“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. John 5:24 (NKJV)
Here we are presented with a graphic and vivid portrait of the difference between the existence without Christ and the life in Christ. It is the difference between death and life.
There’s no life outside of Jesus Christ because He Himself is our life -Colossians 3:4. So death means without Christ. The Apostle Paul says ” to live is Christ”-Philippians 1:21.
Jesus serves and sustains us with His own Life as we hear and believe His Words. It means this Everlasting Life from the Father is communicated through the spoken Word. No wonder it’s called the Word of Life- 1John1:1.
When we hear the Word of Jesus we pass from death to life. We pass from fear, guilt, shame, condemnation and death including physical death to faith, peace, confidence, justification and life. The woman caught in adultery and dragged to Jesus by the Jews who claimed to keep and defend the law was in the jaws of death. She was in fear, guilt, shame, condemnation, and faced imminent death by stoning.
But then Jesus spoke the Words of Life, first He addressed the accusers telling them – “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” John 8:7 (NKJV)
All those who accused the woman stealthily slipped away one by one.
As we hear the Words of Jesus everyone and everything that accuses, condemns and seeks to bring us death disappears. Fear, shame, defeat, lack, oppression all dissolve away as we hear and believe the Words of Him who forgives, justifies, builds, protects, lovingly corrects and gently counsels and guides us.
Jesus left alone with the woman asked her where her accusers were, that has no one condemned her? There was none. John 8:8-11. Then Jesus continued with the Word of Life to the woman saying “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.” John 8:11 (NKJV). God doesn’t condemn you no matter what you’ve done or where you’ve been. His Son has borne your wrongs, mistakes and unworthiness, now go and sin no more. This is what it means to pass from death to life.