What separates us from God and what is the solution? Who is Jesus in relation to God? How much does God love us?
John 8:19-24
19 So they were saying to Him, “Where is Your Father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither Me nor My Father; if you knew Me, you would know My Father also.” 20 These words He spoke in the treasury, as He taught in the temple; and no one seized Him, because His hour had not yet come.21 Then He said again to them, “I go away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin; where I am going, you cannot come.” 22 So the Jews were saying, “Surely He will not kill Himself, will He, since He says, ‘ Where I am going, you cannot come’?” 23 And He was saying to them, “ You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. 24 Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”
Things are heating up in this discussion that Jesus is having with the Jews. I think the questions they are asking are quite legitimate. After all, Jesus’ teachings were completely new and different from what they had all been studying and practicing.
Jesus is the Father
Again, Jesus repeats the same thing, but in a different way. In knowing Christ (ie, having a relationship with Him and believing what He says) we also believe in and know God. Why? Because Jesus IS God! As I mentioned yesterday, we can easily get caught up in Jesus the human and wonder why we would revere another human as God (dare I go into the inanimate objects we revere as God?). What we fail to comprehend, however, is that Jesus’ godliness is not that of anything related to man, but rather that God made it so. Jesus did not become God because man reveres Him as such, rather He always is and was God, whether or not we believe it or treat Him thus.
We seek a relationship with God
Yesterday I mentioned how we take for granted being in the Light. The world at this time was in the very presence of God whenever they interacted with Jesus. Being that He is God, whenever they had audience with Him, they were in His presence. Once we are no longer in His presence, we long to return. Many times we feel convicted or guilty or even ashamed by what we have done outside of His presence and feel we cannot return: a lie that the great deceiver continues to try to make us believe to this day. We were created to yearn for relationship with God. Each of us try to do that in some fashion or another, hence the multitude of religions around the world.
The eternal result of our sinfulness is only remedied by belief in God’s love for us despite ourselves
The relationship we get to have with God is made possible by His love. Sometimes we get caught up in Jesus’ crucifixion as just an action or a persecution without looking at the heart behind it. We discussed in Light of the World that as humans, we tend to judge things on the surface, but why did Jesus (aka God) die on the cross? Was it to set an example? Was it to prove a point? Was it to be a martyr? Many of us would say yes, but we can easily overlook the core purpose: because He loves us. If we cannot accept that Jesus loves us despite our failures, then we are hypocrites.
We long to have a relationship with God our Creator (whether you will admit it or not) and He tells us that yes we can, yet we reject it. What is wrong with us? We are human, but that’s ok…He loves us anyway!
