What did Jesus actually promise?

The claim under examination: Jesus offered eternal life as a present gift, received by believing in him, not earned by performance.

Standard · preponderance of the evidence, not proof

◆ The case for

"Has eternal life." In John 5:24 the believer has it now, does not come into judgment, and has already passed from death to life.
Repeated and direct. John 3:16, John 6:47, the woman at the well, the criminal on the cross with no time left to earn anything.
Present tense means assurance is possible, because it rests on the giver's promise, not your unfinished score.

◇ The case against

The hard sayings are real. Take up your cross; the sheep and the goats; "not everyone who says Lord, Lord."
What does "believe" include? Christians divide over whether it means simple trust or trust plus surrender and perseverance.
Free Grace gets no free pass — it must explain those passages, not file them away.

The verdict

DisprovenUnlikelyPlausibleStrongly supportedEstablished

That John repeatedly presents eternal life as a present gift received by believing is strongly supported, and it gives a real basis for present assurance if read in its ordinary sense. That this simple reading settles every hard passage is not yet established — which is why Christians still argue.

If you read nothing else

The clearest promise is strikingly simple, and present tense.

At his most direct, Jesus made eternal life a gift received by trusting him, not a wage earned after a lifetime of performance. That changes the assurance question entirely. The hard sayings still have to be faced, and that is the final argument.