bread that will give people that life in which they will not die. Jesus goes on, “if anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world.” It does not surprise us that this produced strife among the Jews, with questions being raised about how they were going to eat his flesh. But John’s readers would be expected to discern that Jesus was referring to his atoning death. People would get life indeed, but the cost of their life would be his death.
We should notice that a new thought is introduced at the end of this discourse. In the earlier part of the address the references to the bread that came down from heaven might well be taken to direct us to the incarnation. They point to the truth that to bring us life the Son of God left his throne in heaven and took a lowly place here on earth. But this is now supplemented with the thought that the death of the Son of God is a necessary part of the way in which life is made available.18 Both truths are important for an understanding of this chapter as a whole and for an understanding of John’s view of eternal life. The necessity of the death of Jesus comes out in a number of places. God’s love led to his giving his Son so that people would get life (3:16), and such passages as the treatment of the Good Shepherd who gives his life for the sheep (10:11, 15, 17–18) reinforce the truth. But indeed the shape of the entire Gospel points to it. John deals with the whole of Jesus’ public ministry in his first 12 chapters, but then gives over nine chapters to Jesus’ last talk to his disciples, and to the death and resurrection. This is to put a tremendous emphasis on his death. For that death is central to the bringing of life.
In response to the difficulty the Jews found in the eating of his flesh Jesus goes further and says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life eternal, and I will raise him up at the last day” (6:53–54). The addition of drinking the blood to eating the flesh would have made the saying even more abhorrent to the Jews, but it emphasized the reality of the death that would bring life to those who received Jesus. Jesus would bring real life to those who were so bound to this earthly life with all its values that they saw nothing from the perspective of heaven and of eternity, and he would bring this life at the cost of his own death. With this we are at the very heart of the Christian way.19
Having explained that life proceeds from his death, Jesus goes on to link it with the life of the Father. He speaks of “the living Father” as having sent him, and says that he lives “on account of the Father” (6:57). This probably means two things: Jesus’ life is bound up with that of the Father so that he has no independent existence (cf. 5:26),20 and further he lives to do the Father’s will (in 4:34 this is his very meat). This leads on to the thought that “he who eats me, that one also will live on account of me” (6:57). To partake of Christ, to enter into the life he gives, means to begin to live a derivative life, a life bound up with Christ, and a life of service to Christ. The life that Jesus gives is never a self-centered life; it is always a life of service. Then he repeats a thought he has already given us: “This is the bread that came down from heaven, not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever” (6:58). It is important to understand that the life of which he speaks is not the life of which his opponents speak, a physical life that was sustained in the wilderness by an unusual food supply. He is referring to an eternal life, a life that can never cease. And that life is given by appropriating his death.
Jesus goes on to say, “The Spirit is the life-giver; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life” (6:63). In this very difficult expression we should see a reference to the Holy Spirit rather than a contrast between spirit and flesh in the human body, for the human spirit is not life-giving. That Jesus’ words “are spirit and they are life” means that the Holy Spirit is involved in the teaching. The words of Jesus are not to be understood in some woodenly literal way: they are to be understood as the Spirit leads us to understand them. And understood in this way, they bring life. From another point of view Jesus is insisting that real life comes not from anything terrestrial. Peter discerned this, for when Jesus saw people defecting from him and asked the Twelve, “Do you also want to go off?” that apostle spoke on behalf of them all, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of life eternal” (6:67–68). Already Peter has come to know that life eternal comes from Jesus.21 It may also be said to come from the Father (5:24, 26), and now we see that the Holy Spirit is involved as well. Expressions involving any member of the Trinity bring out the point that Jesus is not referring to a form of life that is produced by human striving. He is referring to a gift of God.
