Thoughts for the Day

… whoever believes in Jesus shall not perish …                     John 3:16

Having spent some days considering questions of love and obedience, I want to change tack, and start by returning to John 3:16, “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.”  Even if its emphasis is not quite what we imagined, it still highlights the supreme act of God’s love and the supreme promise.  All we must do is believe in Jesus and we shall not perish but have eternal life.  But there is an uncomfortable implication running alongside that promise: if we do not choose to believe in Jesus we will perish.  Once again, lest there be any doubt, John drums it home.  He records Jesus as saying “Whoever does not believe stands condemned already”, and continues in similar vein for several salutary verses.

And here begins our struggle.  How can a God of such love countenance that some should perish?  Who as a parent would not want to give their child a second chance, and a third and a fourth and so on?  Perhaps there are children who have turned out so badly, committed such heinous crimes, become so evil that we would give up on them.  But surely God would have an eternal plan to save everyone.  After all, didn’t this same John write that ‘God is love’?  If that is His very essence, how could He do otherwise?

The trouble is not only does the Bible declare that Jesus really did say this, but it is consistent with rafts of other scriptures, some of which we will come on to consider later in this series.  Perhaps the answer to this conundrum lies not in wrestling unsuccessfully with the question of God’s love but looking for another perspective.  What might that be?