Christ Jesus said (John 17:3), "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." We understand from this that eternal life is knowing and understanding God as Spirit, and man as His eternal reflection. Since Jesus used the present tense of the verb, he must have meant that this life is available and demonstrable here and now.
Mary Baker Eddy, through consecrated study and divine revelation, has given to us in Christian Science a spiritual interpretation of the inspired words of the Bible, showing God to be incorporeal Life, Truth, and Love. Through a study of this Science we come into an understanding of God and the divine coincidence of God and man as exemplified by Christ Jesus. The distinction which Science makes between Jesus and Christ will be found helpful in understanding this declaration by the Master. Jesus, the highest human concept of the divine idea, exemplified the incorporeal Christ, the divine manifestation of God. God must be known not as a mere abstraction remote from human experience, but as an active, living presence destroying the errors of mortal sense and revealing the true idea, the image and likeness of God—the man of Mind's perfect creation. The activity of God is the forever Christ taking away the sins of the world and revealing Life in God, good, as eternal, perfect, and infinite.
The Psalmist declared (Ps. 16:11), "Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." He could not have been thinking of the path of life as a span of human existence between the experiences of material birth and death. He was seeking divine guidance to a spiritual sense of life, which would be a well-spring of unending joy in God's eternal presence. In Christian Science, we learn that this "path of life" can be found by those who not only seek but also strive to uplift human thought of life to a consciousness of the divine perfection.