Faith and Life
From what we have said it is plain that John puts great emphasis on the truth that life eternal is God’s good gift, that normally it is seen as coming from Christ, and specifically his death is said to be involved in the process. But he does not regard the gift of life as distributed indiscriminately among the human race. It is freely available, to be sure, and available to people of every race and class. But it must be appropriated by faith. “God so loved the world,” we read, “that he gave his only Son, in order that everyone who believes in him should not perish, but have life eternal” (3:16). It is the will of the Father “that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have life eternal” (6:40; Jesus goes on to say that he will raise him up at the last day). When he talked to Martha after the death of Lazarus, Jesus spoke of himself as “the resurrection and the life” and went on to say, “He who believes in me, though he should die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will not perish for ever” (11:25–26). The life he gives believers is a life that never ends. Or this may be put very simply: “He who believes in the Son has life eternal” (3:36). Believing is not simply a recommended procedure—it is necessary. It is the one way by which sinners receive the gift of life.22
All the passages so far noted employ the “believing in—” construction, but the same truth may be expressed otherwise. In the best understanding of 3:15 we read that the Son of man must be lifted up “in order that everyone who believes may have in him life eternal.” Or life may be linked with the Father, using the construction with the simple dative, “Truly, truly, I tell you that he who hears my word, and believes him who sent me, has life eternal” (5:24).23 The importance of faith is emphasized in the simple statement (prefixed with the solemn “Truly, truly”), “he who believes has life eternal” (6:47). Nothing could show more clearly that we bring nothing to merit the gift. We come believing, and that is all. Believers have life eternal.
The critical importance of believing for John may be seen in the fact that he tells his readers that he wrote his Gospel in order that they might believe that Jesus is the Christ, “and that believing you may have life in his name” (20:31). Believing and life are connected in the closest fashion, and John writes to bring people to believe.
Now and then life is linked with light. This happens as early as the fourth verse (which may indicate that John considers it an important idea, even though he does not develop it fully at that point). “In him was life,” we read, “and the life was the light of men” (1:4). The life that the Word gives illuminates the whole of life. It is true that the gift of life means that those who have it no longer abide in death, and it is also true that the life they live is full of light in sharp contrast to the existence in darkness of those who do not receive the light. Again, after speaking of himself as “the Light of the world” Jesus goes on, “he that follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (8:12). Again there is the thought of the contrast between the miserable existence of those without light and the wonderfully illuminated life of those who have it. There is also probably the thought that life and light go together: without light we do not really have life.24
We should not miss the further point that light sometimes has to do with judgment as much as with illumination. Thus we read, “This is the judgment (or condemnation), that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil” (3:19). Light does of course provide illumination to guide the life, and this the Gospel brings out. But it also makes clear that the coming of the light means a responsibility to profit from the light. People come under condemnation if they reject the light.25 The coming of light does not necessarily result in life; it may result in condemnation since it shows up what should not be there.
Life Is For Ever
A feature of John’s understanding of life is his insistence that it has no end. Seventeen times he has the expression “life eternal” (zōē aiōnios), where the adjective points us to what is endless. The word derives from aiōn, or “an age”, and signifies “pertaining to an age”. The Jews divided all time into the age before creation, the present age, and the age to come, that is, the age ushered in by the coming of the Messiah, an age that will have no end. Theoretically there seems no reason why the adjective should not be applied to any age, but in practice it meant “pertaining to the age to come”. The expression “into the age” (eis ton aiōna) meant “forever”.
“Life eternal”, then, meant “the life of the age to come”, “life appropriate to the coming age”. It may in a given context have the significance “life without end”, but John seems to have a deeper meaning than this. He refers to life that is appropriate to the age to come. He is referring to life of a particular quality rather than life of an endless quantity. He can, of course, speak of this life as endless, but for John this is clearly no more than one aspect of life eternal; it is not its essential character. Thus in Jesus’ high-priestly prayer we find the words: “this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ” (17:3). The knowledge of God and of Christ is itself eternal life.26 It is not that it brings eternal life: it is itself that life. Akin to this is Jesus’ statement, “I know that his commandment is life eternal” (12:50). He does not say that to keep God’s commandment brings eternal life: he says that it is eternal life (cf. Twentieth Century translation, “Immortal Life lies in keeping his command”).
With this will go the thought that what we do here and now has its effects in the life to come. Thus John records a conversation Jesus had with the disciples while the Samaritan woman he met by the well was going back to her village and in which he spoke of the fields as “white for harvest” and went on, “he who reaps receives a wage and gathers fruit to life eternal” (4:36). It may be that this means that the “wage” the reaper gets is that of seeing sinners enter eternal life, or it may mean that the reaper’s reward is one that he will receive in the life to come. Either way the passage looks forward to a life beyond this world, a life in which what we do here and now has consequences. And this is in mind also when Jesus speaks of Judgment Day and says that those “who have done good things” will enter “the resurrection of life” (5:29).27 What we do now has its effects in the life to come.
