Probably no passage of scripture is better known or better loved than John 3:16 (explored here in a meditation from my book A Most Amazing Man Year B). It’s been quoted and requoted time and again; and why not, for it sums up what the gospel message is all about – the love of God taking flesh and being made known to us in Jesus. If you take nothing else away from this season of Lent, let the one truth it reinforces for you be that – no matter how much is may not seem so in current circumstances – God loves you and everyone with a love that will never let us go.
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For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. John 3:16
The meditation of John the Evangelist
It took me a long time to grasp it,
a lifetime of reflection on what his life, death and resurrection
actually mean,
but finally the truth crystallised in a few simple words:
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him may not perish,
but may have eternal life.
It’s simple, isn’t it,
yet somehow, with the best of intentions,
we make it instead so complex.
To hear some people talk,
believers included,
you’d think God feels just the opposite:
that he’s concerned to judge rather than bless,
condemn rather than forgive,
punish rather than redeem.
‘Believe this’ they say,
‘believe that’,
commitment becoming a matter of jumping through the right hoops,
and woe betide us if we don’t.
But that’s their message,
not his;
a reflection of how much we struggle to accept his sheer grace,
his wholly undeserved love and pardon.
He asks merely that we believe in him –
no more,
no less.
Do that, and we will discover the secret of eternal life,
and, ridiculous though it may seem,
contradicting our every sense of justice and fair play,
we will receive that gift not because we love God
but because he loves us.
Pray
Sovereign God,
the words trip off the tongue easily enough –
that yours is the way of love,
that you loved the world enough to die for it,
that you are love itself –
but though we dutifully repeat such ideas
and though we accept them in theory,
in practice we struggle to accept the wonder of that message,
instead setting human limits to your grace and goodness.
Our own love is partial, flawed, conditional,
as much about ourselves as others,
and we subconsciously expect yours to be the same,
somehow dependent on us doing, saying or being the right thing.
Open our hearts to your gracious mercy that accepts us as we are –
to your love that will never let us go.
Amen.