THE OBERLIN EVANGELIST
Lecture I.
ETERNAL LIFE
by the Rev. Charles G. Finney
Modernized by Cliff Collins
“He who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself; he who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed the testimony that God has given of His Son. And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.” (I John 5:10,11)
In discussing this subject, I will direct your thoughts in the following the order:
I. I will show what eternal
life means.
II. Why Jesus Christ is the
eternal life of the soul.
III. God has given eternal
life to the entire human race, regardless of their knowledge or consent.
IV. This gift may be
rejected by unbelief, or received by faith.
V. Whoever believes in the
Son of God, or receives this gift, has the witness in himself, or knows that he
has eternal life by his own consciousness.
I. What does eternal life
mean?
1. Eternal life is not
merely eternal existence. Existing
forever is implied in eternal life, but living forever does not constitute
eternal life. Death, as it is used in
the scriptures, or in common language, does not mean annihilation. Nor does life simply mean existence.
2. Eternal life is not
merely an exemption from eternal death or punishment. This is also implied in the term ‘eternal life’, but exemption
from eternal death does not constitute eternal life.
3. Eternal life is not
merely eternal happiness. All these
things are implied and included in eternal life, but they are not the principal
thing intended by it.
4. But this life is the
contrast, or opposite of that death in “trespasses and sins”. The Bible says that everyone is dead in
“trespasses and sins”. (Eph 2:1) Life is the opposite of death. Therefore, if we can understand what the
Scriptures mean by death, as it applies to us, we can determine what that life
is which is brought to light in the gospel.
Death, as it applies to us in the Scriptures, is a state of entire
sinfulness. It is a state of total depravity
and total alienation from God. In Eph.
2:1, Paul was addressing those who had been converted, saying; “And you He made
alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins”.
And in the fifth verse, he says: “even when we were dead in trespasses,
He made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved). In Col. 2:13, Paul says, “And you, being
dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive
together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses.” And in Eph. 5:14, he says, “Therefore He
says: "Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you
light”. These, and other similar passages,
show what is meant by the death that is the contrast of that life, which
today’s passage says is given in Christ. This life includes exemption from eternal
punishment, together with eternal happiness.
But the most wonderful and exciting thing implied is salvation from sin,
or perfect and eternal holiness.
Therefore, it says in the very beginning of the gospel of Matthew, Matt.
1:21, “and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from
their sins.”
II. Let me show you right
now that Jesus Christ is the eternal life of the soul.
1. We can see that Jesus
Christ is the eternal life of our soul from examining our passage today.
2. John 11:25 says, “Jesus
said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live’.” This passage establishes the same point as
our scripture. Col. 3:4, directly
states, “When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with
Him in glory”. In 1 John 1:1, Jesus is
called the “Word of LIFE”. And in 1
John 5:12, it is said, “He that has the Son, has LIFE, and he that does not
have the Son, does not have LIFE”. That
He is the eternal life of the soul is clear from John 5:40 where Jesus says;
“And you will not come to me that you might have LIFE”. And also from John 6:33 onward, “ ‘for the
bread of God is He who comes down from heaven, and gives LIFE to the world.’ Then said they to Him, ‘Lord give us this
bread always.’ And Jesus said to them,
‘I am the bread of LIFE; He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes
in Me shall never thirst.” Again, in
the 48th verse onward, “Jesus says, ‘I am the bread of LIFE. Your fathers ate the manna in the
wilderness, and are dead. This is the
bread that comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the
LIVING bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will
LIVE forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give
for the LIFE of the world.’ The Jews
therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, ‘How can this Man give us His
flesh to eat?’ Then Jesus said to them,
‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink His blood, you have no life in you.
Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal LIFE, and I will
raise him up at the last day. For My
flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in
him’.”
Beginning with verse 60:
“His disciples murmured at these words, saying, ‘This is a hard saying; who can
understand it?’ When Jesus knew in
Himself that His disciples murmured about this, He said to them, ‘Does this
offend you? What then if you should see
the Son of Man ascend where He was before?
It is the Spirit who gives LIFE; the flesh profits nothing. The words
that I speak to you are spirit, and they are LIFE’.”
Jesus’ disciples thought
that He was speaking about His physical body and blood, but in these verses He
informs them that it was His divine nature that came down from heaven which
constituted the bread and blood that He was talking about, and of which, if
they ate and drank, they would have eternal life. I won’t have to read any more passages of scripture. You who read your Bibles know that Christ is
represented everywhere as “the resurrection and the LIFE,” as “the way, the
truth, and the LIFE,” as “the bread and water of eternal LIFE,” as the
“fountain of LIVING waters”, and in so
many ways, this truth is taught throughout the Scripture.