Of course, the fact that this life never ends comes out in many statements. The person who has it “will live for ever” (6:58). There is a classic statement about the resurrection at the end of this age, a resurrection that will come about because the Son calls people from the tombs. Then some will experience the “resurrection of life”, which is set over against the “resurrection of condemnation” (5:29). This brings us to life in the age that has no ending and is thus life that never dies. We should deduce this also from the repeated “I will raise him up in the last day” in the “bread of life” discourse (6:39, 40, 44, 54).28 This chapter has a good deal to say about the quality of the life that Christ brings, but it also repeats the statement that takes us into the life of the world to come.
Life and the Holy Spirit
In his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus told her that if she knew what the free gift of God was and who it was to whom she was talking, “you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (4:10). The woman asks where he is going to get the living water, since the well is deep and he has no bucket. She does not ask what “living” water is, and Jesus does not explain it. But we should notice that his usage is exceptional. The Rabbis often used “water” metaphorically (mostly to bring out truths concerning the law), but “living water” is very rarely a metaphorical expression. Its ordinary use is for running water as opposed to still water, water in a pond, or the like. We find something of what Jesus means by it in the present passage if we attend to the subsequent discussion. Jesus points out that anyone who drinks from the well will in due course get thirsty again, “but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will certainly not thirst, not ever, but the water that I will give him will be in him a fountain of water leaping up into life eternal” (4:14).29 The reference to life eternal shows that Jesus is referring to no merely temporal gift but to that life which God alone can give.
The water metaphor is found again in the incident at the Feast of Tabernacles. On the last day, the great day of the Feast, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink; he who believes in me, as the Scripture said, rivers of living water will flow from his innermost being.” John adds an explanation, “This he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him would receive; for it was not yet Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (7:37–39). It can scarcely be said that this is a completely straightforward passage, but it is clear that in some way the “living water” and the Spirit are connected.30 The Spirit in all his fulness would not be given until the consummation of Jesus’ earthly ministry, and he would bring deep satisfaction to the believer.
It seems that both these passages are looking at the new life Christ would bring people, a life that would be characterized by the work of the Holy Spirit within believers. This would be such a satisfaction that believers will never again thirst as they did in their unfulfilled state before they received the living water from Jesus. It is possible that we have another significant reference to water, namely the report of the observer at the cross that blood and water came out of Jesus’ side when a soldier pierced him with a spear (19:34). John Lightfoot draws attention to a rabbinic passage which refers to the incident when Moses smote the rock in the wilderness and says, “Moses therefore smote the rock twice, and first it gushed out blood, then water.”31 Lightfoot held that John may well have such rabbinic teaching in mind and that he saw the significance of the water and the blood that came from the Savior’s side in this way: “this is the true blood of the new covenant, which so directly answers the type in the confirmation of the old.”32
The Dead
Now if some receive life, the corollary is that those who do not receive it are dead, and this is part of John’s teaching. He records Jesus’ sorrowful words to some of his opponents, “you will not come to me so that you may have life” (5:40). These people had the Scriptures and they searched them diligently, but in such a way that they did not see that the Scriptures pointed to Jesus. They thought that they had eternal life in those writings (5:39).33 It is the greatest of tragedies when people use the word of God and do not find the Son of God. But that was the fate of the people of that generation.
Persistently they rejected the way of life. John tells his readers that “he who believes in the Son has life eternal”, whereas “he who does not obey34 the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him” (3:36). He does not gloss over the fact that people are faced with a real choice and that eternal issues hang on this. The unbeliever can look forward to nothing but the continuing wrath of God.
In another place John tells us that Jesus said to the people who heard him in the synagogue at Capernaum, “Truly, truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (6:53). We saw earlier that this is a vivid way of speaking of the appropriation of the blessings brought by the death of Jesus, but it is an appropriation that the people addressed would not make. They would cooperate in bringing his death about, not in seeing in it the way to life. For such at the last judgment there can be nothing other than “the resurrection of condemnation” (5:29).
