ABUNDANT LIFE

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I am come that they might have life, and…have it more abundantly— St. John 10:10
This famous statement by Jesus Christ abounds throughout Christendom. The phrase "abundant life" seems to pop up almost everywhere from church doors to graffiti in church rest rooms.
The reason is obvious. To most people, the idea of having abundant life certainly sounds better than the alternative of being dead and gone forever. Even devout Christians, for the most part, aren’t in any hurry to depart from the land of the living any sooner than necessary.
St. John 10:10, indeed, seems sometimes to be taken to mean "Party hearty" or
"Let the good times roll" until Jesus returns.
Maybe that’s okay, but let’s look a little closer at the Lord’s words.       

I am come that they might have life
This really means that people on earth did NOT have life before Jesus came. "We had the sentence of death in ourselves," writes St. Paul in Second Corinthians I:9. "We were dead  in sins" —Ephesians II:5.
Why were we dead? Well, it all goes back to the Garden of Eden…

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In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth…
the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a
living soul —Genesis 1; 2:7

To me, the simple creation account in Genesis seems easier to believe than modern speculation about the origins of the Universe, life on Earth, and Homo sapiens. Theories like "The Evolution of Species," "The Big Bang," etc. all fail to answer one fundamental question: "How could something come from nothing?"
A big bang in the midst of nothingness would have nothing to explode. If humans evolved out of muck over millions of years, where did the muck come from in the first place?
De nihilo nihilum, wrote the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD). "From nothing comes nothing," and yet our world is here. How can this be?
Because of such unanswered questions, I just accept on faith the biblical account that God created Earth, created Adam and gave him life. Yes, it’s a quite a leap of faith, but no more so than is required to believe in more scientific explanations.
Elements of allegory or "poetic license" may be found in Genesis, as in the parables of Jesus, but the book makes clear its main premises. Adam and his habitat were created perfect. There was no death, but there were the wild cards of free will and temptation.
There was only one commandment:
of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye
shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.— Genesis 3:3
By breaking that one rule, Adam and Eve forfeited the long, healthy, happy life which God had intended for them. From then on, life for human beings would be "nasty, brutish and short."*

*Leviathon by Thomas Hobbs

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Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away
their breath, they die and return to their dust.— Psalm 104:29
The psalmist must have been thinking of Adam and Eve when he wrote this. These lines perfectly describe their predicament after disobeying the one commandment God had given them.
God had breathed his own Spirit of eternal life into Adam’s body [and, by extension, Eve’s]. Now that Spirit was withdrawn. They would die, sooner or later. So would all their descendents. The Apostle Paul puts it well…
Through the offence of one many be dead—Romans 5:15

The "offence of one" Paul refers to is Adam’s sin in disobeying God. "Many be dead" refers to most of the millions of humans who came afterward. Most, but not all…
     Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God  Jesus taught in St. John 3:3. Only those few individuals "born again" are the rare exceptions to Paul’s pronouncement that "many be dead."
"How can a man be born when he is old?" The pharisee Nicodemus asks Jesus during their secret nighttime conversation. [St. John 3:1-21]

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Ye must be born again—St. John 3:7
We don’t know if Nicodemus ever fully understood the answer to his riddle, "How can a man be born when he is old?" All we know is that he went on to bravely defend Jesus before the Sanhedron. [St. John 7:51] After the crucifixion, Nicodemas provided expensive spices for the Lord’s burial. [St. John 19:39]  If he was among those who saw the risen Christ, his misgivings surely vanished at once.
As for the riddle, many books have tried to answer it, from the days of Jesus until now. Since new books still keep coming out, it appears that none of the answers so far has ever been fully satisfactory to all. Theologians, like the pharisees of old, aren’t an easy crowd to please.
Let’s just look again at the actual words of Christ, in addressing Nicodemus …
That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the spirit is spirit.
Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. —St. John 3:6-7
Nicodemus answered and said unto Him, How can these things be? —St. John 3:9
Adam and Eve were of one flesh, the flesh that was created out of dust by God. Their flesh was corrupted, however, and their bodies were devoid of God’s spirit after their disobedience.
Because Adam and Eve’s flesh was doomed to death, all humans born since the days of Adam, are born with the curse of death in their flesh, known as "original sin." Like DNA, the sin of the first human couple is passed down in perpetuity.
In this light, the meaning of the Lord’s words to Nicodemas may be more clear. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, Jesus told him. Adam had his chance.  God wasn’t about to start over, make another man of mud, and give him new flesh

