Eternal Life Is Knowing Jesus

Eternal life gets talked about like a distant finish line, but Jesus defines it with a single word that lands in the present: know. From John 17, we dig into Christ’s prayer on the road to Gethsemane and hear Him say eternal life is knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He sent. That one sentence reframes everything, from anxiety about death to the way we measure “faith” in everyday life.

Pastor Carl unpacks why John 17 is often called the true Lord’s Prayer and why Jesus prays out loud for the disciples’ benefit and ours. We slow down over what it means to glorify God, not as religious hype, but as making His dignity and worth manifest and acknowledged. From there we trace Jesus’ authority over all flesh, connect it to the Great Commission, and look ahead to the promised day when His reign is fully realized.

We also tackle a question that sparks endless debate: free will and predestination. John’s Gospel holds “whoever believes” alongside God’s choosing, and we explore a memorable doorway illustration that helps both truths sit in the same hand. If you’ve wrestled with doubt, we lean into assurance too, drawing from Romans and 1 John to show how eternal life is a gift, how Jesus keeps His people secure, and why believers can know they have everlasting life.

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Come On Up is the radio ministry of The Mountain Cross in Waynesville North Carolina. To learn more about us please visit: TheMountainCross.com. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, and we shall walk in his paths.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome to Come On Up, the radio ministry of the Mountain Cross in Waynesville, North Carolina.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

This is eternal life that they might know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. What is eternal life? The definition given by Jesus Himself is that they would know God the Father and they would know Jesus Christ. If you know Jesus, you know the Father. If you really know the Father, you know Jesus. You know him, you love Him, you believe Him, you trust Him, you follow Him, you deny yourself, you pick up your cross, and you go after Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Eternal life can be a hard thing to comprehend for our limited minds, because all we know is this life. We've never known a life without death or pain. In today's message, Pastor Carl will share that eternal life is simply knowing Jesus. When you know Jesus personally and have surrendered your life to his will, you have eternal life. There will come a day when you will leave this world to be with Jesus forever. You'll live without debt, without suffering, and without pain. You will live with Jesus. And now, here's Pastor Carl.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

