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: all the apostles, and John the Theologian himself, died, and yet we consider their hearing of the word and their faith exemplary. How can it be that such a person "does not come into judgment"? After all, it says: "It is appointed for men to die once, and after this comes judgment" (Heb 9:27).

The word "life" can help here. Life is not an accomplished fact, but something that is taking place. Therefore life belongs not to the one who "heard" the word, but to the one who is hearing it; and faith too is a dynamic concept: the distance between faith in God's existence and faith in Christ's death and resurrection is enormous. Thus the one who listens and believes is someone who has stepped onto the path of life, the path of growth, someone who has left the path of degradation and disappearance.

And what about judgment? It can be understood this way: the believer does not come to the future judgment because he is already before the judgment, for "this is the judgment, 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.