Daily Devotion – March 11, 2021 – Dr. Pat Taylor Ellison
John 3:14-21
3:14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
3:15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
3:16 “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.
3:17 “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.
3:18 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.
3:19 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.
3:20 For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.
3:21 But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”
One of the verses in this familiar passage is perhaps the most often-quoted gospel verse:
John 3:16 “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.†I know I had to memorize it when I was about 8. Did you?
The verses preceding it are there to remind us of the story of the Israelites, who were wandering in the wilderness and were plagued by poisonous snakes, many people dying of snakebite. God had sent the snakes, and then God sent the remedy, so that the people would understand that faith in God could save them from anything. Moses was told to fashion a snake and then hold it up, so that anyone who might be on the verge of dying of snakebite would be saved just by looking at the snake Moses was lifting up. God is the answer. God has the cure. Any Israelite who believed that Moses’s snake, made by God’s command, was the cure would indeed be saved from death.
Jesus is saying in this passage to his listeners that God also sent Jesus, so that whoever believes that Jesus was sent from God to be our cure for death, will in fact be saved from death. Jesus is the cure, and God sent Jesus. Death is there already, brought about by human frail bodies that eventually wear out, or brought about by human foolishness and risky behavior, or brought about by human carelessness of one another. Death is already around us, nipping at our heels, and it will automatically claim us. Of that there is no doubt. But God sees the humans destined for death and loves them and compassionately doesn’t want them to live their lives in fear, waiting to be claimed by death. So God sends someone who can vanquish death for those who look upon him and believe he is the cure.
It’s not rocket science. It’s God and God’s deep love for frail humanity. God loves you as an individual person, as sweet as you were as a baby and as cantankerous as you may be today. And two thousand years ago God sent Jesus to vanquish death so that you, now, today, can believe in Jesus and not have to live in fear of eternal separation and loneliness. God sent Jesus, or by some accounts, it was Jesus’s big idea to come, and Jesus, God-With-Us on earth, died, just the way we die, and God raised him just the way God will raise us because we are in relationship with God and believe this wonderful thing.
Do you believe it? If you do, live as if you do. Jesus has slain death, and God has cancelled fear. What more do we need?
Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for vanquishing death so that, when we look upon that gracious act and believe in it, we can live as your blessed children forever.     Amen.
