from deadness in trespasses and sins to spiritual life is described by the apostle John in these words: “Do not marvel, brothers, that the world hates you. We know we have passed over from death to life, because we love the brothers. He who does not love remains in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a manslayer, and you know that no manslayer has everlasting life remaining in him.” That his Christian brothers might continue to prove worthy of everlasting life in God’s new order of things, John adds: “Little children, let us love, neither in word nor with the tongue, but in deed and truth.”—1 John 3:13-15, 18.

26. What does such love move them to do, and hence from whose standpoint are they alive?

²⁶ Such love is a fruitage of God’s spirit with such Christians, and it moves them to obey God’s commandments. As 1 John 5:3 reminds us: “This is what the love of God means, that we observe his commandments; and yet his commandments are not burdensome.” Those who keep God’s commandments as applying to Christ’s followers are really alive from God’s standpoint, spiritually alive now.

Out of the Tombs to a “Resurrection of Life”

 1. Into what kind of life have those who become associate judges with Christ entered while yet on earth, and how?

DOWN through the past nineteen centuries the persons whom God has chosen to become associate judges with his Son in the heavenly kingdom have heard the voice of the Son of God and, because of giving heed to what his voice told them to do, they have entered into a spiritual life while yet on this earth. They have been justified from the condemned condition of the world of mankind that is dead in its trespasses and sins and hateful spirit. God has relieved them of the condemnation of death through the sacrificial death that his Son suffered for all believers.—Rom. 5:1; 8:1-4.

 2. To what, in John 5:26, did Jesus refer by the expression “life in himself”?

² Jesus Christ referred to his part in connection with God’s act of bringing the believers from death across to life, when Jesus next said: “For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted also to the Son to have life in himself.” In view of how Jesus argued in his discourse here, he did not refer to what some persons call “inherent life” in either his heavenly Father or himself, or ‘self-existence’ according to An American Translation. (John 5:26) According to his argument Jesus referred to the power to impart life. Hence the New English Bible (of 1961) puts Jesus’ words this way: “For as the Father has life-giving power in himself, so has the Son, by the Father’s gift.”