Vitality
Jesus had a lot to say about the nature and quality of this “Life.” Many of the ways He described it suggest that it is characterized by a “New Vitality.” It is not the cold, rigid, unappealing way of life so often associated with religion. It is not religion. It is a vital relationship with the Creator, Lord of the universe!
When talking with a woman beside a well outside the Samaritan Village of Sychar he told her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” (John 4:10) He repeated this in verse 14. “(W)hoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Later, at a Festival in Jerusalem, He stood in a public place and loudly declared, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” (John 17: 37 & 38) This time John explains the metaphor. “By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.” (verse 39) This is a vivid description – a word picture – of what it will be like when the Holy Spirit enters our lives.
The greatest Teacher of all, with inexhaustible imagery at His disposal, uses the metaphor of “springs” and “streams” of water, to paint this picture of the “His new kind of Life.” And anyone who’s familiar with arid places knows what streams and rivers do to a desert. They create an oasis. So life, in the Spirit, is a veritable oasis not just for the one in whom the Spirit lives but the people around them.
The compelling quality of this “Life” He offers is more dramatically emphasized in the broadly emphatic language of John 10:10. Describing Himself as “the Good Shepherd,” Jesus says, “I have come that they – ‘my sheep’ – may have life, and have it to the full.” The Greek word translated “full,” – “abundantly” in other translations – is one of those “broad stroke” words. Its root meaning is “beyond.” This “Life,” is “beyond.” “Beyond what,” someone might ask? “Beyond” just about any measure we might apply to quality of life. In the day-to-day common use of this word ideas like “superabundant;” “excessive;” “exceeding;” “very highly;” “beyond measure;” “superfluous:” “lavish;” were being communicated. THE MESSAGE paraphrase translates Jesus statement, “I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.” Jesus is telling us that His Life for us is simply “beyond” whatever measure of well-being we might have. Our Lord fills the “cups” of His followers lavishly!
Sixteen times, in his biography, John recalls Jesus describing this “New Life,” as “eternal.” While it has a beginning, this “life in the Spirit,” is endless. It is “forever.”
On top of all of this Jesus spends a lot of time, particularly in His final
days with His friends, insisting, emphatically that “Life” with Him – “in Him” – is joy filled. At the Seder table the night before His rigged trial and crucifixion, He told His friends, “I have told you this – these things I have been teaching you – so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” (John 15:11) Using imagery most anyone can relate to He frankly describes how His “joy” will come not despite certain hard times but as a direct by product of such pain and suffering.
“I tell you the truth; you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.” (John 16:20 – 22)
“Ask,” He assured them, “and you will receive …” Whatever you receive from me will result in, “your joy” being “complete.” (John 16:24) And when He prayed for His followers that night He assured His Father, and ours, “I’m saying these things in the world’s hearing so my people can experience my joy completed in them.” (John 17:13 & 14 THE MESSAGE) There is no question but that “joy” is the intended experience of people who have been “born from above.” The “kingdom of heaven,” is a joy filled world! “Joy,” C.S. Lewis writes, “is the serious business of Heaven.”
People “born from above” learn, from Jesus the Life Master, how to live in the “oasis” of His present “Kingdom.” They learn, early in their “walk” with Him, that theirs is an endless life and they live accordingly. They find a quality of character being forged in them that sharpens their perception of the “joy” that can be discovered even in their suffering. More and more often they are lighthearted and joyfully expectant no matter what is going on in the “kingdoms of this world,” that surround them, threatening to overwhelm and destroy them.
Here ends John’s telling of the “Greatest Story Ever Told.” No, it isn’t the end of the story. For this story is the real “Never Ending Story.” Day after day the birth we celebrate Christmas after Christmas is celebrated far beyond the crèche in your Home or neighborhood or Church. This very day, this exact moment, somewhere in the world – perhaps in your heart – someone is being “born from above.” And the epilogue to the Christmas story, which John carefully tells, is retold. It is a story “Forever told”!
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