The first eleven chapters of the book of Romans is arguably the greatest doctrinal teaching of the Christian faith, and Paul completes his teaching with one of the great benedictions in the New Testament. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counsellor? Or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11:33-36)
Paul had just concluded a lengthy and detailed teaching of how God has saved us from the wrath we deserve, and he bursts into a song of praise. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!”
When Jesus says that eternal life is to know God, He is merely affirming a core message of the entire Bible. God said through the prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament, “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth.” (Jeremiah 9:23–24)
The theologian J. I. Packer put it so well when he wrote, “What were we made for? To know God. What aim should we set ourselves in life? To know God. What is the eternal life that Jesus gives? Knowledge of God. What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, delight, and contentment, than anything else? Knowledge of God.”
This was Jesus’ prayer in John 17, that we would come to know God through Him as the source of eternal life.
So just what is eternal life?
It is a term which John uses 17 times in his Gospel. Most people think of eternal life in terms of its duration or quantity. They think of everlasting or eternal life as something which continues without end. This is not wrong, of course, but the Biblical understanding of eternal life speaks more of the quality, rather than the quantity of the life we receive as a gift of grace. Eternal life from a Biblical view is far more than an unending existence, but an unending life of fellowship with God, through Jesus Christ.
The Bible also teaches that there is an eternity for both believers and unbelievers, but the quality of this life for the saved and unsaved will be immeasurably different. The book of Revelation refers to the second death. The Bible is very clear on the dividing line between the saved and the lost. When this life ends there will only be two kinds of people - those who are saved and those who are lost.
The Bible teacher Steven Lawson said that if you are born twice, you will only die once, but if you are born only once, you will die twice. The eternal life which John refers to is the life of heaven beginning in us now, granted by God at the moment of our coming to saving faith.
The prophet Ezekiel was given a vision of eternal life as a river flowing out from the glorious presence of God, growing richer and deeper as we advance into it. At first, the water was only a trickle, then ankle-deep, knee-deep, waist-deep, then eventually it was deep enough to swim in.
This is the vision he spoke about in chapter 47: “Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around on the outside to the outer gate that faces toward the east; and behold, the water was trickling out on the south side. Going on eastward with a measuring line in his hand, the man measured a thousand cubits, and then led me through the water, and it was ankle-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was knee-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was waist-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen. It was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through.” (Ezekiel 47:1-5)
He continues in verses 7 and 12, “As I went back, I saw on the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and on the other. And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.”
Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well at Sychar, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14)
What all of this means is that eternal life is a completely new spiritual condition in which we will live. The quality of this new life is far more important than the quantity. Someone once called it “the life of God in the soul of man.”
Faith in Jesus Christ brings an entirely new life, beginning at the moment of our conversion as we are justified by God. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” Notice that this is in the present tense. Yes, there are future promises that await us in eternity that we simply cannot imagine, but the new life is also a present reality. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote, “A new principle of life comes into us which produces in us a new nature, a new outlook, so much so that having received it, we are able to say with Paul, ‘If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.’”
1 John 5:20 says that God “is the true God and eternal life.” When we look at this alongside Jesus’ prayer in John 17:3 where He says, “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent,” we can see that the best way to try and define eternal life is found in the knowledge of God, and knowing Him on a personal level.
The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah said, “The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:9) “No longer shall each one teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 31:34)
So the message is clear. In order for us to have any idea of what salvation in Christ and eternal life really is, we first have to know God and what He is like, because if we don’t know the truth about who God is, and what He requires of us, we will will never understand our need for a Saviour, and how He has graciously provided us a Saviour in Jesus.
There are two main ways that we can know God - through what is known as His general revelation, and His special revelation.
Firstly, He reveals Himself to us through His creation. This is through general revelation. It is God who created everything, and so everyone knows that there is a God. Paul says in Romans 1:19-20, “What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”
Creation itself is the most powerful witness that God exists. Of course, not everyone agrees with this, and Paul goes on to explain why in the following verses. “They are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honour Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” (Romans 1:20-22)
Just as in Paul’s day, there are many in our day who claim to be wise, inventing all kinds of weird and wacky alternatives to creation and how all of this came into being. Paul, in Romans 1:22 echoes the words of Psalm 14:1 and Psalm 53:1 - “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” The Hebrew word for fool in these psalms is nabal, and it means more than just a silly person, or someone who lacks understanding. Nabal means a wicked, vile, morally reprehensible person, but before we start throwing stones at those who deny the existence of God, we must remember that because of the depravity of the human heart and the depth of our sin, instead of seeking after this God who reveals Himself by His creation, we have chosen to reject Him. Isaiah 53:6 says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned - every one - to his own way.” This means we’re all guilty of rejecting the one, true God.
