Tag: John 3:16

WE ARE GOD’S BELOVED CHILDREN

george gaffgaLeave a comment

I’ve been reading Luke 4 about the temptation of Jesus. Just before he goes into the wilderness to face the devil, he is told by God, “You are my beloved Son.” And then twice, and probably more times, he is confronted by the devil with the words, “If you really are the Son of God then act in the way the world most wants you to act… show your power; excite the people; gain popularity. And according to Matthew’s Gospel even the crowds at Jesus’ crucifixion said, ‘If you are the Son of God then come down from the cross.’ Those voices, and those words, haunt Jesus, who knows he doesn’t have to prove anything to the devil or the world, let alone that he is God’s beloved Son.

We face the temptations of voices in our heads, from family and friends, and the world’s crowds asking, ‘Are you sure you are the child of God?’ ‘Are you really God’s beloved?’ If you were wouldn’t you fit in better with this world by listening to those voices? If you were the child of God you would be smarter, sexier, richer, better looking, straighter, more sober, more religious.

But no matter who you are at this moment, you ARE THE BELOVED CHILD OF GOD.

The whole world is beloved by God before there is any addition of goodness or being better on our part. John 3:16 tells us that God so loved the world he gave his only Son…we ARE the beloved of God.

Even if you are reading this and don’t consider yourself a ‘believer in God’ please know you are loved by God and invited to trust Jesus not so you can ‘get into heaven’ but rather by trust to experience Christ’s life in the here and now. ‘Later’ will take care of itself. Jesus told everyone he met that the Kingdom, the reign, the love of God is here, right now, for everyone. Read Acts 17 sometime where Paul tells a bunch of philosophers that indeed we are all the offspring of God; and something else so wonderful – we have the DNA of God. Sure.

Read John 1:1-4: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.’ 

Jesus is the fullest expression of God’s DNA love.

 Lent is a time for reflection and self-examination; not so that we feel shame for the wrong things we have done but so we can know, in the depths of our souls, that Jesus went to the cross to prove the love of God for you, and you, and you and me. So whatever your place in life right now know that you are loved and invited to share in the greatest life ever lived. I know that’s what I want.

GOD’S NOT MAD AT US

george gaffga3 Comments

Many folks think that talking about hell and God’s judgment will bring non-believers to faith. That might be good psychology but not good biblical theology. The scripture teaches that God is love. While there is talk about wrath, the presupposition with which I begin is knowing that God’s central essence, around which God creates and sustains his whole creation, is love.

God’s anger is really against the evil to which humans succumbed. Sin is the result of idolatry. Idols have been empowered by human worship, and God in Christ is out to destroy the power of that evil and thus allowing you and me to worship God. Look at the second commandment. In Exodus 20 God says that we shall not bow down and worship any idol. Worship is reserved for the one true God. When the Israelites were freed from Egypt they were to go and ‘worship’ God, not just take a nice trip to the Promised Land. We are created to worship and love God. That’s where the only real life is to be found.

Now let us realize that after all the idolatry God has made peace with his creation through the Son’s victory over death. In Colossians 1:19,20 we read ‘For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross’ (ESV).

Christ rescues us from the dominion of darkness. ‘He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son’ (Colossians 1:13 ESV). Christ has disarmed all the powers and authorities against us.

The Bible doesn’t say that God was so angry with the world that he sent his Son (John 3:16). Rather it says that God loved his world so much. It was love –  God wanting the best for his wayward children.

See, the God we know is fully revealed in Jesus Christ. And that revelation is Love. It is the self-giving of God for God’s creation in order to reconcile us with him. And we know that the Christ on the cross is there because of LOVE. So if we start with the presupposition of a loving God we will then look at all God’s revelation in Scripture through that lens. Certainly there are passages about wrath and anger and God being sorry that he created this world but those scriptures are ‘the dark side of love’, a side that while expressed is not enacted but through the pain of the cross.

Theologian Kazoh Kitamori, in his book ‘Theology of the Pain of God’, wrote that God’s love becomes the wrath of God in his response to sin. God is sorely against sin because it alienates his creation from him. And if I may be so bold I would compare this to a human father loving his child who is bent on living a life in opposition to the love the father has for them. Take for example when my son was little and insisted upon playing in the street. After three times of telling him not to, I resorted to what he might have considered my wrath as he felt the sting of my hand on his butt. But I prefaced my action by saying, ‘Son, this is going to hurt me worse than it hurts you.’

So when the Bible speaks about the wrath of God, it means that WE experience an alienation from God when we worship idols. God has left us to our own devices but God has always been about redemption, restoration, and reconciliation. Read the book of Hosea.

Let’s look at a few passages about the wrath of God. In Ephesians 2:3 we are told we are objects of God’s wrath. But read carefully and you will notice that God loves these objects of wrath (some translations say children of wrath). You will find God’s love expressed in verse 4: ‘Because of His great love for us.’ In the MSG Version we read, ‘It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us.’

In John 3:36 we read that, ‘whoever believes in the Son has eternal life but whoever rejects the son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains upon him.’ I believe this means that outside the Son there is the darkness of an unconscious life, which is then subject to the evil in this universe. And who really wants that kind of life? ‘All he experiences of God is darkness, and an angry darkness at that’ (John 3:36 MSG).

Now one more verse – Ephesians 5:6. After a litany of the bad things humans do, Paul writes: ‘because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient.’ But there again it is the darkness of being apart from God that is experienced as wrath because remember, we were all disobedient to God, enemies of God and alienated until by grace through faith we stepped into the light of life. See Ephesians 2:4.

There are other passages but these will suffice to say that wrath is NOT the nature of God. That’s good news for all. God is not out to ‘get us’ but rather his purpose is to reconcile us to himself. As Jesus proved through the cross, this work of love pained him more than we can even imagine. That’s ‘costly grace’ that yearns for a response.