"For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God."
~ John 3:16-21
Today is March 16 (3/16) so I thought I would do John 3:16 and some verses following. During the time of Adam and Eve "The Fall" took place and sin entered the world. Since then there has been darkness in the world. We are all sinners and we sin every day. Even though there is still darkness in this world because there are those who don't believe and even those who do believe do commit sins, there is still Light in the world because God sent His only son, Jesus, to die for us. Through this merciful act of God we can all have hope. God didn't send Jesus to the world so that we would feel even worse because we commit sin and Jesus was perfect. He didn't send Jesus so that He would look at all of us sinners and tell us that we are worth no good and should be condemned. God sent Jesus for a much better thing and something that only one who is graceful can do. We are sinners and we need forgiveness and sometimes it is hard for us to forgive others, but because of Jesus we have hope that we are forgiven and will have eternal life.
The good news for us is that God sent Jesus to be our light and to save us from the darkness. Jesus is the truth and if we believe in that we come into the Light. Being in the light we can see all that God has done, does and will forever do for us. By being in the light we can see the evil things that others do and we have the power from God to turn away from the things of the darkness and go find something in the light to do. When we follow the light we are following the path to Jesus which then leads us to God. God sent Jesus to us so that we can go into the light and see all of the great things that God has done for us.
Remember that Jesus is the truth and the light.
Justina Marie
Again ty Justina. I always like to remember v. 17 also which today is a good reminder of St Patrick. He was kidnapped into slavery in Ireland but managed to escape and later devoted his adult life to sharing the love of Jesus with his former captors.
ReplyDeleteFollowing the example of his own Savior Patrick did not judge those who had done him harm. Instead he had compassion on them and shared the good news of God s eternal Love with them. Jesus is nothing about judgment. He is EVERYTHING about forgiveness and love. :)