"Eternal" LIFE pondered and defined

With the fresh understanding God gave me of what LIFE and LIGHT mean, so much more of the bible and my own life began to be more understandable. The common understanding of "eternal" LIFE never did sit well with me. Limiting the concept to a LIFE that never ends, that goes on forever and ever, although true, just doesn't express what it's really all about. Jesus had much to say about LIFE, and as the very essence of it and creator of all living things, it's definitely worth the effort to really try and understand what He was talking about.

As sort of a study "geek", I'm big on trying to find the real definition of things and then expressing them in a simple way. And I've learned over the years that it's valuable to listen to those whom most people would consider experts on any given subject--those people who actually work within a certain field as their primary vocation. What would their definition be? So, it makes perfect sense to me to look at what Jesus Himself had to say about "eternal" LIFE and to discover whether He Himself may have given His definition of the concept. And sure enough, He did, in John 17:3. According to Jesus Himself, "eternal" life is: knowing God the Father, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom God the Father has sent into our world.

According to Jesus, the primary meaning of "eternal" LIFE isn't living forever, although that is an aspect of it that is brought out in other places. No, the key thing to understand is that "eternal" LIFE is "knowing" God the Father and His Son. The word "knowing" in the original language was the word that expressed experiential knowledge of something. In other words, the knowledge that is the result of constant/regular, interaction with something--not just intellectually but also emotionally, physically, and so forth. It's not just mentally acknowledging facts as true, but actually having a personal interaction with that which is external to us. Just a life itself is interacting with and exchanging with that which is external, so "eternal" LIFE is interacting with and exchanging with that which is external to us: God the Father and His Son! It's an interaction and exchange in the context of relationship.

With what I've written so far as a bit of a backdrop, I'll try to bring this all together next time by sharing what I now understand Jesus to mean in John 8:12 Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, "I am the light of the world, he who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but have the ligh of life."

Until then...