Paul goes on to say in Romans 3, there is no-one who is righteous, no-one who understands God or who seeks Him, and this is why we need His special revelation.
We need the special, saving revelation of God that He gives to us in His Word, the Bible, and in the person and saving work of His Son, Jesus Christ. The purpose of the Bible, is to reveal God to us, and our need to be saved, so that we would repent of our sin and turn to Him in faith through Jesus Christ. It is in the Bible where we learn about God’s holiness, sovereignty, truth, power, justice, and mercy.
Knowing God is our greatest need. The prophet Hosea wrote in chapter 4 that the people were “destroyed for lack of knowledge.” When we read the book of Judges we see that each time the Israelites came under God’s judgment, it was because the people “did not know the Lord or the work that He had done for Israel.” (Judges 2:10)
For us to know God and eternal life, we simply have to be grounded in Scripture and the truth it proclaims. 1 John 5:20 says, “We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.” In the next verse, John writes, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”
This is the danger we still face today. The idols which are worshipped in the modern world are deceptions like evolution and secular humanism. The god of “self” is at the very heart of the evil we see in the world today, and it is these idols we need to keep ourselves from, and we do that by grounding ourselves in Scripture. “This is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)
If you want to know how to receive eternal life, you have to know God as He is revealed in Scripture, and to know God, you have to know Him through Jesus Christ, because knowing about God and knowing Him personally through Jesus Christ is very different.
Receiving salvation itself does not come through mere head knowledge. It comes through saving faith in Jesus Christ and His saving work on the cross. You might know many things about God and even believe that they are true. But you do not have eternal life unless you repent of your sins and turn to Jesus Christ as the only means of salvation.
This is the second birth which makes it possible to avoid the second death we are warned about in the book of Revelation. It is at that point of confession that you receive the gift of eternal life, and as Christians, until such time as God calls us home, we are called to live our lives for Him, walking daily in obedience to His Word and His commandments. That is how we really come to know God.
Charles Spurgeon wrote, “Truly knowing God means we bow before Him as worshippers, we submit ourselves to His law, we seek to do His pleasure. No man really knows God who does not know Him as God, and does not accept Him as his God; and to accept God as your God, is eternal life.”
R. C. Sproul wrote in the Reformation Study Bible, “Life consists in fellowship with God ‘who created us for Himself, so that our soul is restless unless it finds its rest in Him,’ as Augustine expressed it. Knowledge of God means more than mere intellectual grasp; it involves affection and commitment as well.”
Once, by the grace of God and by the power of the Holy Spirit, we learn how to walk in grace on a daily basis, He will deepen our knowledge and understanding of Him. Remember, we are new creations in Christ, which means that everything about us has changed. Paul wrote in Ephesians 4:17-24, “Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ! - assuming that you have heard about Him and were taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
As we learn to live these new lives we increasingly reflect the image of God in our lives, which after all, is what we were originally created to do. God made us in His image, and one of the many things our salvation does is begin to restore the image of God in us which was tainted by our sin.
We looked at Ezekiel’s vision of eternal life earlier. Chapter 47:7 and 12 again: “As I went back, I saw on the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and on the other. And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.”
More than 600 years later, when the apostle John was inspired to write the book of Revelation, he was given a similar picture of eternal life which completed the vision of Ezekiel. He wrote in the very last chapter of the Bible, “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His servants will worship Him. They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.” (Revelation 22:1-5)
Maybe it will be only then when we will finally understand that eternal life is knowing God. The key to all of these things is, of course, Jesus Christ. Without Him, we can, at best, know about God, but without Christ, we will never truly know Him, and we will never see eternal life.
If you want to know God, and if you want to know and have eternal life, you have to know Jesus Christ and His salvation. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:6 that it was “God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
It is only in and through Jesus Christ that any sinner comes to the knowledge of God, and therefore is saved by His atoning death on the cross, which brings the gift of eternal life.
Don’t miss the clear connection between John 14:6 and 17:3. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. This is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
God reveals Himself to us through nature (His general revelation), and the written Word (His special revelation), but it is Jesus Christ Himself who is the ultimate revelation of the Father. We come to know the Father through knowing Christ. The opening verses of the book of Hebrews says, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power.” (Hebrews 1:1-3)
Remember Thomas, who doubted that Jesus rose from the grave on the third day. It was when Jesus appeared to him in His resurrection glory and showed Thomas the wounds caused by His death on the cross, where Jesus had paid the price of forgiveness for our sins, that Thomas believed and received eternal life. John writes that Thomas said, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28)
It is only when you look to Christ and see what He has done for you on the cross that you can truly know God and receive His grace. When, and only when you receive Jesus as Saviour and Lord, will you know God and have eternal life.