It agrees with the emphasis John gives to life that he often warns of death, the result of not accepting the gift of life. Thus he tells us that Jesus said to the Jews, “I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin”, and again, “I told you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins” (8:21, 24). Neither here nor elsewhere does he explain what “dying in sin” means, but clearly it stands for the ultimate horror.35 It is the very opposite of that life on which John puts so much stress. We see this also in passages such as that in which Jesus says that those to whom he gives eternal life “will not perish for ever” (10:28), where the implication is that those who do not receive this gift will “perish for ever.”
It accords with this that John has the verb apothnēskō, “to die”, more often than anyone else in the New Testament (28 times). Often this refers to the death that Jesus would die for people, but passages like those just quoted point to the death that is the inevitable result of refusing to believe. It is not that John has a morbid interest in death. He has not. He simply draws attention to the fact that when people are offered life, there is a very serious choice before them. To refuse it is to choose death. We should all be clear on that. But John’s aim is not that people choose death, but rather that they become believers and enter into that life which is life eternal.
1. A. M. Hunter gives three reasons why this Gospel continues to “speak to the condition” of so many Christians, the first of which is “It is the Gospel of Life”. He later says, “between this prelude and this coda [i.e., 1:4 and 20:31], ‘life’ is John’s dominant theme” (According to John, London, 1968, pp. 107, 108).
2. Translations like “your son will live” (RSV, GNB) reduce the saying to a prophecy of the outcome. This overlooks the tense of the verb and the fact that John is recording a “sign” (4:54). It is the overcoming of death by Jesus’ powerful word that John records, not a soothing saying assuring the father that there is nothing to worry about.
3. Alf Corell says, “Consistently zēn and zōē are used to signify the ‘spiritual’ life—life in and through Christ as opposed to the purely physical life. The latter is mostly covered by the term psychē; e.g. in 10.15, 17, Jesus lays down his life for his sheep.… The difference between psychē and zōē is clearly shown in 12.25: ‘He that hateth his life (psychē) in this world shall keep it unto life eternal’ (eis zōēn aiōnion)” (Consummatum Est, London, 1958, p. 139). It is doubtful whether this distinction is always strictly observed (there does seem to be a reference to physical life in the use of zēn in 4:50, 51, 53). But that zōē often means “spiritual life” and psychē “physical life” is undoubted.
4. Cf. W. Barclay, “only by spending life do we retain life. The man who loves his life is moved by two aims. He is moved by selfishness and he is moved by the desire for security. His own advancement and his own safety are the two things which are the driving force of life. Not once or twice but many times Jesus insisted that the man who hoarded his life must in the end lose it, and the man who spent his life must in the end gain it” (The Gospel of John, II, Edinburgh, 1956, p. 144).
5. “The man will keep his psychē not indeed for physical life, which he may well surrender, but for eternal life, of which he can never be robbed” (C. K. Barrett, The Gospel according to St. John,2 Philadelphia, 1978, p. 424).
6. G. R. Beasley-Murray holds that “the truth” and “the life” explain how Jesus is “the way”: Jesus is the way “because he is the truth … and because the life of God resides in him (in the context of the Gospel that includes life in creation and life in the new creation …)”. A little later he says, “as the Life he is the mediator of the salvation which is life in God” (Word Biblical Commentary: John, Waco, 1987, p. 252).
7. The Fool Hath Said (London, 1936), pp. 126–27 (Nichols’s italics).
8. R. F. Bailey renders the passage, “I am come that they may have life and may have it to overflowing”, and proceeds, “ ‘I am the way,’ we shall find later, leads on to ‘I am the Life’ ” (Saint John’s Gospel, London, 1957, p. 136).
9. Cf. Augustine, quoted on p. 105 above.
10. In the Johannine manner there is probably the thought of a present judgment: the believer does bring down judgment on himself. But it seems impossible to empty the saying of eschatological force. Not only is the believer not subject to present judgment; he is delivered from future judgment, too.
