“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (John 17:3, NIV)
As Jesus began to pray to his Father in John 17 he did so with two major goals in mind: 1) being glorified so he could glorify the Father and 2) eternal life by way of knowledge for those given to him. For this short article I want to focus in on the second major goal of Jesus—eternal life through knowledge of the only true God.
It may seem odd to us or even off-putting to some who have skewed view of Christianity to think about knowledge being tied to eternal life. Do Christians really believe you have to be smart enough to be saved? What kind of gracious God would demand that someone have the right sort of knowledge to be saved? Questions like those come not so much from a wholesale rejection of New Testament teaching, but from a misunderstanding of an aspect of what the New Testament teaches.
When Jesus prayed to his Father that he might give eternal life to those given to him by his Father, he clarifies what he means by eternal life. Jesus says that eternal life is knowing God and. The point here is that Jesus prays that those who will be saved will be saved through knowing something. And this something is actually two somethings that is really one something at the same time. Let my try and clarify what I mean.
Jesus wants people to know the only true God because in really knowing the only true God they will find eternal life. In Jesus’s mind (and hopefully in ours) eternal life isn’t a thing out there that God gives to some and doesn’t give to others. Eternal life isn’t a commodity to be grasped; it’s a relationship with God. For someone to receive eternal life they must come into contact and then into relationship with the one in whom eternal life is found—God—the only true God. Now, as you’re probably thinking, this is only half of the equation.
Jesus doesn’t stop at merely knowing the only true God, he says that eternal life is found in people knowing him. Again, in Jesus’s mind (and hopefully ours) God and Jesus go hand-in-hand because Jesus is God—John’s gospel testifies to this fact again and again (Jn. 1:1, 3; 18; 8:58). John, as do the rest of the New Testament writers, see Jesus as the embodiment of Israel’s God—the only true God. And, as we read through the New Testament we come to find that the only true God has revealed himself in the person of Jesus so that everyone who would come to believe in the only true God would do so by seeing him as being made manifest in the person and work of Jesus.
Eternal life is found in knowing the only true God and the only true God has made himself supremely knowable in Jesus.