John 17:3 - A Supreme Relationship with Jesus Christ is Eternal Life.
John 17:3 (NKJV) And this is eternal life,
that they may know You, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
CONTEXT
Jesus' prayer in John 17 is the longest in
the New Testament. But Nehemiah holds the record
for the longest Bible prayer in Nehemiah 9:5-37.
[Youth SB]
INTRODUCTION
What is the most glorious thing that man
can see or find upon earth? Nothing less than
God Himself.
And what is the most glorious thing that
a man can and needs to do every day? Nothing
less than to seek, to know, to love, and to
praise this glorious God. As glorious as God is, so
is the glory that begins to work in the heart
and life of the man who gives himself to live
for God.
My brother or sister in Christ, have you
learned the first and greatest thing you have to do
every day? Nothing less than to seek this God, to
meet Him, to worship Him, and to live for Him and
for His glory. It is a great step in the life of
a Christian when he truly sees this truth and
yields himself to consider fellowship with God
every day as the chief purpose of his life.
Take time and ask whether this is not the
highest wisdom, and the one thing for which a
Christian is to live above all - to know his God
rightly, and to love Him with his whole heart.
Believe not only that it is true, but also that
God's greatest desire is for you to live thus with
Him. In answer to prayer, He will indeed enable
you to do so. [Andrew Murray 365-Day Devotional
Bible by Barbour re Isaiah 26:9]
COMMENTARY PEARL
The knowledge of God is absolutely
necessary for the spiritual life. It is eternal life.
It is not the intellectual knowledge we receive
from others, or through our own powers of
thought, but the living, experiential knowledge in
which God makes Himself known to the soul. Just as
the rays of the sun on a cold winter's day warm
the body, imparting its heat to us, so the
living God sheds the life-giving rays of His
holiness and love into the heart of one who waits on
Him.
Why do we so seldom experience this
life-giving power of the true knowledge of God? Because
we do not give God enough time to reveal
Himself to us. When we pray, we think we know well
enough how to speak to God. And we forget that one
of the very first things in prayer is to be
silent before God, so that He may reveal Himself.
By His hidden but mighty power, God will
manifest His presence, resting on us and working in
us. To know God in the personal experience of
His presence and love is life indeed.
Brother Lawrence, author of The Practice
of the Presence of God, had a great longing to
know God, and for this purpose went into a
monastery. His spiritual advisers gave him prayer books
to use, but he put them aside. "It helps little
to pray," he said, "if I do not know the God to
whom I pray." Brother Lawrence remained in silent
adoration for a long time in order to come under the
presence of this great and holy Being. He continued
in this practice until, later, he lived
consciously and constantly in God's presence and
experienced His blessed nearness and keeping power. Just
as the sun rising each morning is the pledge of
light throughout the day, so the quiet time of
waiting upon God will be the pledge of His presence
and His power abiding with us all day long.
[Andrew Murray 365-Day Devotional Bible by Barbour]
COMMENTARY
Eternal life doesn't merely mean going to
heaven when you die and living forever, as amazing
and wonderful as that promise is. Eternal life
involves knowing Almighty God intimately. That began
the moment you entered into a relationship with
Christ, and it will extend throughout eternity.
Eternal life, however, is a quality of
life more than a quantity. It's abundant life.
It's security in the nurturing intimacy of your
personal relationship with your heavenly Father,
contentment in the joy of His presence with you, and
radiantly hopeful because of His promises to you. To
thoroughly experience eternal life in the present as
well as in the future, you must continually
strive to know God more intimately.
Some Christians seem to think that they
have to wait until heaven to truly know and
experience Christ, so they unwisely neglect their
relationship with Christ in this life. Yet Scripture
suggests that we take with us into eternity the
relationship with God that we began on earth.
God invites us to experience and enjoy
eternal life - by knowing and experiencing Him.
Start enjoying eternal life today. [Being
Still With God Every Day by Henry Blackaby]
We have the desire for happiness deeply
ingrained within us. In other words, God has hardwired
us to be happy. So where do we find this
happiness?
We wont find it is in this world,
because the world bases happiness on how well things
are going. If things are going reasonably well,
then were happy. If things are not going so
well, then were unhappy.
When you obtain everything, when you have
all your dreams fulfilled, when you reach all
your goals and maybe surpass them, you find how
empty it is. And then you realize that happiness
isnt in those things at all.
