DYNAMIS!
A publication of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral
Wichita, KS
St. John 3:16-21 (5/6) CHRIST IS RISEN! Gospel for Tuesday of the
Week of Thomas
All about Love:
The
verse declares that God, from the depth of His Being, is love. His love is not limited to a single
action, nor confined by any conditions, nor bound within any time-frame. God’s love flows out from Who He is essentially.
As
First, the Lord Jesus declares that God is
concerned to “save,” not to “condemn” (vs. 17). Why then does Christ our God speak
mostly of condemnation here (vss. 17-20)? The answer is quite simple: God looks
upon a condemned race, a creation of His own making that is perishing,
sentenced to the oblivion of death.
The loving Source of Life looks lovingly upon His creation, filled with
this death, and this entire creation affronts His nature. However, let us have the humility to
acknowledge: we have brought and we bring the condemnation upon ourselves. Condemnation hovers over us as the
over-arching tragedy of our human life-experience.
Death negates all of human history and every
single human being. How is it that
we cause such a condemnation? We
stand apart from God’s outstretched, loving, life-giving hand: “men
loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (vs.
19), but our loving Lord is Light.
He comes to illumine the world, and still we love darkness rather than
light (vs. 19)! That is our
self-defeating choice, and our practice of evil demonstrates our love of
darkness (vs. 20). From Adam to the
present, we have loved darkness (compare Gen. 3:8 and Jn.
3:20).
As it was in the beginning, when God first
gave us life and breath (Gen. 2:7), so it was with the coming of God in the
flesh: Christ, the Life-giver strives lovingly to woo us away from death, that
we might have everlasting life (Jn. 3:16). He only asks that we believe in Him,
trust Him, and commit to Him, so that we and all “the world through Him
might be saved” (vs. 17).
In Genesis, God reveals that we are made in
His image (Gen. 1:27). We have the
basis for love in our inmost essence.
When the Only-Begotten Son of God came into the world, He exposed our
potential to love, and He did more than display an ideal. In a supreme act of love, He directly
attacked the evil and death that negate our capacity to love. Most assuredly the Lord Jesus is all
about love, for He Himself lovingly embraced even death to give us life in Himself.
In the Gift of the Only-Begotten Son, God acts
to restore us to Himself, that we may live in Him and love Him in His eternal
Kingdom. He does not leave us in
condemnation. Rather, He has made
His grace and forgiveness tangible (1 Jn. 1:1-3), so
that we who are dependent upon what is concrete may trust in Him. By becoming Incarnate and being one of
us, Christ our God has historically and physically given us a discernible basis
to trust in Him (vs. 18), to do the truth (vs. 21), to come to the light (vs.
21), and avoid condemnation. God
loves His world. The Lord Jesus is
palpable proof. You need not perish
eternally, but may have everlasting life in Him.
Save us, O Son of God, Who art risen from
the dead, who sing unto Thee, Alleluia.