III. God has given eternal
life to the whole human race, regardless of their knowledge or consent.
By this, I don’t mean that
they have received, or are actually put in possession of eternal life, or if
they remain in unbelief, that they ever will be put in possession of it, but
that an act has passed conferring on them pardon and eternal life. In proving that this gift must have nothing
to do with our believing it, I must say that whatever is to be believed, must
be true independently of our belief. If
the truth of a proposition depended on our believing it, then we would be
required to believe it before it was proven true. That would be absurd.
Every truth of the gospel that is an object of faith is true, whether we
believe it or not. If this were not
true, we wouldn’t be required to believe it.
Therefore, it must be true that God has given eternal life to everyone
who is under any obligation to believe the gospel. The text represents the unbeliever as accusing God of being a
liar, “because he doesn’t believe the testimony that God has given of his
Son. And this is the testimony: that
God has given us eternal LIFE, and this life is in His Son.” (I John 5:10-11) Now, should the unbeliever believe that God has given eternal
life to others, but not to him? Or,
should the unbeliever believe that he is included in the gift of eternal
life? Because John uses the word ‘us’,
the unbeliever must include himself with the rest of the human race. Therefore, it must be true that eternal life
was given to him before he believed or received it. Did the gift belong only to those who believe, and then, only
after they believe? How, then, could
our unbelief make God a liar? This gift
must extend to all for whom Christ died.
In John 1:29, He is called the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of
the world”. In John 3:16,17, it is
said, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world
to condemn the world, but that the world, through Him, might be saved.” In John 4:42, He is again called the “Savior
of the world”. In John 6:33, He is
represented as “giving life to the world”, and in the 51st verse, the same fact
is declared, “and the bread that I will give, is my flesh which I will give for
the life of the world”. In Heb. 2:9, it
is said, “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for
the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of
God, might taste death for everyone.”
These, and many other passages that I could quote, show that this gift
concerns everybody.
IV. This gift may be either
rejected by unbelief, or received by faith.
This gift is absolute,
without any other conditions than those necessarily implied in the
bequest. If I give anything to anybody,
the condition is always implied that that person receives it. The gift on my part may be absolute, and the
condition, if not expressed, is always implied in the very nature of the
transaction. A father may make a will,
and bequeath his estate to an heir; but in this bequest, the condition, that
his heir receives it, is implied. The
gift is an absolute gift, which may be received or rejected, at the pleasure of
the heir. Now, faith is a necessary
condition of the Gospel. It is
naturally impossible for an unbelieving mind to accept, or receive the gift of
eternal life. The gift is
holiness. Holiness is love and active
obedience. Unbelief is distrust. Faith is trust or confidence; that confidence
of the heart that works by love. Faith
is yielding up the soul to the influence and truth of Christ. Thus, Christ is represented as being our
sanctification. He is not our
sanctifier. He doesn’t make us holy all
by ourselves, and leaves us to obey by exercising our uninfluenced and unaided
powers.
When we say that Christ is
our life, we are also saying that He is “our sanctification”, the “bread of
life”, and the “vine of which we are branches”. All these statements mean the same thing, which is that Christ is
the perpetual author of all our holy feelings and actions. Faith is that act of our mind that submits
to the control of Christ and to the truth.
It is receiving Christ as an indwelling Savior. It is opening the door of our heart, which
is mentioned in Scripture, and receiving Christ as an indwelling and reigning
king. Thus in Eph. 3:17, Christ is
represented as “dwelling in the heart by faith”, and in many other passages, He
is represented as dwelling in our heart, and faith is represented as the door
by which He enters. As I have already
said, it is voluntarily receiving the divine influence of Christ and His truth
into our mind. It is yielding our
voluntary powers to His divine control.
As a result, Christ is represented as dwelling in us, which I believe to
be really and literally true, that, by His Spirit, He is personally present
with us, and by His truth and persuasive influences, He is controlling, guiding,
and directing our minds.
Now distrust or unbelief
rejects His teaching. Unbelief refuses
to receive. It refuses to be guided and
molded by truth; while faith, accepting and receiving the divine communication,
surrenders our will and all our powers to His complete control. As a result, Christ becomes our
sanctification, that is, He does not change our nature so that we become good
all by ourselves, or that we have life all by ourselves apart from Him. But, as Paul says in Colossians (3:3-4),
“For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then
you also will appear with Him in glory.”
