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Jesus gives eternal life to His followers
JOHN 10:28
28 And I will give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will tear them from My hand.
Jesus closes the parable of the good Shepherd and the flock with these comforting words, and reveals Himself as the One who has eternal life. No one lives forever except God. All creatures have a beginning and an end. Only God exists before all time and is alive forever and ever. He is eternal life.
By saying He gives eternal life to His followers, Jesus declares that He Himself is the life, and that he wants to give divine life to men who are doomed to death, He wants to put His own life, His spirit, His power and His love into His followers. He wants to make us, who are born from dust, participants in His eternity, clean us from all sin, and help us share in His divine nature. This explains why Jesus, through His shed blood, has given forgiveness of sins to His followers, so that they might be entitled to receive the Holy Spirit and eternal life. The sinner's justification and the reception of God's Spirit marks the beginning of following the good Shepherd. Christ ascended to His father in order to pour out the power of the Holy Spirit on all flesh. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear!"
With this rescue and endowment, Jesus turns sheep into shepherds, selfish men into servants, and dead men into life-givers. This privilege holds only as long as Christ´s followers stay true and faithful in following Him. Not one of them has eternal life in himself. They only have it in connection with Jesus. He is their life. If they remain with Him and in Him, they will share His life.
Before Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, he explained to the dead man´s sister, Martha, the secret of eternal life. He said:
JOHN 11:25-26
25 I am the resurrection and the life. Whosoever believes in Me, will live even though he dies; 26 and whoever lives and believes in Me, will never die. Do you believe this?
Here Jesus states the horrors of death cannot have much over His followers. He revealed to them how to escape this dread by saying: "Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies!" Whoever has real spiritual life through faith in Jesus will never die." Death becomes the gate through which he walks to enter into the glory of Christ.
Every religion, every ideology or world view that has no clear response to the fact of death, is like a child that's stillborn. Only the one who has overcome death has the right to say he knows the truth, and that he has received the authority to communicate it. Only Jesus Christ is the way and the truth and the life. Only He could say: "No one comes to the father, but through Me" (John 14:6).
The hatred of hell against God's Son and the hatred of Satan against the Father of Jesus Christ are great. He would smash the followers of Jesus to pieces if the good Shepherd would not protect the ones He blesses with eternal life. He embraces them in His arms and shelters them in His heart. He is the mighty fortress, an indestructible shelter - where His followers remain in safety. He is the realm in which Satan has no power. The hand of Christ is larger than our earth; it spans the universe. He carries all His followers in His pierced hand. He assured us with His word. He says: “No one will tear them from My hand.”
The powerlessness of Satan, in comparison to the omnipotence of Jesus, is a great comfort. We need understand: Neither death nor torture, neither fear nor despair can separate us from the love of God. No demon and not even Satan himself is able to rip us out of Jesus' hand. Even we cannot abruptly separate ourselves from Him once we have yielded to Him. Even our sins do not separate us from Him if we fall down before Him in repentance, recognize the sin we've committed, confess and hate it and turn to Him again. Whoever remains under the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ rests safely in God's omnipotence and protection. The perfect sanctuary that the followers of Christ enjoy in their Lord gives them a peace that surpasses all understanding. They remain protected in all persecutions, confident in interrogations, and will be restored to inner tranquility again, even should they be threatened or even when they are facing their final hour. Death has no power over them. They live forever. Jesus Himself has made His home within them.
The safety of the saved ones in Christ can't be broken even by mental illness, brainwashing, old age, or memory loss. The seal of the Holy Spirit remains intact in us. He is the Eternal Comforter. He bears witness to our spirit that we are children of God and will live forever.