We are in chapter 17 of John. John chapter 17, and you've heard of the Lord's Prayer. We've all recited it over and over again, but technically, if we think about the Lord's Prayer, it's really the disciples' prayer. That would be a better title for it, because it was the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray, because they asked, teach us to pray. And he says, Okay, here's how you pray, our Father who is in heaven, and so forth and so on. But what we're looking at today would probably be better labeled as the Lord's Prayer, because it's his prayer for his disciples and for us. As he was making his way to the Garden of Gethsemane, as he was making his way to the darkest hour of his life, the hour that he came for. He came to die for our sins, and it's overwhelming to him. And yet his heart is not focused on himself at this moment. His heart is focused on his disciples and their well-being. And again, for those who would follow after them, which include us. So this is if you ever wonder if Jesus is praying for you, this is evidenced right here, chapter 17, that he has prayed for you. And today he sits on the right hand of the Father as our advocate and continues to pray on our behalf. And it starts out like this Jesus spoke these words as he was speaking and going along with them on the trail. Now he starts praying out loud for them to hear. So this prayer was for their benefit. He didn't have to pray it out loud. He could have been praying this straight to the Father. But he says a lot of these things so that they would hear, so that they would understand. And I think a lot of times we pray this way too, and it seems almost unnecessary, but I say these things, these things that Jesus is saying to his father. The father knows these things, he knows the son's heart, and the son knows the father's heart. But it's for our benefit and the disciples' benefit that he praised these things. So he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and he said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your son, that he might glorify you, as you have given him authority over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him. Now we we've we've heard this term glorify a lot, so I've decided to look it up. Because we we have an idea of what glorify means, but then we ask, what can you define it? Well, we just glorify him, and you're not supposed to use the same word in the in the definition. So in the strongest concordance, some words that mean glorify uh reflect it this way to praise him. Well, that makes sense. We praise him because of his goodness. We extol him, we lift him up, we exalt him as the king, we magnify him, make him bigger so that people can see him, reflect his goodness and his majesty, celebrate, honor. Uh, you know, he is good, and we're going to clap our hands because he is worthy of it. Clothe him with splendor in our actions, in our praise. We clothe him in splendor. That's an interesting phrase, isn't it? We render him excellent. We say, yes, he is excellent, he is true. We acknowledge what he said is is right. And then the last uh is a phrase here that I'd like to share. It's really good. To cause the dignity and worth of some person or thing to become manifest and acknowledged. You see, the Lord at the beginning of John, chapter, at the beginning of the Gospel of John, John reflected that the Lord came, the word came and dwelt among us, and uh the darkness did not receive him. Um he did a lot of the things that he did uh until his ministry grew and grew, without people recognizing who he was, uh, without acknowledging who he was. And when his in-ministry continued on, they started either believing him or rejecting him. So the one that has come, the one who is truth, the one who is life, the one who we put our hope in for salvation, the one who is the Messiah that was prophesied to come, we either deny him or we glorify him, we acknowledge him, we give him praise, and we let that be known to the rest of the world. And so Jesus is saying, May I be glorified, not for his sake, but for the sake of the world. He has come to draw people unto himself so that people would be saved from their sin, because there would be no other way to be saved from our sin except that the Lord would take it upon himself. And so he's praying that the Son would be glorified. He's talking in in second person here. Instead of saying, Glorify me, he's saying, Glorify your son, that your son may be may glorify you, to bring God the Father the glory that he deserves. God the Father that we don't see. Jesus is the God that we do see in person because he became one of us. But God the Father is in heaven and we don't see. But when we see him, when we see Jesus, we've seen the Father. And so he's asking that he would be glorified in and through himself and through his disciples. You have given him authority over all flesh. Now here's Jesus kind of doing that outside of time thing again, because he's given him authority, but he hasn't fully given him authority, and he doesn't really get the authority until after he's gone through the cross. And I don't understand all these things, how they go together. But there are a few verses that talk about the authority that has been given to the Lord. Of course, at the end of Matthew, as he's about to ascend into heaven, the Great Commission in Matthew 28, beginning at verse 18, Jesus came and spoke to him, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. And because all authority has been given to me, I'm sending you out. He says, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son, and then of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that have I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even till the end of the age. Amen. So because Jesus has been given authority, his followers are now given authority to go and to declare the good news and all that Jesus has taught them in his three years that he was here. And it's all in this word. So we are to proclaim this word until he comes again. And that's why we teach the word verse by verse and chapter by chapter, because the Lord has told us to do that. Now that is uh an authority that he was given, but uh not all the authority has rested upon him yet. Um he's not taken all of that authority yet because the enemy is still at work, right? But in the book of Revelation, chapter 11, verse 15, we see that the seventh angel sounded, and there was a great voice in heaven saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. And we sing the hallelujah chorus, right? Forever and ever. Hallelujah. And and and so there will be a time when his authority will be fully realized here on earth. That's when his kingdom is set up, and no more