For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him. The one who believes in him is not condemned. The one who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. (John 3:16-18 — New English Translation)
One of the most famous, frequently cited passages of the Bible — this is a short but profound description of God’s plan of salvation for the world. It’s hard for some to swallow because it makes several strong, unambiguous statements about how eternal life is only for those who believe in the Lord Jesus. The idea that we should be accepting of all religions because they all lead to God in the end, may sound nice and humble, but the simple truth is that it contradicts this verse and many others like it in the Bible. God’s word is very clear about who He is, and that He is the only way to salvation.
C.S. Lewis said this about Jesus: “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.”
Don’t treat the Lord Jesus as a “great human teacher”, and don’t treat His house — the Church — as one of a list of places you go each week or month. Jesus is God, and we need Him if we are going to survive life on earth… and His house is the most important place we visit during the week. As we begin the year, let’s make God and His house our top priorities in life.
No comments:
Post a Comment