One-of-a-kind Son of God

Wednesday in the Second Week of Easter, April 27, 2022             

(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)

One-of-a-kind Son of God

God so loved the world that …

When Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” I resonated with his question. I’m not much of a philosopher or logician, and I wouldn’t ask the question casually, cynically or cruelly, like Pilate might have. But I do struggle to identify truth, or rather TRUTH.

It’s no problem for me to believe God is truth. Jesus said, “I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life.” But Jesus IS truth, not an idea about truth. When I descend into thought about truth, all sorts of experience and observation gets in the way, mainly suffering and death of others, and soon of myself.

Is the Bible just poetry, or are its statements about the afterlife TRUE? The Bible is God’s textbook, we learn about God from it, but we make plenty of mistakes, I am sure. Like a good human teacher God turns away before She rolls her eyes, and then turns back and smiles. “Let’s try again,” She might say.

I sought the Lord and he answered me, he delivered me from all my fears. The Lord hears the cry of the poor.

In our human world, love is king of all.  It is our primary emotional truth. Paul’s poetry: “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong. If I give all I possess to the poor and give my body over to hardship, but have not love, I gain nothing.” And John said, giving great comfort, “There is no fear in love.”

Greek agape stands alongside Greek eros, philias and storge. In English all of them reduce to “love.”

In Psalm 77 the psalmist makes it clear there are points of grief where no one can accompany or join us, no one except God. When we have lost all that we can lose, God is waiting (God’s LOVE is waiting) where no one else can go, no matter if they want to go or not.

We hope. We pretend. We make stuff up. In What Dreams May Come, Robin Williams and his wife explore hell together, both determined to help the other get to heaven. Love is all we need. Love is stronger than death. Perhaps. But it sounds more like poetry than truth.

So, when Jesus defines love for Nicodemus, his words matter.

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.

There are several terms to define: world, son, believes, perish, eternal … and then, condemn, saved, through …

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned.

Every translation, classic and modern, uses either the word “condemned” or “judged.” Jesus does not pull punches here with his Pharisee friend.

As is often true, Eugene Peterson helps in The Message (John 3:16-18):

This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.

Jesus goes on. When we reject God’s light/love/truth to save our pride, we forfeit our acquittal.

Shakespeare, good Catholic Renaissance man that he was, knew we could talk ourselves out of this obvious Christian truth.

       The native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.

But we must not!

(Acts 5, Psalm 34, John 3)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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