Abundant Life: What Did He Really Mean?
“I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”
— John 10:10
For years, I read this passage the way many of us do. Abundant life sounded like a promise of “more.” More health, more success, more security, more of whatever we happen to value at the time.
In other words, more of the world.
And yet, if we are honest, the world has never quite delivered on that promise. Even at its best, it gives with one hand and takes with the other. Gains are temporary. Security is fragile. What appears to increase today can disappear tomorrow.
So what kind of abundance was Jesus pointing to?
From the perspective of A Course in Miracles, the answer begins with a simple but unsettling idea: what we call “life” in the body is not life at all, but a kind of misperception. The Course reminds us, “Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.” (T-In.2:2–3)
If that is true, then “abundant life” cannot refer to something that comes and goes.
It must refer to something that does not change.
The Course speaks of life as extension, not accumulation. Life is not about getting more. It is about recognizing what has never been lost. What we are in truth is already whole, already complete, already safe in a way the world cannot offer.
Abundance, then, is not measured in quantity, but in awareness.
It is the quiet recognition that nothing real is missing.
When Jesus speaks of coming that we might have life more abundantly, we might hear it not as a promise to improve the dream, but as an invitation to awaken from it. Not to rearrange the conditions of the world, but to see through them.
The shift is subtle but profound.
Instead of asking, “How can I have more?” we begin to ask, “What am I already?”
And in that question, something begins to loosen.
The endless striving softens. The need to defend, to compete, to secure our place in an uncertain world starts to fade. We begin to notice that peace does not come from what we add to our lives, but from what we are willing to release.
Judgment. Fear. The belief in lack.
The Course would say that these are the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence. Remove the blocks, and what remains is what has always been there.
That is abundance.
It does not depend on circumstances. It does not fluctuate with outcomes. It is not improved by gain or diminished by loss.
It simply is.
And when it is recognized, even briefly, the world is seen differently. Situations that once felt threatening begin to soften. Relationships shift. Not because the world has changed, but because the lens through which we see it has.
Abundant life, then, is not a future reward.
It is a present recognition.
It is the moment we stop trying to become something more, and instead allow ourselves to remember what we have always been.
Not lacking. Not incomplete. Not waiting.
But already whole.
And perhaps that is the quiet correction hidden in the words we have heard so often.
“I am come that they might have life…”
Not later. Not someday.
Now.
“…and that they might have it more abundantly.”
Not by adding anything to it.
But by seeing it as it is.