¹¹And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. ¹²He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.

God has spoken in His Word to give assurance to people who believe. We have seen two things in God’s Word on this matter. Verses 9 and 10 tell us that the greatest proof (that is, authoritative testimony) to a believer’s eternal life is that God has taken His written Word and internalized it into the believer’s inner person. This does not prove his salvation to anyone else but to the believer himself. Others cannot see into our inner person; they have only our outward actions to provide credibility to our confession of faith. However, the genuineness of our faith is evident within us, by God’s spiritual validation.

The Lord wants believers to have the assurance that we do indeed have eternal life. The grammatical tense is significant here. Our passage does not speak of a future time when God will give (future tense) us eternal life. We have (present tense) eternal life as a present possession. While the words “eternal life” encompass spiritual quality of life and relationship with the Lord, we do grave injustice to the passage if we ignore the emphasis on the word “eternal.” Eternal life has no end; it is that spiritual quality of life and relationship with the Lord that is infinite. We can never lose it or forfeit it by anything we do; otherwise, we negate what John is teaching us here by inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

This unending relationship with God that our passage calls eternal life is identified with our relationship to Jesus Christ. John speaks of a believer as one “who has the Son.” This reflects what Jesus said in the upper room the night before His crucifixion: “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). The intimate knowledge of Christ is synonymous with belief in Christ. This is eternal life, what it means to have the Son.

John speaks in black and white terms, as he is accustomed to doing. A person either believes and has the Son, or he does not believe and does not have the Son. John affords no middle ground. A person either has the testimony of God within or he does not. We conclude that the person who does not have the spiritual reality of God testifying to his inner person does not have the Son and therefore does not have the reality of eternal life. Through the Holy Spirit, this inner witness of God is powerfully convincing and assuring to the believer. To the unbeliever, without this testimony, there is no rest for the soul.

Lord, I want to live a Spirit-filled, Christ-like life so that I will never hinder Your testimony within me.