11. Lesslie Newbigin comments, “The enthusiasm of the crowd rises; they will seize him forthwith and make him their leader.” He goes on, “This is not faith but unbelief. They have not understood who Jesus is. Jesus will not be the instrument of any human enthusiasm or the symbol for any human program” (The Light Has Come, Grand Rapids, 1982, p. 76).
12. Thus the Midrash Rabbah informs us that “R. Berekiah said in the name of R. Isaac: As the first redeemer was, so shall the latter Redeemer be.… As the former redeemer caused manna to descend, as it is stated, Behold, I will cause to rain bread from heaven for you (Ex. XVI,4), so will the latter Redeemer cause manna to descend, as it is stated, May he be as a rich cornfield in the land (Ps. LXXII,16)” (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 1.9; Soncino edition, p. 33).
13. Martin Noth explains, “food is like a staff to lean upon in order to walk more securely; cf. the expression ‘to support oneself with a morsel of bread’ = ‘to fortify oneself (with a meal)’ ” (Leviticus, London, 1965, p. 199).
14. J. H. Bernard points out that “the bread of God” is not only “such as ‘comes down from heaven,’ for that was said of the manna … but such as coming down imparts life and not merely bodily nourishment” (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to St. John, I, Edinburgh, 1928, p. 195).
15. Peder Borgen agrees with the viewpoint that this chapter teaches “that the eternal life is a present reality which unfolds itself in time up to the final close at the bodily resurrection on the last day” (Bread from Heaven, Leiden, 1965, p. 172).
16. U. E. Simon says of “Your fathers … died” (6:48, 58), “this is the incontrovertible evidence which testifies to the nothingness of existent religions. The pagan hope certainly does not avail in the Fourth Gospel.” Earlier he has said, this Gospel’s “stark realism again continues in the best tradition of what Cullmann has called the ‘pessimistic conception of death’ which rests, however, on the the optimistic regard for the living God” (F. L. Cross, ed., Studies in the Fourth Gospel, London, 1957, p. 99).
17. Bertil Gärtner holds that John “makes a clear distinction in this section between the three ‘ages’ and their ‘bread’: the manna in the desert for the Mosaic age, Jesus’ feeding of the people in the desert, and the bread appropriate to the feast in God’s kingdom, the Eucharistic bread” (John 6 and the Jewish Passover, Lund, 1959, p. 23). I cannot go along with him in seeing a reference to “the Eucharistic bread”, but there is certainly an important distinction between two kinds of “bread” which give no lasting life, and the bread that does, the flesh of Christ.
18. Cf. W. H. Cadman, “In interpreting the thought of the discourse as a whole it is important not to miss the significance of this twofold application of the figure of the bread. From the one point of view Jesus is ‘the bread of life’, ‘the living bread which came down out of heaven’ (vv. 35, 48, 51), because with His presence in the human earthly order ‘life’ has now become accessible to men; from the other point of view He is the ‘bread of life’ because He chooses to die, in order that He may make the ‘life’ which is in Him the actual possession of many more as well” (The Open Heaven, Oxford, 1969, p. 81).
19. Most modern scholars hold that John is here referring to the Holy Communion. But despite the popularity of the view no one seems to have explained why Jesus should have puzzled an audience in Capernaum by referring to a non-existent sacrament (it would be another year at least before the Holy Communion would be instituted); he could not possibly have been understood. And if we say that John is not concerned with accurate history in our sense of the term but is giving his eucharistic teaching at this point in his narrative, the question arises of why John thought his readers would find no problems with eucharistic teaching alleged to have been given to a group consisting largely of unbelievers at least a year before there was any Eucharist. It is also a problem that no one partook of this Eucharist (there is no report of anyone drinking the wine that was an integral part of that sacrament). And further, in all the early accounts of the Eucharist there is a reference to Jesus’ “body”, not to his “flesh”. Why should the terminology be changed on this one occasion? We should also take note of the strength of the language used. In verse 53 we read, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” This language is absolute. Are we to say that John taught that unless we receive the Eucharist we “have no life”? And that this is the one thing necessary for life? For all its popularity the hypothesis is flawed.
20. C. K. Barrett comments, “The life of the Son is entirely dependent upon the Father (dia ton patera); he has no independent life or authority, and it is because he abides in the Father that men may live by abiding in him” (The Gospel according to St. John, p. 300).