will there be nations warring against nations, but all will be submitted to Jesus sitting on the throne. And the enemy who is the God of this world will be tied up and put into a pit for a thousand years, and people will walk by the pit and say, Is that the guy that caused all this trouble? That's a funny phrase, isn't it, in the in the Bible? But uh that's true, and that's going to happen. Are you ready to see it? Now, his authority was also prophesied in the Old Testament. In Psalm chapter 2, verse 8, he said, Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession. The big picture prophecy that was taken from this psalm is that God the Father is offering God the Son, the nations, as his inheritance. He's saying, Ask me. And so Jesus is acknowledging in this prayer that uh he has asked and he has received, and the Father has given him all authority. And of course, if nations give Jesus the authority that he's due, we read in Psalm 33:12, Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people he has chosen as his own inheritance. When a nation acknowledges the goodness of God, even before he comes in revelation to have all nations surrender and follow after him, a nation that seeks in the here and now to follow after the Lord, that nation will be blessed. And may I say the United States of America used to be that nation. Can I say we've gone past that? But the Lord is still gracious, the Lord is still blessing, the Lord is still sustaining us, but we're we're just teetering on the end because we've rejected God. The God of our nation is no longer the Lord, but the God of our nation is all sorts of other things and ideals and so forth, and we've rejected the goodness of God. Lord have mercy on us. And if he even even yet would he bring revival? Would he turn this thing around before it's too late? I hope and I pray that uh that will happen. I hope and I pray. So he's been given all authority. Why? That this is back in uh chapter 17, verse 2, as you have given him authority over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him. He has been given a certain amount of people that will have eternal life. And what does that eternal life look like? Well, John reflected it many times in his gospel in John chapter 3, verses 14 through 16, said, As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Now I just read something that Jesus said, those that you give me, and we'll read another verse in a little bit that talks about we as believers being preordained by God to be part of the number. But here we, of course, have whosoever will believe in him will not perish, but have everlasting life. And this is the great debate between Calvinism and Armenianism, between free will and predestination. And how in the world do the two work together? Well, may I say they're both in the Bible? And may I say um it's hard to explain because we can't put our head around it. But may I say both are true? That uh we need to make a choice to follow him, whosoever would believe. And God knows ultimately who would become and those he would give to his son to believe. Uh, it's kind of like I've seen this illustration. There, you imagine a door with uh with it's a doorway to heaven, it's opening up, and you see all this glorious light, and above the door you see a sign that says, Whosoever will. And so you decide to go through because I will, I decide, I believe, I want to be saved. And so you go through the door, and as you go through the door, you see the other side of the door, and over the top of the door it said, predestined from the beginning of the earth, from the foundations of the earth. And uh I think that is a really good explanation of how the two fit together, isn't it? Um, and probably as much as I can figure out. Uh, these things are very difficult for me to put my head around, but I can say by faith, this is what God says, and I believe it, and I trust him. And there is this idea that I have to believe the gospel in order to be saved. I mean, he said that. Uh, John also said in chapter 5, verse 39, you search the scriptures, for in them you think they have eternal life, and these are they which testify as me. He was talking to the Pharisees. The Pharisees knew the scriptures in and out, but they did not have a relationship with Jesus. They didn't even recognize Jesus, even though the scriptures were pointing to him. And so if we want everlasting life, they're not found by knowing the scriptures, they're found by knowing the scriptures and who they are pointing to. They're pointing to Jesus. The eternal life is found in him, not just in your knowledge. John 6, 54 said, Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. If you want eternal life, you need to eat his flesh and drink his blood. And that offended a lot of people. And that says, ooh, that that sounds strange. But what does that mean? That means you need to get into the word, make him part of you, partake of Jesus. You know the old phrase, you are what you eat. Well, if you want to be in Jesus, you need to partake of him. You need to put aside your other things and you need to get into the word and let him change you from the inside out. Grow in him, know him from the inside out. Let him change you as you grow in relationship with him. In John chapter 10, verse 28, John said, And I and Jesus was saying, And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand. As we find eternal life, we find uh protection. We find that Jesus has taken hold of us, and he will not allow any of us to be snatched out of his hand. There's a goodness there, there is a uh a hope there, so that whatever happens to us in this world, another place he says, do not fear the one who can kill your body, but fear him who can destroy your soul. Who's the one that can destroy your soul? Well, only Jesus can send you to hell. But if you fear Jesus, he's also your savior, he keeps you from hell. So if the enemy destroys your physical body here on earth, don't fear that. Fear your soul and trust in the Lord. And so whatever happens to you in the here and now, he's still got a hold of you for eternity. And that's a that's a perspective I think we need to keep an eye on and grow in more and more, especially uh as we progress in things that are happening today. Romans 6.23 says, For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. How do we find eternal life? It's in Jesus Christ. How do we gain it? We accept it because it's a gift. We believe it, we're changed by it. We live our life full of sin because we're born into sin and sinners sin. So not only have we inherited Adam and Eve's sin, but we've had our own sin and we can't work ourselves out of our sin, so we're stuck in sin. And what are the wages? What's the payment for