“And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?”(John 11:26).
The Lord Jesus makes five different never promises to anyone who believes in Him. Whoever believes in Him will never: 1) thirst, 2) hunger, 3) be cast out, 4) perish, or 5) die [spiritually].
In part 5, we will consider the fifth never promise in John’s Gospel—the promise that the believer will never die. It’s found in John 11:26.
In the previous verse, John 11:25, the Lord said that the one who believes in Him, though he should die, yet he will live. That is the promise of the resurrection and glorification of the believer. In verse 26, when the Lord said that the believer will never die, He was not talking about physical death. He was talking about spiritual death. The believer has everlasting life and can never lose it.
Only here in John’s Gospel do we see the condition “whoever lives.” John 3:16 doesn’t say that. No other verse does. So why did the Lord add it here? He was denying the possibility of postmortem conversions (cf. Heb 9:27). Once an unbeliever dies, his eternal destiny is set, even if he later comes to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (John 11:27; 20:31).
Leon Morris comments,
Everyone who lives and believes on Jesus (one article ties the two closely together; life and faith must be understood in the closest of connections) will never die. Jesus does not, of course, mean that the believer will not die physically. Lazarus was dead even then, and millions of Jesus’ followers have died since. He means rather that believers will not die in the sense in which death has eternal significance. They will not die in the age to come. They have eternal life, the life of the age to come (John, p. 489).
A. T. Robertson agrees, saying, “Strong double negative ou mē with second aorist active subjunctive of apothnēskō again (but spiritual death, this time), ‘shall not die for ever’ (eternal death).” (Word Pictures in the New Testament, s.v. John 11:26).
Unlike the unbeliever, the believer’s eternal destiny does not hang in the balance until he dies, as, sadly, many Christian traditions teach in contradiction to the five never promises. The believer is secure the moment he first believes in Christ for everlasting life. He is guaranteed never to die spiritually.
Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.
Keep grace in focus, and you’ll never fear dying spiritually.
