Three Kinds of Life
We're looking at security with God and whether we can lose it. We've looked at God's foreknowledge, from eternity, of what we decide about Him and His Son, our Christ, our Lord and Saviour. We then talked about predestination; about how God actively tracks us to our final destiny. Our destiny is the glory of Heaven. Because God speaks from eternity, He sees this as a done deal. This positive predestination, this secure track to glory, applies only if we are believers.
Now let's look at what we mean when we talk of Christ's life in us.
When we are born again, we pick up a new and extraordinary 'flavour' of life, unavailable any other way. It's a free gift. How does the Bible describe this life?
For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself
For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will.
John 5v26,21
Here Jesus refers to a particular type of life possessed by God. It is not a derived, created, life. It is a self-existing, self-sustaining, uncreated, indestructible life*. It is beyond our present knowledge and experience. If God wants us to know anything about it, He must chose to reveal it, because we aren't going to work it out for ourselves. And if He does reveal, we must humbly accept what He gives us, and the manner in which the revelation arrives. The supreme revelation is someone who, like us, lived as a mortal man, Jesus Christ. We know Him now through His Word and His Spirit. Jesus possessed this same special type of life as the Father; unique among men. But then He started to give that life to others. It's infinite, from eternity, so He didn't give it away, in the sense of losing some of it in the process. It stayed fully with Him. But He imparted it to others. The widow's flask of oil from 2 Kings 4 is a type of this life. It doesn't deplete when poured. It only stops flowing when it has completed its purpose. We also get the fullness of it. We also won't lose anything if we give it away either. It's more blessed for us to give than to receive, because God is a limitless, enthusiastic replenisher.
For he whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for He gives the Spirit without measure.
John 3:34
The Father gives this life to the Son, and the Son gives it to whom He will.
There are three Greek words all translated as 'life' in English Bible versions. They are, transliterated, bios, psuche, and zoe. They represent, loosely, biological life, the life of the soul, and the life of God, respectively. This is how the words are most often used in the Bible. We can see that the English words 'biology' and 'psychology' are derived from the first two. Bios represents the physical processes of life. Bios is impressive enough as far as it goes. When I look at a well-used guitar, someone has maybe played it regularly for decades. It is worn, the fretboard has hollows, the frets are grooved, the finish is eroded. Yet the fingers of the musician are just fine. Bios did that, the callouses may be there but the skin cells are renewed continually. The guitar may be great but it is really just dead matter. Psuche represents the functions of mind and emotions. The mind is complex, nuanced, multi-facetted, different for each person. It may be fragile and delicate.
But beyond these, there's a further category of life. Jesus used the word zoe to refer to the life He and the Father shared**. The same word is used to describe the life which He gives to us. The verses from John above use zoe (or a derivative of the root word for zoe. The rest of the New Testament does the same).
Now the word zoe was not invented for the New Testament: it was a pre-existing Greek word. Strictly speaking, as originally used, the word does not refer only to 'the God kind of life'. Bible teachers often call it that, and that is how it is used in the New Testament. Originally though, in Greek usage, it referred to what we might call vibrancy, vigour, productivity, freshness. It is the zing, the beans, present in addition to bios and psuche, infusing them with something extra. When we combine zoe life with the Greek aioneos, which means something like 'perpetual' or 'always ongoing', we get a phrase usually translated 'everlasting life' or 'eternal life'. This is the Greek phrase used in the famous verse, John 3v16, for example. Permanence and quality of life are both emphasised by the Greek words used. The KJV sometimes translates aioneos as 'everlasting', and sometimes as 'eternal'. Various other versions may prefer one or other word. The phrase zoe aioneos occurs about 47 times in the New Testament, most often in John's writings.
The exact interpretation of the phrase 'eternal', as found in the Bible, is subject to some debate amongst scholars. Interestingly, Strong's Concordance says aioneos indicates a past, present and future continuity of times. We might think of something described as 'everlasting' as having a beginning, but no end. An 'everlasting' battery for example. (There are things called RTG batteries but they don't really last forever, just a very long time; they got left on the Moon to power instruments. Clearly they had a beginning; someone made them). But 'eternal' has the sense of infinite times past as well as present and future. When we say God has no beginning and no end, we are attributing this kind of life to Him. And, when it is seen in others, He is always the source of it. It is granted at His discretion. He has already granted bios and psuche to everyone born into this world. New Testament zoe, zoe aioneos, is only for born again believers in Christ His Son. The equivalent Hebrew phrase occurs only once in the Old Testament, in Daniel. There it refers to the destiny of the resurrected righteous.
The full nature of eternal life, as it concerns time, remains, frankly, a mystery. It is usually held to be either the the continuation of time forever, or possibly the absence of time. Whatever the best definition, and we are looking through a glass dimly here, we are entering into God's very own realm of existence. All scholars agree it is a realm that has always been. In Christ, He is the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last. God's name, according to Exodus 3v14, is I AM. He is present in all our times. We, in our mortal selves, are present only in one instant.
When we become believers, we cross over into this zoe aioneos. It is perpetual, it is not subject to birth or death, although we are born again into it from our natural life.
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
John 5:24
'Life' here is, you guessed, zoe, and 'eternal life' is zoe aioneos. But notice what Jesus says. He's saying 'he who truly hears and believes has already passed from death to life'.
A few English versions (e.g. CJB, EHV) use 'crossed over' for 'passed'.
If you have passed from death to eternal life, it is very, very hard to see how you can pass back again. You have passed into a realm of permanence. I would suggest this means you simply cannot pass back out again!
For me, the only question is, 'did you really pass over?'
* This uncaused quality of God is called 'aseity' by theologians. It is possessed by the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
** Jesus very probably spoke in Aramaic most of the time; so this is the Greek word used to record what He said.
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