24 Words
The Trouble with Jesus: He wouldn’t water down his message like how people wanted to hear it.
It was a dark night after Jesus had stirred up mad trouble, a perfect time to lay low. The big shots were still heated about his tirade in the Temple. A whip cracked, tables flipped, cash flew, and animals scattered. Setting new standards for righteous anger, he wasn’t playing. “Don’t turn my Father’s house into a marketplace!”
Hours later, when the crowds had been hushed and the money-makers thought Jesus was out of the game for now, a shadow slid into the disciples’ camp. By power and status, he was from the other side. No respectable Pharisee would be caught in the light of day with this troublemaker, but under the obscurity afforded by darkness, Nicodemus slid in.
Used to respect and power, Nicodemus tried to play it cool, but you can tell he’s nervous. He called Jesus Teacher and props up his miracles as proof God’s got his back. Or maybe he’s just trying to get close, level with this man of immense mystery.
Jesus doesn’t buy it. Immediately, pointedly, he declared that to see or be a part of God’s kingdom, “you must be born again.” Spiritually dense, Nicodemus asked if an old man can go back into his mother’s womb and be born again. Irrational thinking is not what he expected.
To be fair, maybe it was just the way Jesus said it. Maybe if he had said that you gotta change your life and priorities without losing yourself, it’d make more sense. Maybe if he had said you find God by keeping the commandments, attending the festivals, and making the sacrifices, it’d be easier to swallow. Maybe if he had used fancy theological or philosophical words about digging deep inside yourself to find your best, it’d sound inspiring.
The Trouble with Jesus: He wouldn’t water down his message like people wanted to hear it. “You must be born again.”
Born Again
Like a newborn baby starting fresh, your soul needs a clean slate, washed by living in God’s Spirit, so the soul needs to be wiped cleaned, washed in water, if you will, by life lived out in the Spirit of God. That Spirit is known by knowing one who showed how deep God’s love runs. It’s for those whose souls come to believe that Love can flip their lives and destiny in this life and afterwards. In just 24 words or so, Jesus clarifies this Love.
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By the Love of God
“God loved the world so much…” In a perfect place, back in the garden, an animal had to die to cover the first couple’s nakedness. Only by a death would a man and a woman know the extent of their Creator’s Love. They had wanted to be more, to be like God, and they believed a lie. “Eat this and you will not die.” (Genesis 3:1-4) The trouble it brought could only be halted with such a Love so big nothing would be beyond its reach into the world.
“God loved the world so much God gave…” It took the biggest sacrifice ever, Love that gave and gave all it could. “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” he said. (John 15:13)
Costly? Yes. It meant a surrender that shatters all concept of a love that serves itself. “I came here not to be served but to serve others, and to give my life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) It’s a love that gives without caring what it gets back, how it is helped or promoted, or one’s life is made better. Total Love, no holds barred.
“God loved the world so much that God gave his only Son…” One can’t know Love without knowing its Lover. So Love came to show how Love is done. “As the Father knows Me, I also know the Father; and I lay down my life…” (John 10:15) God knew what this Love would cost, and the only way to fix the world’s mess and trouble was for God’s Son to face it head-on.
“God loved the world so much that God gave his only Son that whoever believes in him…” “Come and see,” he said. (John 1:39) Watch me, observe me, draw closer, get nearer to what I do and who I am. Don’t just take someone else’s word. Get close enough, and I’ll flip your world and change everything you thought you were or could be. In me, you’ll know God and believe, in me you will have faith in what I can do, and in me you will trust as you walk in my path.
“God loved the world so much that God gave his only Son that whoever believes in him will not perish…” Yes, what you’ve been chasing, I want for you too. You will not die! That inner sense of self you call your soul is infinite, and the trouble you’ve lived will not rob you of your innermost, intimate part of you that only God sees and of which you barely understand. What the first couple reached for is yours now, but not by a lie. It is a gift from the life I give to you.
“God loved the world so much that God gave his only Son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) You see, you will not die; you will live — starting now. I came so you can have life, full and rich, and have it abundantly, satisfying with the essentials of all that life is and needs. Even more, this life will carry you beyond this world’s trouble into a better existence forever with me.
God Loves. God Gives.
God gave God’s self in human form, lived, died, and came back to flip the script on trouble by reversing where trouble ends into what God and every created person wants, not death but life that fulfills Love.
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