the sin? Eternal death, separation from God. But the gift of God is eternal life. Eternal life is forgiveness, eternal life is hope, eternal life is healing, eternal life is right standing with God through Jesus Christ. Isn't that good news? And in his first epistle, 1 John chapter 5, verse 11, he said, and this is the testimony that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his son. Do we understand this? The life is in his son, the life is in Jesus, eternal life is found in Jesus. Do we know Jesus? Have we been changed by Jesus? And uh John also goes on to say in 1 John chapter 5, verse 13 the reason he has written this particular letter, these things I have written to you, who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you might know that you have everlasting life, and that you might continue to believe in the name of the Son of God. I don't know about you, but if you've been a Christian for any period of time, you might get weary in your belief and you might say, Do I really believe this after all? And uh John has written, first John, to encourage you. If you have believed in Jesus Christ, remember these things that he said and be encouraged and continue to believe. Don't drift away. Know that you have eternal life. Things are happening bad to you, not because you've lost your salvation, but that you know you you're gonna go through bad things in this world. But he is with you, and if you've trusted him, you've been changed. Now, if you haven't come to faith in Jesus Christ, you can't have this reassurance. But once you've come to faith in Jesus Christ, you know that he has saved you. You know that you have eternal life, and with that, that you would continue to believe in the name of the only begotten Son of God. Well, let's get back to our study. John chapter 17, and we're in verse 3 now. This might be a long time, no. The rest of it will go fairly quickly. And so then he's defining himself what eternal life is. Verse 3, and this is eternal life, that they might know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. What is eternal life? The definition given by Jesus himself is that they would know God the Father, and they would know Jesus Christ. If you know Jesus, you know the Father. If you really know the Father, you know Jesus. You know him, you love him, you believe him, you trust him, you follow him, you deny yourself, you pick up your cross, and you go after Jesus. Verse 4 says, I have glorified you on the earth, I have finished the work which you have given me to do. Jesus has done all the things that he was told to do. And again, he's saying this for the benefit of his believers. My work here is done, or it's fixing to be done in the next few hours. I have done the things that Jesus says. I haven't gone as a man and gone in my own way. I have, as a man, submitted myself to the authority of God the Father, and I've done your will, Father. I've said your words, Father, so that they would benefit, and so mankind could be saved. I have glorified you on the earth. I have finished the work which you have given me to do, and now, O Father, glorify me together with yourself, with the glory which I had with you before the world was. What kind of glory did Jesus have before the world was? Well, he was with God, he was God. The beginning of John says that. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. Jesus is God, and he was in the presence with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit in all their glory and all their majesty. And Jesus decided to lay aside his glory to become a man because it was the only way to save mankind. But now he's going back and he will be glorified again with that same glory that he had before the world was. Verse 6 I have manifested your name to the men whom have you have given me out of this world. They were. Yours and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now that particular phrase, um I know Dave Guzick for one says, I don't know what that means, and other other commentators have given a stab, but may I say this might be some of that uh predestination stuff that we were talking about. They were yours. Think of this Ephesians chapter 1, verses 3 through 6. This is what Paul said to the Ephesians at the very beginning: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be uh holy and without blame before him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glory and his grace by which he made us accepted in the beloved. And we could do a whole hour on just those verses themselves, but Paul really got a big picture revelation of what this is. We're saved by grace, we're put we're made part of the beloved, which means we're made part of Jesus because Jesus is the beloved Son of the Father. We're made right with him, we're in him, and and this was planned before the foundation of the world. So God knew, and they belonged to him before it even started. Does that make sense? It sort of does, doesn't it? Can you grasp it by faith, even though we can't fully put it all together in our heads? God the Father knew who would be saved before we were saved. And they were given to Jesus. And Jesus was faithful to take these disciples through and to teach them and to equip them.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

That's Pastor Carl of the Mountain Cross on Come On Up. We're currently going through the book of John. We're so glad you've been with us, and we know there's so much to get out of this gospel book. One of the most powerful moments is in a well-known passage in John chapter 3. Jesus is meeting with Nicodemus and explaining what it means to be born again, not physically, but spiritually. As you might have memorized, Jesus speaks this to Nicodemus, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. What a promise from God! It sounds so easy, right? But sometimes the pressures of life can push you further away from wanting a relationship with God. Let me tell you, the most important decision you'll ever make is being in right relationship with God. He wants you with him for eternity. So don't be waiting around for the right moment. The best time to choose Jesus is now. If you'd like to learn more about what all of this means, head over to themountaincross.com and click on How to Know God. The Mountain Cross is a group of believers in Jesus who seek to grow in faith by simply teaching the Bible verse by verse, chapter by chapter. We meet on Sundays at 10 a.m. at the Smoky Mountain Cinema in Waynesville. We look forward to worshiping with you. Well, that's all for today, but come on up to the mountain with us again as we seek to learn more from the Lord through His Word. Come on Up is sponsored by the Mountain Cross, a Calvary Chapel fellowship.