[AI translation] If there is any way to distinguish between one verse and another in the Bible in terms of importance, let me tell you that for me this saying of Jesus is one of the most important. It is one of the verses that I think about most, that is most deeply engraved in my heart, and I think not only in mine. The most fundamental questions of our faith, the issues of life and death, salvation and damnation, are the ones that Jesus speaks about here in the most basic and simplest way. And it is also good for us sometimes - in the midst of other current daily problems - to discuss these most fundamental questions of our faith. That is why I want to talk about this Word today.I am struck by this saying of Jesus. Let's realise what we are talking about here! Someone who has eternal life! Not will be, once he dies and rises again in eternity, but already is! Here, now, he has eternal life! Someone who has already begun eternal life in this earthly life. Furthermore, we are talking here about someone who is not going to damnation - or rather to judgment - that is, someone who is already, as it were, beyond judgment, who is no longer anxious about what will happen there at the last great judgment, where everything will be revealed, when everything will have to be accounted for, because he is already beyond it. And also someone who has already passed from death to life. And it's not a typo, it's the letter "t"! Jesus deliberately said in the past tense: "he has passed from death to life" - so it's not that he will pass from death to life, so he's not making a promise, which refers to the future, to the elusive, nebulous uncertainty, but Jesus is stating as an event that has already happened, a reality, a fact: there is a person who has already passed from death to life. So, once again, Jesus is not saying these things about a person who has died after a life of grace, but about someone who is alive here and now. So here, now, among us, there can be people who have eternal life, who are not going to judgment, who have already passed from death to life.
First, it means that the Bible has a very different concept of life and death than we do. God has a different view and understanding of life and death than we do. Let me illustrate with an example. We are all familiar with those modern fluorescent tubes that make our bodies look as if they were dead. You look at your own hand or the face of a loved one and you are almost shocked because everything is dead-coloured in this light. And now imagine what it would be like if God shone his light on us, and we had to see ourselves and each other as God sees us! Then we might better understand the meaning of that strange phrase in Revelation, "It is your name that you are alive and dead!" Yes, if we saw it in the light of God's light, we would understand that "being dead" is not something that is still ahead of us, something that is still waiting for us in the future, but that we humans can be dead while we are alive here. So when God speaks of life and death, it is not a question of whether the pulse is still beating in someone or has stopped - the great boundary between life and death is somewhere else entirely, not where human science or observation establishes it, but where God draws that line.
Now, to be very specific: God is life! As Jesus said. "I am Life!" So, according to the Bible, true life - that is why we can say eternal life, that is, life that is not threatened with death - is only found where there is communion with God. And death is where this communion with God, with Life, is broken! In a way, it is like a cut flower: outwardly it may not be so different from the uncut flower, the one that is still connected to the root and receives the life-fluids, but in fact it is already dead, because the flow of life has been interrupted in it. The apostle Paul speaks in Ephesians of those who are "alienated from the life of God" (Eph 4,18). Life separated from the source of life, eternal life. Or as we read in Ephesians 2:12, "You, I say, were at that time without Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and absent from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world." Well, that's death! And that's basically what Paul also writes in Ephesians, "You were dead in your trespasses and sins!" So this death is a spiritual state, and a spiritual state under the power of sin. Sin itself is death, not the individual sinful acts, but sin as contamination; sin as corruption; sin as deadly poison, as the damning poison of hell in a person's life, heart, mind, body, soul - that is death! So it is not death as a physical process, but death as a state! It is the state in which we are all involved - we are not born into it, we are not born into it! For the story of Adam and Eve means that man is made for communion with God, but man lives in separation from God! We are all born outside Paradise, in a state of separation from the Tree of Life - and that is death! This death is not depravity - being contaminated with sin does not necessarily mean being a villain - but a way of being separated from God, a life that lacks eternal life!
Remember the figure of the rich young man? He claims not to have stolen, not to have murdered, to have respected his father and mother, to have kept the commandments from childhood, to have many fine virtues - but with all these fine virtues he is in death, because eternal life does not depend on his never having stolen or lied, but on the one defect which Jesus points out, namely, that his life is separated from God! Well, his heart is not bound to God, but to his possessions, he cannot get rid of them. This sympathetic, virtuous, religious, rich young man is like a beautiful flower, but cut off! And that is the danger of this state of death: that it does not seem to be death! It sometimes looks deceptively like life! One of the most astonishing verses in the Bible is Pro 14:12: "There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, and the way that goeth unto death is the end." So sometimes the way seems right, and there is nothing wrong, wrong, wrong, evil, evil, evil in it - and in the end it turns out that this way that seems right was the way to death! So often it may not be wrong what one does on that road - and it may even be very right - but the road is not right, because no matter how beautiful and good things one does on it, it is not the road of life, but the road of death!
