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, it is 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 faith exemplary! How is it that one "does not come into judgment"? After all, it is written: "It is appointed for men once to die, and after that judgment" (Heb. 9:27). The word "life" can help. Life is not an accomplished fact, but something being accomplished. Therefore life belongs not to the one who "heard" the word, but to the one who is hearing it; and faith is also 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 hears and believes is one who has set out on the path of life, the path of growth, one who has left the path of degradation and disappearance. But what about judgment? Consider this interpretation: the believer does not come to the future judgment because he is already before judgment, for "judgment consists in 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.