Have you already crossed over?

Описание: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” (John 5:24)

There are mornings when I wake and the light has already won. The sun is up. The sky is bright. The day has begun its quiet unfolding without consulting me. Night did not argue its case; it simply gave way. Darkness did not negotiate; it dissolved.
And sometimes I wonder whether salvation is like that.
Jesus does not say, will pass from death to life. He says, has passed. Not a future tense dangling over our heads like an exam result yet to be posted. Not a probationary status awaiting review. A completed crossing.
Has passed.
Some of us are still standing on the shoreline of fear, waiting for a trumpet blast or a celestial visa stamp. We imagine eternal life as something shelved in heaven’s storeroom, labelled “To Be Opened After Death.” But in John’s Gospel, eternal life is not merely duration. It is participation. It is relationship. It is knowing and being known by the living God.
To hear and to believe is not intellectual assent alone. It is to step into communion. It is to trust oneself into Another.
And something shifts.
Water into wine.Night into dawn.Death into life.
Not metaphor only. Ontology. Reality rearranged.
Even if my body bends toward decay—cells aging, bones thinning, breath shortening—the deepest part of me is already grafted into Christ’s indestructible life. My future is not an abstract hope; it is tethered to a Person.
“Has passed.”
It is possible to be biologically alive and spiritually entombed. To be breathing yet barricaded by shame. To be moving through the day under the constant hum of self-accusation. We may technically believe in grace, yet function as if judgment still shadows our every step.
But Jesus is startlingly clear: the one who hears and believes does not come into judgment.
Not will not—does not.
Judgment, in this sense, is not simply divine anger. It is the condition of standing condemned, self-prosecuting, forever on trial. And Christ says that condition has been interrupted. Cancelled. Crossed over.
Mitch Albom once wrote, “Death ends a life, not a relationship.” That line lingers because it touches something deeply Johannine. In John’s world, belief is not assent to a proposition; it is attachment to a Person. If eternal life is relationship with God in Christ, then death cannot sever what God has joined.
Relationship does not terminate at the grave.
And yet, how often do we live as though it has not even begun?
E.E. Cummings observed, “Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.” How piercing that is. Survival is not the same as vitality. Existing is not the same as flourishing. We can avoid catastrophe and still miss communion.
The tragedy is not that we will die one day. The tragedy is that we might postpone living until then.
Eternal life is not merely what happens after the flatline. It is the quality of life that flows from union with Christ now—life suffused with grace, thick with mercy, untethered from fear of condemnation. It is the audacity to rise in the morning believing that the verdict over your life has already been spoken: beloved.
Nothing can sour the freshness of that sunrise unless we insist on closing the curtains.
There is a holy defiance in John 5:24. It refuses to let death have the final definition. It refuses to let judgment have the final word. It insists that the decisive movement has already occurred. The crossing has happened. The bridge has been walked.
The question is not whether eternal life exists somewhere in the distant future.
The question is whether we will live as though we have already stepped into it.
Today is not rehearsal. It is participation.
Today is not a waiting room for heaven. It is the first room of it.
So I wake. Perhaps the sun has already risen. Perhaps grace has already flooded the horizon. Perhaps, without fully realizing it, I have already crossed over.
And so have you.

Prayer
Lord Jesus,Life of my life,
Thank You that eternal life is not postponed but present—not earned but given—not fragile but anchored in You.
Where I still live as though I am on trial,silence the accusing voices.Where I shrink back into fear of judgment,remind me that I have passed from death to life.
Teach me to hear Your word as invitation,not threat.Teach me to believe as relationship,not mere agreement.
Let this day be more than survival.Let it be participation in Your life—joy without apology,grace without suspicion,hope without expiry.
Even as my body ages,keep my spirit rooted in Your indestructible love.When death comes,let it find me already alive in You.
Today, I rise—not merely un-dead,but truly alive—in the joy of knowing You.
Amen.