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Weekly Devotional

March 26, 2012

God’s Peace be with you all

John 3:16-19  ¹⁶ "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.  ¹⁷ "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.  ¹⁸ Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.  ¹⁹ And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.

            For our devotional today I wanted to revisit our Gospel text from two weeks ago.  This was also the text that we used yesterday in Sunday School.  Now normally, I do not include a whole lot of “judgment” texts in these devotionals.  However, we had some interesting discussions in Sunday School yesterday that I wanted to expound on.  The focus of these discussions in relation to this text was around verse 19:  “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world.”  That’s interesting, isn’t it?  Much different than Revelation, which has the following “judgment discourse”

Revelation 20:11-15  ¹¹ Then I saw a great white throne and the one who sat on it; the earth and the heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them.  ¹² And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books.  ¹³ And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and all were judged according to what they had done.  ¹⁴ Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire;  ¹⁵ and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

            The text from John’s Gospel is not one that has the feelings of the “rapture”. Instead, to me it gives a sense of peace.  God judgment of the world was that Jesus was sent into the world (notice I used past tense here, as the text did).  We usually rejoice in the fact that God sent Jesus into the world…not that God has judged the world.  John gives us a unique twist in that he takes the negative connotation out of judgment (i.e. fire and brimstone) and instead replaces it with something to celebrate.  Again, what an amazing and totally unexpected thing God has done.

            With Easter approaching, our focus slowly shifts to the empty cross and tomb.  The sins that we confessed on Ash Wednesday finally will receive absolution.  We once again rejoice that Christ hung on the cross for the entire world, so that one day we will be reunited with all the saints in a glorious day of resurrection for the world.  When that day comes, there will not be people who love darkness, there will only be the light.  Praise be to God.

In our prayers this week:  Robert (Karl’s brother-in-law), Jim A., Ann, Daniel, Barbara M., Scott S., Charles, Wendy S., and Mike C.