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So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations.—St. Matthew 1:17

Our inborn deficit of God’s eternal spirit is a tough nut to crack.  During all those generations— between Adam’s exile from the garden and the birth of Jesus
 —the inhabitants of earth tried innumerable ways to reconcile themselves to their creator and regain the divine spark of eternal life.
Needless to say, none of these methods worked. The tower in Babel didn’t work. Bloody sacrifice and burnt offerings didn’t work. The impossibly arcane code of conduct called "the law" didn’t work. No, nothing worked.
That which is born of flesh is flesh. And all flesh must die.
Only the birth of Christ gave mankind a second chance. Once again, the divine spirit of eternal life was alive in the flesh of one man on earth, the man Jesus. Adam, it is true, had eternal life in store for him before he sinned. Adam, however, was not born. He and Eve were each one of a kind, handmade by God.
With his virgin birth, Jesus was not begotten of the flesh, like all human beings born after Adam’s creation. The sin we call "original" was not born in him.
During the Lord’s brief ministry on earth, Jesus repeatedly made the assertion that sinners could be forgiven and eternal life could be restored to them by only one means: Belief in Himself as the son of God, having power to forgive sins on earth [St. Mark 2:10]. 
It was a simple enough assertion to take or leave. Some of those who met Him on Earth, having seen his miracles or heard his words, believed in Him at once. Witnesses to his resurrection certainly had no doubts. Nor did many in the first few generations afterward, having heard the truth from older family members and/or eyewitnesses. That’s how the Gospel spread so rapidly..
For us today, it’s more difficult. It’s been 2000 years since Christ died. We didn't see His miracles.  We didn't see Him risen from the dead.  Our minds, lacking recent evidence, often are not capable of accepting Gospel truth..In our day and age, Satan’s lies seem more plausible.
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From within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts,
Jesus told his disciples, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these things come from within and defile the man.—St. Mark 7:21-23

A common reason why "modern" men and women don’t trust fully in the promises of Jesus is that our own sins—in our own eyes—are just so heinous as to unforgivable. We may believe He was born of a virgin. We may believe He rose from the dead. We may even believe that, in general, "He died for our sins"…just not my sins.
To think this way is a fatal mistake.   As Lord told us,
             I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.                                                                                                    ―St. Mark 2:17
If we think our sins are too much for Jesus to forgive, we don't truly believe in him.
Our twenty-first century world provides far more opportunities to sin than ever before. At the same time, there is less public censure for sin than ever before. "If it feels good, do it," a catch-phrase of the 1960s, now applies to almost any human behavior imaginable. Society’s indifference, however, doesn’t change the "wages of sin—death."[Romans 6:23] After his physical death, the unforgiven sinner has nothing good to look forward to.

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      Trust the Lord with all thy heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding.
                                                                    —Proverbs 3:5   
    
As always, the Book of Proverbs, gives good advice. No one can reason his or her way to salvation. Our own understanding is so flawed as to be useless.
Suffer little children to come unto me, Jesus told the disciples in Luke:18:16-18,
 for of such is the Kingdom of God. Reading this verse, adults with a lifelong resumé of sin may feel  quite hopeless regarding their chances of salvation. What the Lord meant, though, is simply that we must stop thinking like an adult, and start trusting like a child.

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
                                                       —St. Luke 11:8-10  
He that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. —St John 6:37

Only believe.— St. Mark 5:36

I am come that they might have life, and…have it more abundantly*— St. John 10:10




^* I am the vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him,
the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.
-St. John 15:5

To bring forth much fruit is to have abundant life.
A branch that is dead brings forth nothing.