I think in many cases, the people you
follow on social media and those you admire or look
up to may have a far more miserable life than
you have.
One Gallup study on the subject of
happiness found that spiritually committed people are
twice as likely to report being very happy than
the least spiritually committed people.
Ill take that a step further: Godly
people will be the happiest people. As the Bible
says, Happy are the people whose God is the
Lord! (Psalm 144:15 NKJV).
C. S. Lewis put it this way: God
designed the human machine to run on Himself. He
Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to
burn, or the food our spirits were designed to
feed on. There is no other. That is why it is
just no good asking God to make us happy in our
own way God cannot give us a happiness and
peace apart from Himself, because it is not there.
There is no such thing.
The more we chase after the Lord, the
more godly well become - and the more well
find the happiness that has eluded us for so
long. [Greg Laurie from Harvest Ministries;
https://www.harvestdaily.com re Psalm 144:15]
God made us: invented us as a man invents an
engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would
not run properly on anything else. Now God
designed the human machine to run on Himself. He
Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to
burn, or the food our spirits were designed to
feed on. There is no other. That is why it is
just no good asking God to make us happy in our
own way without bothering about religion. God
cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from
Himself, because it is not there. There is no such
thing. C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity
CLOSING THOUGHT
If you asked people if they are going to
heaven or hell, many of them will likely say, I
hope Ill go to heaven.
But hope just isnt good enough. I pray
thats not your answer. Your eternal destiny is too
important not to know for sure.
Its foolish to be unprepared for what
we all know is inevitable: death. The most
recent statistics show that mortality rates in the
world remain 100 percent!
Youre not guaranteed another minute on
this planet, much less another hour. Dont put
off the most important choice youll ever
make.
The Bible says in 1 John 5:11-12, And
this is the testimony: God has given us eternal
life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the
Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of
God does not have life (NIV).
Thats about as clear as you can get.
If you have Jesus, you have life. If you
dont have Jesus, you do not have life. You have a
choice.
You wont go to heaven because of
someone elses faith. And, at the same time,
youll never go to hell because of someone elses
choice. [Daily Devotional by Rick Warren:
https://pastorrick.com/devotional/ re 1 John 5:11-12]
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
The aim of conversion is to bring one
into daily fellowship with the Father in heaven.
For the believer, taking time each day
with God's Word and in prayer is indispensable.
Each day we need to wait upon God for His
presence and His love to be revealed.
It is not enough at conversion to accept
forgiveness of sins or even to surrender to God. That is
only a beginning. We must understand that we have
no power on our own to maintain our spiritual
life. We need to receive daily new grace from
heaven through fellowship with the Lord Jesus. This
cannot be obtained by a hasty prayer or a
superficial reading of a few verses from God's Word. We
must take time to come into God's presence, to
feel our weakness and our need, and to wait on
God through His Holy Spirit to renew our
fellowship with Him. Then we may expect to be kept by
the power of Christ throughout the day.
We must see the absolute necessity of
spending time with the Lord Jesus. Without this, the
joy and power of God's Holy Spirit in daily life
cannot be experienced. [Andrew Murray 365-Day
Devotional Bible mod.]
In Christ is the life of the soul. In the
outgoings of our hearts to Him, in our earnest,
affectionate yearnings for His excellence, in our eager
searching into His glory, we find life. In communion
with Him we eat the bread of life....
Christ must be the central object of our
affections, and then we shall live in Him, then we shall
have His spirit.
God must be ever in our thoughts. We must
hold converse with Him while we walk by the way,
and while our hands are engaged in labor. In all
the purposes and pursuits of life we must
inquire, What will the Lord have me to do? How shall
I please Him who has given His life a ransom
for me? Thus may we walk with God, as did
Enoch.... OHC61
LINKS FOR FURTHER STUDY ON THIS TOPIC
John 17:3 - A Supreme Relationship with
Jesus Christ is Eternal Life.
http://www.abible.com/devotions/2018/20180823-1030.html
1 John 5:11, 12 - Eternal Life Is A
Relationship With Jesus.
http://www.abible.com/devotions/2006/20061214-0741.html
YOUR COMMENTS
If anyone has a paraphrase, commentary or
testimony on this passage of Scripture, either
personal or otherwise, I would be interested in
hearing from you. Thanks in advance and let's keep
uplifting Jesus that all might be drawn to Him. Fred
Gibbs
