Who has everlasting life? Is it the man Jesus spoke of in John 3:16 when
he said, "whoever believes in him (speaking of himself--DS)
should not perish but have everlasting life" (NKJV) or is it the
man he spoke of in John 5:24 when he said, "I say to you, he who
hears my word and believes in him who sent me has everlasting life"
(NKJV)? Jesus says in the former passage believe in him for
everlasting life while later in the latter passage he says hear my
words and believe in him who sent me (God the Father).
Many cling to John 3:16 with the idea being that all Jesus requires of man
for salvation is a belief in Jesus without ever giving any real
serious thought as to how Jesus would define a believer in himself,
one whose faith is sufficient to save. They merely assume they know
so every man becomes a law unto himself, declares himself a believer,
and is in his mind (and often in his family and friends' minds) saved
without ever offering any real concern about God's commands or any
serious obedience to them. Many have made no real attempt in years to
worship God or read his word let alone put him first in their life
yet they are saved, they say, because they say they believe in Jesus.
Jesus never taught even once what such men have assumed. John 5:24 offers a
commentary on John 3:16, as do many other passages throughout the New
Testament, concerning who the believer of John 3:16 is. When Jesus
says in John 5:24, "he who hears my word" (and, of course,
believes in God the Father) will have everlasting life he is not
adding to what is required of man for salvation for hearing the word
of God has been required of man ever since Adam and Eve. But, who is
the believer in Jesus who will be saved? Who is that man? It is the
man who hears Jesus' word. A man cannot hear Jesus' word, disregard
it or consider it unimportant, even unnecessary, and at the same time
in truthfulness say he believes in Jesus.
It goes without saying when Jesus spoke of hearing his word he was not
speaking of hearing with the physical ear only but of heeding the
words, of obeying those words. The next verse, verse 25, makes this
clear. "Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and
now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and
those who hear will live." (John 5:25 NKJV) The dead spoken of
here are not the physically dead but the spiritually dead and the
meaning is not that just by hearing Jesus speak one would be saved
but rather if you hear what he says and you believe it enough to act
on it (obey it) you will live. No man has truly heard Jesus who does
not believe what he says enough to take him at his word and obey him.
Those who crucified Jesus heard him speak through the physical ear
but never heard Jesus in the sense of which Jesus spoke of hearing
for salvation.
Further proof is provided in John 5:38 (a verse in the same chapter) where
Jesus speaking of himself tells those he was speaking to, "Him
you do not believe." (NKJV) They heard him okay with the
physical ear but they had not heard him in the sense Jesus spoke of
in John 5:24. They were not heeding the message he was delivering.
Jesus closes this conversation in verses 46 and 47 where he says, "For
if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote about me.
But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my
words?" (John 5:46-47 NKJV) You see it is not enough to just
believe in Jesus that he is the Son of God. (See John 12:42-43 as an
example of those who believed that but were nevertheless lost.) You
must, as Jesus put it, "believe my words" and that is where
the rub comes in with so many people. They are glad to believe in
Jesus as being God's Son, to believe in Jesus as being the Savior,
but they are not glad to believe other words he spoke and indeed
reject many of them.
Belief cannot be a smorgasbord of Jesus' sayings where we get to go down the
line and say I will take this, and I will take that, but I will have
none of that. How can we do that sort of thing and say we believe in
Jesus? Do we really believe him if that is what we do? If we don't
"believe him" how can we say we "believe in him?"
Most people do not believe Jesus when he said, "He who believes and
is baptized will be saved" (Mark 16:16 NKJV) but rather believe
"He who believes and is baptized, or not (either way), will be
saved" (Mark 16:16--man's version, not God's). In the Great
Commission, as found in Matt. 28, Jesus commanded that disciples be
baptized (Matt. 28:19) but man while he says he believes in Jesus
says it does not matter whether a disciple is baptized or not. He can
be saved without it, says man. Yet, this very man declares his faith
in Christ, faith in the very being whose word he questions. Believe
in Jesus but just don't believe everything Jesus says seems to be the
idea. You will then be saved by faith in Jesus. That is the claim
even though none would dare put it so bluntly.
The world may believe this kind of perversion but I am not among their
number. It all comes down to the question of "what is belief in
Jesus?" Of what does that faith consist? We are worlds apart on
that. To believe in Jesus is to believe what the Son of Man, the Son
of God, said. If you can't believe or won't believe what the Son of
Man--the Son of God--said you are not a believer in him. If I can't
believe a man's word out in the everyday world it is quite a stretch
to say I believe in him. It is no different in the Bible as one
considers Jesus and his word.
When Jesus declares a man has everlasting life based on a certain
condition then that condition becomes mandatory and is not a matter
of personal preference as to whether it is required for salvation or
not. The same holds true if he phrases it some other way--for
instance, uses the term "eternal life," or the phrase "is
saved," or the words "will see the kingdom of heaven."
Whatever Jesus states as necessary to salvation under any and all
such descriptive terms is required of man, man's thoughts to the
contrary notwithstanding. To fail to believe Jesus (fail to believe
what he says) is to fail to believe in him.
A good example of what I am talking about is found in Matt. 7:21 where
Jesus says, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall
enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in
heaven." (Matt. 7:21 NKJV) If you really believe in Jesus you
must believe what he said here and thus understand that salvation is
dependent on keeping the commands of God. You will either believe
that or else you will not believe Jesus and thus do not believe in
him in any sense of having a faith that will save you.
If you say doing the will of God, keeping his commands is salvation by
works, not by grace, I say in response it is salvation by believing
in Jesus, believing what he says.
We must always remember that while we are saved by faith it is only a
certain type of faith, a faith that is inclusive of trust and
obedience. James makes light of a non-obedient faith, "What does
it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not
have works? Can faith save him?" (James 2:14 NKJV) "Faith
without works is dead." (James 2:26 NKJV)
In closing, I ask who is the believer of John 3:16 who has everlasting
life? I answer by saying he is not the man most of the world thinks
he is. He is a man who has the faith of Abraham of whom the Bible
says, "By faith Abraham obeyed." (Heb. 11:8 NKJV) To what
extent did Abraham obey? To the extent he was in the very act of
offering Isaac as a burnt offering to God because God had commanded
it before God stopped him. This is the Abraham whom the Bible says is
"the father of all those who believe, though they are
uncircumcised, that righteousness might be imputed to them also."
(Rom. 4:11 NKJV)
The believer who is blessed by God, the believer in Jesus of John 3:16,
is the believer who does not question Jesus or declare some of his
commands as unnecessary but obeys them all to the best of his ability
because in believing in Jesus it necessarily follows that he believes
Jesus. He is the true believer of whom it can be said he has
everlasting life.
