“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.” – John 3:16-18 NIV
Most of us
believes that everybody is able to enter the kingdom of heaven at the end of
the age if they only do good deeds until the end of the age. Therefore, we tend
to obey the second commandment of God and the law of the Spirit, which is
loving others as ourselves (Mark 12:31; Romans 13:8-10). This is because if we love
one another, then we automatically change this evil world into the peaceful
world that God wants it to be (Colossians 3:12-15), due to the fact that
love covers over a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8). Furthermore, we might
misunderstand what John 3:16 really means. We think that ‘... whoever
believes about him shall not perish but have eternal life’ is same as “… whoever believes in him shall not perish but
have eternal life.” Hence, we may even read a lot of theological books to
get more knowledge of God, in order to get qualification to enter the kingdom
of heaven at the end of the age.
However, the true
meaning of John 3:16-18 is same as ‘whoever trusts in the
Lord until the end of the age shall not perish but have eternal life.’ This is because
if we trust in the Lord (Proverbs 3:5-8), then we are basically
inside of Jesus Christ—living our lives according how God wants us to live (Galatians 2:19-21). In addition to this,
the word of God declares, “Those who
belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since
we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:24-25) Yes, of course, it is
necessary for us to love everyone else our lives to make this evil world into the
peaceful one by doing good deeds but God wants us to put trust in the Lord
firsthand and believes in Him until the end of the age. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not
from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For
we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God
prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:8-10) Furthermore, not
believing in Jesus Christ until the end of the age is the biggest sin that we
are going to make (John 16:8-11), even though it is not
physical, because we have actually been created by God to be His image (Genesis 1:27) and Jesus Christ is the
perfect image of God (Colossians 1:15). In other words, if we do
not believe in Jesus, then we deny the fact that God has created us. In
addition to this, we also deny that Jesus is powerfully working within us as
the Spirit of God (Ephesians 3:20-21).
At one time we too
were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and
pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But
when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because
of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through
the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us
generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by
his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. This is a
trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who
have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good.
These things are excellent and profitable for everyone. (Titus 3:3-8)
No comments:
Post a Comment