What Is Life?
We know when something is alive, and we can usually tell when something is dead, but have you ever tried to define the two? What exactly changes when a thing goes from living to dead? Consider, for example, a living rosebush. It can respond to its surroundings, draw nutrients and water from the soil through its roots, and turn sunlight into food. All of this allows the plant to grow and produce beautiful blossoms and healthy leaves. But consider, on the other hand, a bush which used to be alive. What is the difference between them? Aren’t they made of the same stuff? If we put the one in the sunlight and give it plenty of water, it will grow, but if we place the other one in those same conditions, it will not. The living plant produces foliage and flowers, but the dead one makes neither. We can all tell the difference between one that is alive and one that is dead, but if you had to explain what causes one plant to thrive in the sunlight and the other to dry up, you’d be hard-pressed to say anything except, “It’s dead.”
What makes it “alive”? And where did that life originate? Obviously we know that living plants come from other living plants, just as living creatures come from other living creatures. This is true for human beings, too. Everything that is alive receives life from something or someone else that is already alive. This presents us with a bit of a dilemma. According to John 1:3, Jesus is the Creator of all things, but does that include life itself? In order for the Word to create life, he would have to already be alive. This is the kind of question to which there simply is no answer.
Consider the first man and woman that God created. He placed in the garden of Eden and gave them strict instructions concerning one tree: they were not to eat any of its fruit. “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;” he said, “but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17). What did God mean when he told them on the day they ate the fruit of that tree they would surely die? He might have meant that biological life would stop, but we see in the next chapter that it didn’t.1 If we read John 1:4, though, we get an idea of what God was talking about when he said that the day they ate the fruit of the tree they would surely die: “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”
Life is more than simple biological existence, it means having a relationship with God himself.
What did we lose because of our sin? Life. The life which is in the Word – eternal, self-existent, in constant and continual fellowship with the Father. This is what it means to be truly alive, and we’ve lost it! Our sins have plunged us into death, separating us from the One in whom is life. Jesus repeatedly contrasted this kind of life with physical death. Here are two examples: “And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:40) and “Jesus said to her [Martha], ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live” (John 11:25).
Jesus said that someone who believes in him, even though he may die, he will live. I don’t know about you, but I know one thing: that’s impossible! When someone is dead, he’s dead. He’s not alive! But Jesus was not contradicting himself or speaking nonsense. The life that Jesus was talking about means something more than just being alive. “This is eternal life,” Jesus explained in another place, “that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). Life in the Gospel of John is more than simple biological existence, it means having a relationship with God himself.
Where Can Life Be Found?
John 1:4 says that life was in the Word. This is Jesus, the unmade Maker; he is the source of life. Following on the heels of v.1-3, this verse says that before anything else was, life existed in Christ. It’s not just that he is the source of life; life is fundamental to who he is as a person. His life is more than just biological, it is spiritual, diverse, and abundant. It was this life which Adam forfeited by rebelling against God. This life is inherent within the very person of Jesus Christ; what John means by, “In him was life.” Then John goes further, saying, “…and the life was the light of men.” There is a subtle change in wording at this point. In the first part of the verse, John spoke of life in a general sense, saying that life is inherent in the Word, but in this second clause he narrows the focus to the specific movement of life from eternity past into the present. Life has been brought to men.
It is important to recognize that John did not say Jesus merely possessed life, but that he was life, and that life has come down to men. Listen to what Jesus said of himself and compare that to what he said of the rest of mankind generally: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6) and “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). Jesus said that he was life, and that men may possess life, even though many do not. These are different categories altogether. Life is not something Jesus merely possesses, it is completely dependent on him and flows from him to all who receive it. And how do we receive life? We simply believe on Jesus as the eternally-existing Word of God, who is God, the Creator of all things that have come to be, and the source of life itself. This life, as it is defined in the Gospel of John, is not physical life; it’s not even resurrection life, although it includes both of these. It is life as it always was in Christ since before the world began, an ongoing, vital relationship with God the Father.
Do you have this kind of life? Do you have the kind of fellowship with God that Jesus enjoys constantly and eternally? Do you have a relationship to God that is characterized by total satisfaction, daily joy and peace, and dependence on him for everything? “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
1Some say God meant they would begin to die when they ate the fruit, others that God meant they would die spiritually. Taken by itself, the text of Gen. 2 does not specify what kind of death is meant.
