The Lord and Giver of Life.
I. If religion had nothing to do with this life, it would be enough to become religious when we are on the point of departing from life, when we are on the borders of another world; but it is never thus that the Bible speaks of religion. Rather it tells us that religion has the promise of this life as well as of that which is to come; that it is not a mere death-bed ornament, but something that beautifies, elevates, and makes noble this present life. Without it a man cannot live the highest life of which he is capable. There may be existence without religion, but not the sort of life which his Creator intended man to live. This being so, we are not surprised that the text speaks of religion as something which we should have in our present life. It does not say that he that hath the Son shall have life, but "He that hath the Son hathlife." As the oak is contained in the acorn, so eternal life has its seed and first beginnings in the life we are living now.
II. Having the Son seems to mean, in the first instance, having the revelation which God gave by His Son. God taught us through Jesus Christ that sin is a very terrible thing, so terrible that it cost the death of the Son of God. But He did not stop here: He proved to us at the same time His great love to us sinners. Let a man once realise that the revelation made by Jesus Christ is true for him personally, and a new life will be communicated to his soul from the Lord and Giver of life. He has the Son now; and therefore he realises the fact that he has a share of the life, spiritual, regenerate, eternal, which Christ promised to His faithful disciples.
III. A true Christian is one who lives a double life: the ordinary life which all men live and an inner, secret life which is hid with Christ in God. This life is the scene, so to speak, of his greatest joys and sorrows, and Christ is the Sharer of both. He is the Head, and each true believer one of His members. He is the Vine, and we are His branches; and we are strong, healthy, and fruitful only by deriving sap and nourishment from the Vine.
E. J. Hardy, Faint yet Pursuing,p. 231.
Christ the Life of the Soul.
It is a very difficult thing to define accurately what we mean by life. Perhaps we shall not be very far wrong if we say that in its highest sense life is that state of which any being is, or feels that it is, capable. So that when anything has reached its true condition, that is its life.
I. The life of every one lies in that Divine particle which man originally received. That particle is lost quite lost. Christ is the only Son of God. Therefore in Christ the Divine particle has descended. It is only in Christ, it can only be by connection with Christ, that any son of Adam can regain the Divine particle of life wherewith he was originally endowed, and which is essentially man's life. Therefore "he that hath the Son hath life."
II. We all have felt the difference between the cold effect of a picture we look at and the glow of the touch of its living original. We are too accustomed to deal with the holy truths of our religion as pictures. We look at them, but they do not speak to us; we admire them, but we are not influenced by them; we dream about them, but it is not action. The sentiment is strong, but there is little principle. There is much poetry, but it is not life. All this is "not to have Christ." Possession of Christ appears to me to be made up of three things. (1) The Christian has Christ's work. Believe it, as a matter of actual historical fact, that Christ did bear the cross for you, and the life for man He has received back from the Father He now holds in heaven for you; and that assent of your heart to that great truth immediately makes that great truth your own. (2) The Christian has Christ Himself. We want a presence, an all-pervading, happy, constant presence, with us. We want a love which we can grasp, which we are conscious shall never decrease. We want the glory of an eternity thrown over us. All this we have if we have Christ (3) But a man's life does not lie only in these things. There is a deep, secret, mystic being which every one holds a life within life. It is the life of the Holy Ghost. There must be the real feeding upon Christ in the soul of a man if he would maintain what is, after all, his truest life. If a man would live, he must lay up Christ always in the recesses of his innermost, secret affections.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,2nd series, p. 228.
References: 1 John 5:12. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xiii., No. 755. 1 John 5:13. Ibid.,vol. xxx., No. 1791. 1 John 5:13-15. Ibid.,vol. x., No. 596.