NOTES for Joh 5:24

"What do these words mean?" What does "has eternal life" and "has passed from death into life" mean? In any case, not deliverance from physical death, for all the apostles, and John the Theologian himself too, died, and yet we consider their hearing of the word and their faith exemplary! How is it that one "does not come into judgment"? For it is also written: "It is appointed for human beings to die once, and after that the judgment" (Heb. 9:27). The word "life" can help. Life is not a completed fact, but something being carried out. Therefore life belongs not to the one who "heard" the word, but to the one who is listening to it; and faith too is a dynamic concept: between belief in the existence of God and faith in the death and resurrection of Christ there is an enormous distance. Thus the one who listens and believes is one who has set out on the path of life, the path of growth, the one who has left the path of degradation and disappearance. But what about judgment? Think about this interpretation: the believer does not come to the future judgment because he is already before the judgment, for "the judgment is this, that the light has come into the world" (John 3:19); Christ is this light, and the believer "walks in the light," that is, before the face of the One to whom the Father has given judgment. Every moment the Face of the Judge is turned toward us!