KJV 1 John 1:2 “… that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us.”

NASB 1 John 1:2 “… the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us …”

Life Through Him

One of John’s themes, whether we examine his Gospel record or his epistles, is that of life. In all his well-known gospel verses, he stresses that eternal life comes to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. It is through His work, or by virtue of it, and by our faith in Him, that we received this eternal life (John 3:16, 36; 5:24; 10:10, to note but a few). John will brook no other possibility. All hope of salvation comes through Him and Him alone.

We all were brought by different paths and means to realize our need for a Saviour and to find in Him, our Lord Jesus, a sufficient Saviour. We applied the virtues of His work on the cross and received the forgiveness of sins. We received life through Him.

This eternal life is not only a new life marked by its duration but by its dimensions. We not only have been saved from hell beneath and raised to sit in heavenly places above, but we have been brought into a community of love where we can know immeasurable depths, breadth, and height of the Father and His Son (John 17:3).

Life in Him

But then we learned something more. That eternal life is not only through Him but also in Him. “God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son” (1 John 5:11). He is the sum and circumference of all God has for us. Everything is found in Him. John boldly says: “He that hath the Son hath life” (1 John 5:12). When you have Christ, you have all God intended life to be. The Lord Jesus came to undo the works of Satan (1 John 3:8). Redeemed man is now being brought back into the image of God (Col 3:10). The marring of that image at the hands of the evil one is now subject to renovation or transformation because of the work of the Lord Jesus for us. God’s original purposes are being realized in those who possess life in Him.

He is Eternal Life

But John goes further by telling us that we not only have eternal life through Christ and in Christ but that He Himself is eternal life (1 John 1:2; 5:20). “He is the true God and eternal life.” He is also the Word of Life (1 John 1:1), a title which I assume means He is the very message of what life should be.

As the Eternal Life, He has eternally possessed life in Himself, and now He communicates that life to each of us who have trusted Him for salvation. As such, we share Him, and we share His life. Forgive my inability to express all this means. I am not sure I can either grasp or conceive of the full meaning of Him as eternal life itself. Though I cannot exposit all it means, it means at least that all life centers in Him and that we shall know life in all its vast dimensions when eternally with Him.

Consider

The writer desires the thoughts of anyone who can plumb further the depths of the statement that He Himself is eternal life.