If You Believe in Jesus Do You Already Have Everlasting Life?

Tom:

We are continuing with the gospel—salvation verses in particular from the gospel of John although we’re going through the gospel verse by verse.Dave, we left off last week with John:5:24Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
See All... and that’s where we are going to pick it up. This is Jesus speaking of course, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.”Dave, when Jesus begins saying something with “verily, verily I say unto you…” this isn’t just generalizing on something.This is something very specific, very important when he addresses something in this fashion.

Dave:

Truly, truly is what it means.

Tom:

And these are particulars.“…he that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life…” wow!

Dave:

Well “…he that heareth my word…” doesn’t mean that you just hear the sound, but that you act upon it.You believe it, you understand it, you act upon it.This is what it means, you heed and it’s interesting—and we’ll get into this again in chapter eight.“…if you continue in my word…”“…he that heareth my word…”The rabbis must have bristled at that and the ordinary Jew listening would be shocked.What do you mean your word?We follow God’s Word.Are you claiming to be God?He that heareth my word—Jesus IS the Word.This book of John begins with “In the beginning was the Word….”He is the Word.He’s the one who speaks and we’ve gone into that in detail in the past.You heed my Word, the scriptures, the Word of God, and “…believeth on him that sent me….”Now this is not just a higher power Tom.This is not just any god will do but the God you believe in is the one who sent Jesus to this earth.He is the Father, and you would have to believe all that Jesus said about him, “I and my Father are one…”“…the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world…” so you believe my word, you heed it, you obey and you believe in the Father who sent me, his Son and of course that would take in why he sent him.To give his life to die for our sins upon the cross.You believe that, you have everlasting life.Now that Tom, we could spend the next week I guess in non-stop discussion of that point.Because—well there is discussion between so-called Calvinists and so-called Armenians about this issue.There’s the discussion between those who accuse others of a lordship salvation and those who talk about free grace and so forth.Now wait a minute!All you have to do is believe?But doesn’t James say that faith without works is dead?Could believing—is that all you have to do?You mean that’s how you get saved?You just believe?Well, you have it over, and over, and over.John:3:16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
See All..., “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son….”This is the one Jesus is talking about.You believe him who sent me, “...that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”To the Philippian jailer who cried out, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”Paul said well you’ve got to be baptized and catechized and then you’ve got to—

Tom:

Be sacramentalized….

Dave:

Live a good life you know and take the sacraments and prove yourself as some Calvinists would say.You don’t really know whether you are one of the elect unless you persevere, you have to prove it by your life and so forth.You have to live, you know what Catholicism goes through, the whole thing in order to somehow gain eternal life.But I don’t find it in the Bible.But somebody says, wait a minute, believing?That’s too easy.The Jehovah’s Witness standing at your door, well you think you can just believe—and then you’re saved.It doesn’t matter what you do, how you live and so forth.All we are trying to do Tom is take what the Bible says.Jesus says, you believe, you have everlasting life.Not only that, he says it’s really everlasting life.Eternal life would be kind of strange eternal life if you had it today and lost it tomorrow.So what Jesus says, and I would just appeal to anyone out there who wears a scapular— the scapular promises that if you are wearing it you won’t suffer eternal fire.What does Jesus say?You will not come into condemnation, but you have passed from death to life and you now have eternal life, the very life of God himself and you can never perish.

Tom:

Dave, I want to back up just a little bit to this idea of belief.We have no other option.There is no other option, because if there’s something you could do, it would have to be paying the penalty for sin.We are all under condemnation.And there’s nothing we can do except suffer the consequences of our sin, except turn to Christ, who paid the full penalty.So how do you turn to him?Well what is this turning?It is belief, trusting in him.That’s our only option.I can’t think of anything else, because anything else is saying that Jesus didn’t do it all.

Dave:

You mean I don’t have to clean up my life?I don’t have to turn over a new leaf?

Tom:

Not for salvation.

Dave:

I don’t have to become a better person?

Tom:

It won’t save you Dave.It won’t save you, but once you are saved, God enables you to do the very things that people recognize—well wait a minute, I’m a sinner, even my works are as filthy rags before God, but God will transform our lives, he makes us a new creation.So that is available, but not for salvation.We only have one option.

Dave:

Over and over it says believe and be saved.Let’s just take one other verse, because the contrast there—.Some people say that believing is a work.So you even have to be regenerated before you believe, that God somehow sovereignly regenerates people, makes them a child of God.Well then you get saved before you get saved.After he has regenerated you, then you can believe.He gives you the faith to believe, but faith itself must be a gift, because if you could believe, then that is a work and we are not saved by works.But wait a minute—Romans:4:5But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.
See All..., Paul writes, “Now to him that worketh not, but believeth—so faith is not a work.In fact, it is contrasted with work.Tom, I sympathize out there with everyone who has questions about this.The question is not with us, it’s with the Word of God.I know it’s difficult to imagine—you mean I can be saved, I can be forgiven by God, I don’t have to turn over a new leaf, I don’t have to change myself, I don’t have to become a better person in order to qualify for this?No, in fact you have to be a sinner.You have to acknowledge that you are a sinner.“This is a faithful saying,” Paul says, “and worthy of all acceptation, Christ Jesus came into the world to save those people who turn over a new leaf and they manage to clean themselves up and live a good enough life?No, it doesn’t say that.“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” and Paul adds, “Of whom I am chief.”So if you’re not a sinner, you don’t qualify.You don’t even need a Savior if you’re not a sinner.But if you are a sinner once you have sinned, once you have committed one sin, you are without hope.Because if I was speeding on the freeway yesterday, I cannot make up for that by driving within the speed limit the rest of my life.It would never make up for having exceeded the speed limit just one time.So as soon as the person becomes a sinner, the situation is hopeless.God is infinite, his justice is infinite, his standards are infinite.I can’t pick myself up; pull myself up to the standards that God has set.So I would be separated from God forever, and forever, and forever trying to pay off this debt which I could never pay.You remember that little chorus: “He paid a debt he did not owe, I owed a debt I could not pay, I needed someone to wash my sins away.And now I sing a brand new song, Amazing Grace, Christ Jesus paid the debt that I could never pay.”It’s that simple and I believe and as you have underlined the fact, we have nothing else to do.We can’t work for it, we can’t earn it.I must believe that he offers me a gift and a gift can’t be earned.If you try to pay for a gift, you are insulting the giver.So Jesus says, reading it again, “Verily, verily, (Truly, truly) I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.”I hope that there are some out there listening to the words of Jesus who maybe never understood this before and for the first time, will receive the free gift of eternal life by believing who Jesus is, what he has done, and what he has promised.

Tom:

Absolutely glorious, absolutely.