Christ is the life, or the holiness of our soul. His presence and agency produces holiness in
us. This holiness continues no longer,
and extends no farther, than the divine agency that produces it. By this, I don’t mean that we are passive in
holiness, or that we receive His holiness or righteousness by imputation; but
that we actually become partakers of His holiness, and of His life, by
voluntarily surrendering our powers to His control. Nor by surrendering our powers to His control, do I mean that our
own agency is suspended. Our own agency
is never more freely and fully exercised, than when it is under the divine
influence of Christ. His influences are
moral, that is, they are only persuasive; otherwise we couldn’t receive them by
faith. It would be absurd to speak of
receiving a physical or compulsory influence by faith. Nor can eternal life, although absolutely
given and left at the option of everyone, be received in any other way than by
simple faith. This gift has nothing to
do with works of any kind on our own part.
Works of law, or any other kind of works, can’t bring us any closer to
receiving it. Faith alone receives
it. Unbelief alone rejects it.
V. Whosoever believes on
the Son of God, or receives this gift, has the witness within HIMSELF, or knows
that he has eternal life by his own consciousness.
This is clearly affirmed in
our passage. I could quote many similar
passages, but please notice that since eternal life consists in holiness, we
must be aware that we have eternal life.
Holiness is supreme love. Now
what can we be aware of, if we are not aware of the supreme affection of our
heart? Is it possible that any of you
should love God supremely, and not be aware of it? Many people hope that they love God, and hope that they have
eternal life. But, if they would
consider that eternal life is holiness and that nothing short of supreme love
is holiness, they would immediately know that if any man believes, he has the
witness in himself, the testimony of his own consciousness, which is the
highest and best possible evidence, that he has eternal life. Now if any of you don’t have this evidence,
if you don’t have the witness of your own consciousness, I beg you to put away
your hope and your talk about eternal life.
For what is a life worth if you are not aware that you even have it?
REMARKS.
1. From what I have shared
with you today, every one of you must know whether you have eternal life or
not. Can you say with Paul “I am
crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me? And the life which I now live, I live by
faith in the Son of God?” (Gal
2:20) Do you know that you live in love
and walk in love?
2. You who don’t believe, and claim you have received eternal life, are making God a liar. How horrible it would sound if the language of your unbelief were put into words!
3. You see from this
subject, the great error of those who believe that if people were completely
sanctified, they would no longer need Christ.
If you believe this, you overlook the fact that Christ is the eternal
life of our soul. The difference
between those who are wholly, and those who are partially sanctified, is that
those who are wholly sanctified constantly feel that their entire dependence is
on God; that “in Him they live, and move, and have their being”. Without Christ, they are completely dead in
“trespasses and sins”. Every spiritual
breath they breathe, and every pulse they feel, is because of Christ’s influence. They know they don’t have and never will
have any life outside of Christ, any more than a vine has life when severed
from the branch. Constant faith
receives the tide of eternal life as it constantly flows from Christ; in other
words, faith receives a constant influence, and the constant leading and
guiding of the Spirit of Christ.
However, those who are only partially sanctified have not learned their
dependence, so sometimes they look to Christ, and at other times to turn away
and depend on the exercise of their own unaided powers.
4. If God has given us
eternal life, why shouldn’t we enter into, and take possession of it? The gift is absolute! Our eIder brother, the Lord Jesus Christ,
has it in His possession, and holds it as a trustee, or surety, or guardian,
and invites and continually urges us to accept it. And why, with such an inheritance as this, should we go about
like swine, and wallow in the filth of sin, instead of immediately entering
into our inheritance, and taking hold of the fullness of gospel salvation? Take hold!
Immediately! Right now! Christ, your eIder brother, has this eternal
life in His possession. Believe in
Him. Believe now, at once. No preparation is needed. Believe the record “that God has given to us
eternal life, and this life is in his Son”, and you will now enter into the
rest of faith.
5. From this subject, you
also see the infinite guilt of those who reject the gospel. The gift is absolute, it is tendered to
their acceptance, with all the sincerity of God. It was purchased by the blood, and treasured up in the life of
Christ. There is an infinite excellence,
power, and glory in it; and if “Of how
much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has
trampled the Son of God underfoot, and counted the blood of the covenant by
which he was sanctified a common thing.”
(Hebrews 10:28)
6. Finally. Let everyone remember, understand, realize,
and feel, that this bequest has been made.
The Testator has died and sealed it with His blood. The infinite treasure, the pearl of great
price lies before you, waiting for your acceptance. Take it! Receive it right
now; and hold fast to it by faith!