11 And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 12 He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. 1 John 5:11-12 (NKJV)
God has given us eternal life. Eternal life is offered to everyone and is not just something that we enter into after death. It is something that you can receive on earth while you are alive. It is not just another time frame; it is available now and is a state of being in Christ. The way to receive eternal life, is to receive God’s Son. The Bible tells us that eternal life is available through Jesus Christ.
Why does God offer eternal life and why does He offer it through His Son and what does it do for us and to us? Even after Adam and Eve sinned, God planned to offer Man eternal life. God made Man, but He also gave him a free will to choose and instructed him to be obedient to all that He asked of them. However, Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate from the Tree of Life. As a result spiritual death came into being and this is separation from God. The Bible says that the iniquities of Adam and Eve separated them from God and their sins hid His face from them (Isaiah 59:2).
When Adam and Eve sinned, they knew that they had sinned. They were naked. They also became afraid of God and tried to do something about their nakedness by covering themselves in fig leaves. So from the beginning of sin, Man tried to cover his own sin. From that day on, Man was trying to fix his own sin, thinking that doing good deeds could bring acceptance with God, but this all falls short of God’s approval. Indeed, it is only when we come back into relationship with Him that we are reconciled with God. Romans 8:8 says that once we remain in our sin, we can never please God.
God could not stand the fact that Man would be separated from Him forever because of his sin and therefore He already had a plan to reconcile him to Himself. The Bible says that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. His love, mercy and grace were far greater than the judgment that was supposed to fall on Man. God worked His plan through the same fallen Man. When people like Jacob and David messed up, God still worked with them and through that lineage, God redeemed Man through Christ.
Jesus lived on this earth as a perfect example of how we should serve God. He loved those who hated Him; He healed the sick and He stayed close to God. He satisfied God that a man could come and live holy and stay true to God. However, the main reason Christ came was to pay for our sin and do something about our sin situation. God’s love is unconditional. He will never stop loving us. He loves us even when we are bad. Romans 5:6-8 states that while we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly, that is, for us. This is because God had to punish sin, and rather than punish us, Jesus bore that punishment in our place. If we die physically and are not in Christ, we are lost forever, but if we die in Christ, we have the gift of eternal life.
Out of God’s great love for Man, He gave us His only Son who lived a sinless life on earth, died and was raised from the grave, proving that He is God. Because of what God did for us through Jesus, anyone who believes in Him has eternal life (John 1:12).
God did all the work to bring us back to Him, even though it was our fault. Each of us comes to God in the same way as a sinner realizing that no human effort can reconcile us to God. Salvation is found in no other name but Jesus Christ. When we come into relationship with Christ, it does not mean that everything goes right all the time, but it means that God will be there to assist us all the way. He who has the Son, has life and He who does not have the Son, does not have life.
