Second Sunday in Lent: March 5, 2023
Second Sunday in Lent: March 5, 2023
Genesis 12: 1-8
Psalm 33: 12-22
Romans 4: 1-5; 13-17
John 3: 1-17
Bishop Ariel P. Santos
John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” This is the gospel! This is the good news! God loves the world so much that He sacrificed His own Son so that if we believe in Him, we can be led by Him to life. If we believe in Him, we don’t perish in the world’s ways, but we enter life now, in the world to come, which is eternal life. The good news is that God is not willing for anyone to perish.
In John 3:17, “For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world (cosmos, all creation) might be saved (preserved, kept form being destroyed) through Him.” God created everything good. He love His creation and He doesn’t want it destroyed but to saved and to preserve the goodness of His creation. Sin entered and destroyed the goodness of God. It introduced death into the life God gave us. In the Creed, it says that through Jesus Christ, all things were made and through Him all things will be restored. All is not just the people but all of His creation.
Jesus has been saving the world for 2000 years. It is progressive. We believe the gospel, the good news; not the bad news that our world will be destroyed. We don’t believe the world is hopelessly evil, is on a trajectory toward destruction/extinction, and is progressively deteriorating, because Jesus saves. We believe in a future new earth. We believe that His work will be completed and we will have a new heaven and a new earth.
Man is the crowning glory of God’s creation. This is the reason we are blessed! We bear the image and the likeness of God in a way that is very different from other things. What is man that God would bless him so much and think of him? We are blessed by God to breathe His spirit unto us. God loves us so much that He gave His life for our lives. No way will God stand by and watch His children die. What He did was that He designed a society where man thrives in peace, in prosperity, in love, and in health. God created us with spirit and flesh; our wholeness of spirit, soul, and body.
In a word that I can think of, it is the word that the Jews use when they greet each other: Shalom. Shalom is more than peace; it is praying for each other’s health, abundance among others. The Greeks calls it Zoe – the God kind of life. The Muslims use Assalam.
We need to be born again – to be free from sin. God is saving a world where man flourishes in wholeness of spirit, soul and body; in peace, prosperity, love and health, which is the life God intended man to flourish. A theologian said, “God created the world so that He can have a place where He can have fellowship with the material.” God is spirit; we are flesh and blood. We can’t live in the spiritual realm so God created the world so that there is a venue where man can meet Him. This is what God is saving – a world where man flourished in the life God gave him.
Genesis 12:3 says that God intends for all families on earth to be blessed. He doesn’t play favorites; He is not willing for anyone to perish but for all to experience the life He intended for man. Therefore, salvation is much greater and way more beautiful than the individualistic, posthumous (after death) assurance of heaven. Not only our soul should be saved but everything God gave us – our home, His creation.
The world has gone wrong, but God loves it still so He is saving it. We are being transfigured to remove what we have been used to in the world: hatred, unforgiveness, conflicts. All of these will be cleansed so that we will be prepared for deification, divinization, glorification for the life of the world to come were peace and love reigns.
In the following Sundays, our gospels will be stories of salvation – the woman at the well, the man born blind, and of Lazarus. God wants His people well. The first two were sick and Lazarus was already dead, but they were all restored. This is the good news.
In Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, it is full of metaphor. Actually, the Bible is full of metaphors.
If Jesus explains to us who God the Father is, we wouldn’t understand. The truth is that there is no word that can encapsulate who God really is. God is infinite. God is only explained by The Word – Jesus Christ. No one has seen the Father and His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, has explained Him. We see glimpses of God in Jesus Christ.
Central to God’s plan of salvation is the Cross. Jesus used a metaphor in telling Nicodemus, “As Moses lifted up the serpent, so the Son of Man will be lifted up.” Jesus was talking about His crucifixion. In Numbers 21, what God wanted for Israel was what was good for them. He will take them out of the house of slavery and give them their own land, a very fertile land flowing with milk and honey. This is a metaphor of abundance, joy and peace. However, there is a process. They will be taken out of Egypt including the Egypt in their hearts – to what they were so used to.
Like us, we need to be in theosis to remove the ways of the world in our lives. The Israelites became impatient so they complained and grumbled because they forgot that the plan of God is for their good only. If we understand that God’s plans are always for our good, we will not complain. We become impatient because we want the results immediately. When the Israelites complained, the snakes appeared and bit them; it poisoned them and killed them. But the heart of God was for them. God wanted to save them.
There is a threat and a poison in sin. God wants us delivered from it. When we are impatient, when we complain, there is poison in our lips. This is the reason God told Moses to put a bronze serpent so that the people will recognize that it is that which poisons them and makes them sin. Anyone who looks at the serpent is healed. Jesus likened this to His crucifixion. Anyone who looks at Jesus on the cross will see what we have done to Him – our greed, our envy, our hatred, our wars. We don’t want to kill God. We want to be delivered.
The Proclaimer says, “The Word of the Lord,” and we respond saying, “Thanks be to God!” The Deacon says after reading the gospel, “The Gospel of the Lord,” and we respond saying, “Praise to You, Lord Christ!” Are we thankful for the good news? If we are, we would respond!
Sin is more than a crime; it’s a deadly disease. We need a doctor, not a lawyer to save us from death. The Cross is therapeutic, not merely legal. Jesus Christ is more a doctor than a lawyer. If we look at the Cross, we see our sins, thus, we say, “Heal our hearts.” We don’t only see our sin, but the extent that we would go to remove the sin. The Cross is not a picture of God’s wrath. It is a symbol of God’s unfathomable love for us and it is the clearest revelation or explanation of who God is. God is One who would rather die for His enemy than take vengeance. This is good news and an ongoing process of salvation.
It has already been two thousand years, but it is not yet finished because He wants all of us saved. We are thankful because we came ahead, but He wants the whole of creation saved. We who had found Him and were found by Him, we are thankful for hearing the good news. In doing so, we need to participate in the work of salvation. The reason we are saved first is so that we can join Jesus in the work of salvation for the rest of the creation. It is an ongoing process and this is why we have the Every Day King Way because it is the way to participate in God’s kingdom. When we do these five principles, we do the work of God of restoration.
We do this instead of continuing to live in our ways of selfishness and death. This will lead us to eternal life which is the way it is in the kingdom of our God.
