Part Four: Eternal Life Begins Now

The Radical Redefinition of Eternal Life as Present-Tense Knowing — John 17:3

“Now this is eternal life – that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent.”

— John 17:3 (NET)

There is a sentence in John 17 that most Christians have memorized in the abstract and almost none have received in full. It is spoken by Jesus while He is praying to the Father the night before His crucifixion, and it defines the central benefit of everything He is about to accomplish on the cross in a way that almost no discipleship curriculum ever addresses directly.

He does not define eternal life as heaven. He does not define it as the absence of hell. He does not define it as the resurrection of the body, though that is included in it. He does not define it as everlasting duration, though it has no end. He defines it as knowing.

“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”

The word “Now” is doing more work in that sentence than a casual reading suggests. It is not “Now, as in: here is my definition.” It is “Now, as in: at this present moment.” As in: this is what eternal life is, and it is available now. Not after death. Not at the resurrection. Not in the age to come only. Now. Presently. In the body, on the earth, in the middle of the war.

Part Four of Volume II unpacks this single verse across three chapters. It is a short Part in number of chapters, not in weight. Everything in this handbook — Volume I and Volume II combined — is in service of the thing this verse names. All the commands, all the armor, all the authority, all the disciplines, all the cultural engagement, all the disciple-making — they are the expression of a life in which the present-tense knowing of God is the primary reality. Strip that knowing away, and everything else is religion. Receive the knowing, and everything else becomes worship.