This week features the most well-known passage of the Bible- John 3:16. It is an awesome message. We will discuss his love, hell, and God’s mercy. The only commentary is after the Gospel.
Reading 1Ex 34:4b-6, 8-9
Early in the morning Moses went up Mount Sinaias the LORD had commanded him,taking along the two stone tablets.Having come down in a cloud, the LORD stood with Moses thereand proclaimed his name, "LORD."Thus the LORD passed before him and cried out,"The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God,slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity."Moses at once bowed down to the ground in worship.Then he said, "If I find favor with you, O Lord,do come along in our company.This is indeed a stiff-necked people; yet pardon our wickedness and sins,and receive us as your own."
Responsorial PsalmDn 3:52, 53, 54, 55, 56R. (52b) Glory and praise for ever!Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of our fathers,praiseworthy and exalted above all forever;And blessed is your holy and glorious name,praiseworthy and exalted above all for all ages.R. Glory and praise for ever!Blessed are you in the temple of your holy glory,praiseworthy and glorious above all forever.R. Glory and praise for ever!Blessed are you on the throne of your kingdom,praiseworthy and exalted above all forever.R. Glory and praise for ever!Blessed are you who look into the depthsfrom your throne upon the cherubim,praiseworthy and exalted above all forever.R. Glory and praise for ever!
Reading II2 Cor 13:11-13
Brothers and sisters, rejoice.Mend your ways, encourage one another,agree with one another, live in peace,and the God of love and peace will be with you.Greet one another with a holy kiss.All the holy ones greet you.The grace of the Lord Jesus Christand the love of Godand the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.
GospelJn 3:16-18
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,so that everyone who believes in him might not perishbut might have eternal life.For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,but that the world might be saved through him.Whoever believes in him will not be condemned,but whoever does not believe has already been condemned,because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
Gospel
God loved us so much that he sent his only Son so that if we believe in him we will not perish, but have eternal life. What does that mean? How is sending your son a sign of love?In order to answer these questions, we have to look at why God assumed human form (his only son). Why did he do that?
- God became flesh in order to rescue us.1 Think about your life for a moment. Have you committed serious sins? You probably have and I certainly have committed them as well. The worst part about these sins is that they hurt God. When you lie to someone, you are hurting that person, but even worse is the fact that you are offending and disobeying the God who created you and who loves you. So we have all screwed up. We need a savior. God recognized our terrible condition and sent his Son to rescue us.
- He came so that we might know how much he loves us. As Christians, we believe that Jesus is equivalent to the Father and they are one God. So it’s not like God sent a good friend of his down to us. He sent himself. He came down from heaven to walk the Earth with us! On your wedding day, do you want your best friend to be there? I do. At your deathbed, do you want your best friend to be there? Sure, why not? God wants to be there for us also, so he came to Earth to let us know that he loves us by being present with us-physically on Earth 2000 years ago, and physically now in the Eucharist.
- He came to be our role model. We have all heard that the best way to teach is by example. God walked the Earth and if we want to know how to live well, we only have to look at his life. Fortunately, his life was documented in great detail. What an opportunity we have to know in great detail how God lives and how he loves. We have a wonderful teacher. Jesus says, “love one another as I have loved you.”3 In other words, “you have seen how I love, all you have to do is copy me!” Pretty simple right? Because of his love for us, Jesus wanted to make it easy for us to understand him and how we should live.4
John 3:16 is the passage that we have seen at sporting events and it may be the most popular and best known verse of the Bible because it is so important. God shows that he loves us by giving his only son, so that we might not perish but have eternal life. If you look at the text above, you can see how loving it is of God to give his only Son and why God did it. He did it as a gift to us. The next part of the Gospel says that God “did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” We have just discussed how God sent his Son to save us. But why would anyone think that Jesus was sent to condemn us?
Chewing on Lead
When I was about 16 years old, I was hanging out with a friend of mine. Another kid from the neighborhood was with us. My friend and I had some lead pellets that were meant for an air rifle (BB gun). This other kid from the neighborhood “Ricky” grabbed one of the lead pellets and began to chew on it. I was very alarmed when he did that because the package said that “lead is a reproductive toxin and causes brain damage.” I said to Ricky, “you know that eating lead causes brain damage, don‘t you?” Then I told him to quit chewing on the lead. He got very defensive immediately. He said, “that’s not true”. Then Ricky told me that he chewed on lead all of the time. I felt sorry for him, but he seemed angry at me for bringing it up. I just wanted to warn him that he was hurting himself. I understand why Ricky was defensive. He had chewed on lead before and if he admitted that I was right, he had to admit the damage he had done to himself. It must have been upsetting to him. God also notices that we are “chewing on lead” when we sin. He knew 2000 years ago how in need we were, so he sent his only Son. Jesus came to baptize with “fire and water“ (Matt 3:11). The Holy Spirit is described as fire because of fire’s ability to change and to transform. Jesus wants to transform us, but he does this not to condemn us, but so that we can be saved. Jesus does not want us to sin because it damages not only our brains, but our souls. He came to save us, not to condemn us.
Here are some example scenarios in our lives today:
Me: I love my girlfriend and we are going to have sex.
Jesus: You are chewing on lead- please stop that!
Me: I am going to have an abortion. It is the right choice.
Jesus: You are chewing on lead- please stop that!
Me: My wife and I can’t get along, I want to get a divorce.
Jesus: You are chewing on lead- please stop that!