21. He still, of course, has much to learn. R. Alan Culpepper can say, “He has grasped the importance of Jesus’ words, his glory, and the life his words give. Paradoxically, the words of life may also require death, and this Peter has not yet grasped” (Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel, Philadelphia, 1983, p. 120).
22. “Faith is the attitude whereby a man abandons all reliance on his own efforts to obtain salvation, be they deeds of piety, of ethical goodness or anything else. It is the attitude of complete trust in Christ, of reliance on him alone for all that salvation means.… Faith is the one way by which men receive salvation” (IBD, I, p. 496).
23. R. Schnackenburg comments, “The Father is heard in the Son”; on the dative he remarks, “the verb pisteuein with the dative does not mean ‘to believe in the Father’, but rather ‘to believe him’ who has sent the Son” (The Gospel according to St John, II, New York, 1982, pp. 108, 109).
24. Cf. Alf Corell, “Just as light is the prerequisite condition for all earthly life, so Christ is the light, the very source of life, which is the condition of all human existence.” He draws attention to the significance of Genesis 1:3 (Consummatum Est, p. 142).
25. Cf. Barnabas Lindars, “John uses the theme of light, not simply with its expected connotation of spiritual illumination, but with the idea of showing up truth and falsehood. Thus it belongs closely with the theme of judgement and discernment”; in 8:12 “The theme of light is not developed from the point of view of the revelation of knowledge. It is again concerned with judgement, the light which reveals true from false” (Behind the Fourth Gospel, London, 1971, pp. 24, 67).
26. W. H. Rigg asserts “that eternal life is a divine life, and that it is essentially spiritual. It is essentially union with God.… It is a mutual indwelling; the believer abides in Christ, and Christ abides in him (15:4, 7)” (The Fourth Gospel, London, 1952, p. 84).
27. “The ‘resurrection of life’ is not in contradiction with the Johannine concept of life, since this involves the whole man” (Schnackenburg, The Gospel according to St John, II, p. 118; he also says, “what really matters to the evangelist is not the future event but the present attainment of life through belief in the Son of God”).
28. “The ‘last day’ can denote only one great period of resurrection for the whole Church of God.… It is not the gift of eternal life that belongs to the last day. Whosoever receives the Son at once receives in Him life eternal … but the day of the resurrection of the body witnesses the completion of that gift of eternal life which is now bestowed” (W. Milligan and W. F. Moulton, Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, Edinburgh, 1898, p. 82).
29. J. A. McClymont says that here Jesus “claims for his gift an incomparable value, as having the power to quench man’s thirst not for a time only but for ever, abiding with the receiver and dwelling in him as a spring of water ever leaping up afresh with incessant energy and inexhaustible fullness” (St. John, Edinburgh, 1901, p. 155).
30. E. Schweizer, “the Spirit as the water of life will flow into the community in the proclamation which takes place in word and act. The new statement here, however, is that the Spirit will come only after the death of Jesus. In the first instance this simply corresponds to the historical facts. It acquires for John, however, a special significance, as the sayings about the Paraclete will show” (TDNT, VI, p. 442).
31. A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Hebraica, III (Grand Rapids, 1979 reprint of 1859 edition), p. 440.
32. Ibid., p. 441.
33. The great Hillel said, “the more study of the Law the more life.… If a man … has gained for himself words of the Law he has gained for himself life in the world to come” (Aboth 2:7).
34. The natural antithesis of “believe” would be “does not believe”, but the verb apeitheō normally means “disobey” (so most translations, though JB has “refuses to believe” and LB “don’t believe and obey”). See further 
35. Cf. R. Bultmann, in John “Outside revelation in Jesus the human race is given up to death, and it is responsible for this because it is sinful. Its sin is simply that it will not understand itself in its creatureliness from the standpoint of its Creator.… It seeks rather to understand itself in terms of itself. This is shown in the fact that in relation to God it thinks it has criteria by which His revelation must be proved (5:31ff.; 8:13ff.), that it thinks it is free (8:33) and that instead of asking concerning God’s glory it establishes its own standards of glory (5:41ff.). It is thus in sin and death (8:21–24, 34–37)” (TDNT, III, p. 16).