Of course, more often than not, the signs of this death are visible! Do you know what are the signs that one is living in death, that one is dead in the eyes of God? It is like, for example, a lack of peace: that there is no inner peace in the heart. Or discontentment, when one is dissatisfied with his fate, feeling sorry for himself. Or hopelessness. Or, for example, one of the very typical signs of death is anger: a festering, unquenchable anger towards someone. Jesus says that whoever is angry with his brother is worthy of judgment. How unmistakably God says in His Word, "We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. He that hateth his brother is a murderer of men: and ye know that no murderer of men hath eternal life" (1 John 3:14-15) So if you cannot love someone, that is also a sign of death, because a dead soul cannot love, a dead soul cannot rejoice, cannot be patient, a dead soul has no peace.
Someone may say now, "But why talk so much about it, it's fine with me! If I've been in that certain state of death, I'll be all right after this. Is it really good for you? Are you happy in this state? And even if it is good for you, is it good for those with whom you live? Is it good for your wife, is it good for your colleagues? And are you really good for yourself as you are?I am talking about this at such length so that none of us can delude ourselves that we have nothing to do with this spiritual death. "He has passed from death to life". Well, whoever has not yet passed from this death to life is still in this death! And do you know when this death is conscious quite clearly? When one can say what I once heard a brother say: Yes, that is the danger of this death: if something does not happen to you before the bodily death, it will become eternal death. He who dies in the state of separation from God, that is, in the state of death, is lost! Completely lost! The Scriptures even call this the second death! The first death is the one we are born into, but from this we can still pass into eternal life. But if this does not happen until the bodily death, then comes the second death, from which there is no more transition to eternal life. Remember the example of Lazarus and the rich man? Between heaven (eternal life) and hell (eternal death) "there is a great difference, so that they who would" pass from heaven to hell "cannot pass, neither can they pass from thence...to hell." (Lk 16,26) These basic teachings of the Bible are very seldom mentioned nowadays, but I would like to emphasize very strongly that we should not be lulled into some false illusion!
If this is true - and God has indeed made it known to us - then the most vital question for all of us is: how is it possible to pass from death to life? One could ask: who is the one who has already passed from death to life? Look, this is what Jesus says: "He who hears my word and believes him who sent me away!" In other words, the question of death and life turns for us on the person of Jesus, on the relationship with Him. "He who hears my word", says Jesus. Obviously, this does not mean to perceive certain sound vibrations with the sense of hearing, but to hear in a different way. Perhaps it is not so much hearing with the ear as with the heart! In a way, the words of Scripture, or the words of a sermon, are no longer mere words, like our human words, but the One of whom they speak almost steps out of the letters, stands before us, reaches out to us, takes hold of us and never lets us go. I have seen many times that the word of Jesus became the word of life for someone, that the word of Jesus brought eternal life into a dead soul, that the word of Jesus brought someone from death to life! "He who believes in him who has sent me away", says Jesus. So whoever believes in the God who sent Jesus as Saviour. Not believing in God in general, but believing in God who reveals himself in Jesus - he has eternal life! You see, Zacchaeus here believed in God, because he was a son of Abraham, a member of the chosen people, but he really lived from the moment he met Jesus, when Jesus came to him. Because the word of Jesus - life! Whoever hears it, whoever receives it, is reconnected to Life, to the life of God, to eternal life! Where Jesus enters, life is present, eternal life begins.
And now, my brother, you who said that you know that if you died now you would be damned: do you hear with your heart, with your faith, the word of Jesus, that He is already damned in your place?! What God would condemn you for, He has already condemned you for, so He has taken your condemnation upon Himself, so it is you who do not have to go to judgment! Yes, if you have now heard this word of Jesus with your heart, you have now taken it to your heart, and if you now believe that this is why God sent His Holy Son, then you have now passed from death to life!!! For sometimes we hear a man speak and yet a voice from another world speaks to us! Well, is that how you hear His voice now? Not mine. For truly He is saying to you: that you too, who know that you would be damned, may say right now: I know that I would be saved if I died, because I know that I have passed from death to life! And how Jesus says to Zacchaeus, "Today this house is saved." So he's not encouraging him not to be afraid, he will be saved when he dies - but TODAY! Whoever has passed from death to life has salvation! And it shows. This is practical! Look, Zacchaeus, when he received Jesus, the result was that a lot of people's lives were changed for the better. Zacchaeus distributes his wealth, makes fourfold restitution to those he wronged, smiles break out on troubled faces, tears dry up, tempers flare, hatred is released, life becomes happy! You see, this is the present-day aspect of salvation, of eternal life. This is the earthly forerunner of heavenly salvation. It is a good thing, then, a good thing for the whole world, when one passes from death to life! Not only is there joy in heaven among the angels of God when a man in Christ is given new life, but there is joy on earth at the same time in the lives of many people. How good it would be to live like that!
"Truly, truly, I say to you," Jesus begins. When he wanted to emphasize something very much, when he wanted to say something fundamental, Jesus began. And if you have now heard His word, and if you now believe in the God who gave Jesus for you, then you too have eternal life, you will not go to judgment, but you will have passed from death to life! And then you can now go back with the powers of eternity, out into life on earth to love, to serve, to bring joy to other people.
Amen!
Date: 19 November 1961.
Lesson
Lk 19,1-10