Me: I am rich! It’s time to live it up! Life is short, I wanna have as much fun as possible before I die! As for poor people, they need to get jobs!
Jesus: You are chewing on lead- please stop that!
God came to warn us and stop us from hurting ourselves. It’s painful to admit that we are wrong, but that’s the first step towards change.
Where is God?
My fellow missionaries and I often visit jail inmates. One common reason they give for not believing in God is that so many bad things have happened to them that they think that a good, loving God would not allow such things. In other words, God doesn’t exist because if he did, evil would not exist, nor go unpunished. Many of us have been hurt by rape, theft, murder, lies and other sins. WE WANT JUSTICE! In other words, we want wrong-doers to be punished! On the other hand, I often hear people say that if God was loving, there would be no hell. They ask, “How can God be good if there is a hell?”
Crazy Demands
Our demands of God are ridiculous when you think about it. On the one hand, we want punishment for wrong doers. On the other hand, we ARE the wrongdoers and we don’t want to be punished. How ridiculous we are! This reminds me of a child who wants to “have his cake and eat it”. It’s like the kid who wants to keep a dollar and also wants to spend it at the same time. In sin, we make these types of requests of God:
- Lord, I want unmarried sex with someone’s daughter, or son, but I don’t want responsibility
Lord, I want all the money I can get, but I don’t want to share.
Lord, I want people to be punished for wrongdoing, but don’t punish ME
Apparently, God is very patient with us, because if I were God, I would strike my creatures with lightning any time they made such stupid requests of me. But God does not strike us with lightning because of our sins (even though justice calls for it). He gives us chance after chance after chance in his infinite mercy. God “is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Pet 3:9) God “wills everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Tim 2:4).
Since we know God, in all of his beauty, we are called to spread the good news of his love. Like a loving parent who warns his kids not to cross the street without looking both ways, Jesus warns us of the dangers of hell.6 Do you believe EVERYTHING that Jesus says? He believes that hell exists.5 Do you? Our knowledge of hell is a call to conversion. Since we know that hell exists, we are supposed to do something about it. Some people know that driving drunk kills people and increases the cost of auto insurance by thousands yet they drink and drive anyway. Are we going to ignore the consequences of our sins in the same way a drunken driver ignores reality? Not only should we listen to Jesus, but we should follow his example. He warned others about hell, and so should we. When we see our relatives, friends, and co-workers inching towards hell, we should try to help them and if we can, we should try to save them.
When you go on a commercial flight, the flight attendant says that if they lose cabin pressure, oxygen masks will emerge. They tell you to put your mask on first before helping others. If not, the whole plane would soon be full of unconscious people. Just the same, we cannot “save our friends” if we don’t first follow God’s loving commandments first.
The Point
- God came to Earth in order to rescue us, to show us how much he loves us, and to be the ultimate role model for us to follow. This proves that “God so loved the world”
- Even though it hurts like a dental appointment, God points out our mistakes because he loves us
- Our loving God is a God of justice. He lets us choose every day whether we wish to go to heaven or hell. It is up to us.
- In our weakness, we want wrongdoers to be punished yet, we don’t want to be punished ourselves.
- God is patient with us. He gives us many chances to go back to him after we sin terribly.
- Jesus believes in hell and we should as well.
- Since we know there is a hell, we must live in such a way to avoid hell. We should help others to live good lives as well.
Real Life
This week, I made a general confession. I did so because St. Francis De Sales recommends that we do it in his book Introduction to Devout Life. Also, I trust the people who recommended this book to me. A general confession means that you tell the priest every sin that you’ve ever committed. It was extremely painful to write. In fact, the day I wrote most of it, I felt horrible and terribly ashamed. I wanted to be invisible for just one day so that no one would see me and know how terrible of a sinner I am. The day that I CONFESSSED these sins to a priest was different. I did feel shame and I shed some tears, but I started to feel better as I spoke to him. He reminded me that at anytime during my terribly sinful life, God could have killed me if he wanted to. Yet, he did not. The priest showed me that in confessing and remembering all of these sins, I was reminded of how much mercy God has on me. God is so good to me. Afterwards, I bowed my head and received God’s forgiveness- again. I have experienced 2 confessions in my life that I will never forget. In the first one, God literally put his hand on my head (I could feel it yet could not see it). In the second one, which took place this past week, the priest put his hand on my head and again, I felt that mountain of sin lift off of my back to replaced by God’s infinite mercy and love. It felt good. Truly, God wants to pat us on our sinful heads and say that, “he so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.”God is beautiful.
Originally written around April 7, 2008 and was entitled "Jesus vs. Lead"
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1- 1 Jn 4:10, 4:14, 3:5
2- 1 Jn 4:9
3- Jn 15:12
4- The entire first section on why God became flesh is nothing I came up with on my own. It is paraphrased from the Catechism of the Catholic Church 457-460.
5- Hell is punishment and the worst part of hell is separation from God. (CCC 1035) When we sin, we make a statement to God. Namely, we are saying, “I don’t trust you.” We don’t trust that Gods knows how we should live. We don’t trust him when he offers us protection from sin through obedience. We don’t trust him and therefore, we reject him. Hell is nothing more than a permanent state of that rejection of God. The sinner, who does not trust God during his life, gets to live in this self-chosen state for eternity.
6- Mat 5:22, 29; 10:28; 13:42, 50; Mk 9:43-48
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