Love and Light: A Meditation on John 3 for Holy Trinity Sunday

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,

 that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world;

but that the world through him might be saved.

 

He that believeth on him is not condemned:

but he that believeth not is condemned already,

because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world,

and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

 

Jesus’ dialogue with Nicodemus in John 3 began with a teacher of Israel sneaking under cover of darkness in order to speak with Jesus.  He, and others of his ruling class of religious teachers, knew that Jesus had to have come from God, because they also knew from the testimony of Moses that no man could work the wonders Jesus did without being in fellowship with God.  Jesus didn’t make it easy for Nicodemus, nor did He respond to his flattering platitudes, but rather pointed Nicodemus to the Truth which saves an already condemned human race:  the love of God incarnate.  Jesus was more than one of the great Prophets of antiquity, who struggled against their own sinful desires so as to abide in the Word and Will of God; rather, Jesus was and is the very Word and Will of God made flesh, who would work out the salvation of the world through His life, death, and resurrection.  The saving love of God is as real as God Himself, and that incarnate Love brings the Light of Truth into a dark and dying world.  The only reason the world has to hate or flee from the Light and Love of God, is that they prefer their evil be cloaked in darkness, and thus they repudiate the Love of God to remain condemned in the darkness of their wicked desires.

 

The Truth is something every sane person should be interested in, because Truth corresponds to reality; i.e., what is real is also true, from the subatomic composition of all matter and energy in the universe, to the mystery of our own lives in this present world.  Descartes and other philosophers grappled with variations on the maxim that to perceive one’s existence is to identify the objective reality that they do, in fact, exist—and by extension, there must be a real world out there that we exist within, and that can be at least partially known as we explore it.  Natural Philosophy which gave rise to modern science depends upon the rational connection between Truth and Reality, just as any engineer, practical mathematician, physicist, or chemist must explore the truth of what is real if they hope to build, quantify, test, or compose mixtures that produce useful results.  So, too, does our God, the fountain from which flow both material and spiritual realities, who is Himself the ground of Wisdom and Reason, engage His creatures in the Truth of their existence as well as revealing His own.  There can be only one true God, and it is He who comes to His people to reveal Himself by His Word and Spirit.

 

What God reveals to us may not be comfortable to hear, and hard to embrace.  He comes to a broken world of fallen men, and tells them that their bondage to evil and death is a work of their own hands—of their original repudiation of their created reality, chasing the prideful and deceptive words of the devil, rather than abiding in the Light and Love of His Word.  The curse inherited is as real as the death all people must one day experience, just as is the deeper reality that separation from God by rebellion against the Author of Life is to condemn oneself to eternal death.  Man, though created good and possessing many good attributes from the image of his Maker in which he was formed, is hopelessly twisted in all his powers, with not one remaining that can save him.  Like King David, we must all confess that we were conceived in sin, and with St. Paul conclude that there is none authentically righteous in the world by their own strength or merit.  When the Light and Love of God dawn upon such a dark and dismal landscape as ours, we face once again the reality of our condition stripped bare of its pretenses, and the choice to remain bound in our evil, or to embrace the incarnate, saving Love of God in His only begotten Son.  These are the inescapable realities of man, and the unfathomable mercies of the King of all Creation.

 

Yet if we were to abide in the Light and Love of God, we must return to His Word and Will, rejecting all the deceptions, lies, and insanity of our present darkness.  There is no darkness or rejection of reality in God, just as no lie has any place in the presence of Truth.  He has revealed Himself to the world as our Creator, the very ground of being and existence—an indivisible Unity which can never be added to nor subtracted from.  He is the Almighty, All Knowing, All Present One, from whom all things have their origin and to whom all things shall return.  He is One, and there is no other besides Him, nor does He countenance the delusions of rivals.  And yet, He is revealed as a perfect community of Three:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, unconfused and unmixed in their Persons, yet undivided in their divine essence.  Jesus was not just a Prophet, but the very Word of God made Flesh, the eternally begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.  He was beheld by His Apostles, and accomplished what only God incarnate could do by giving His life as a ransom for the world.  His testimony in the world has continued by the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and sent by the Son, convicting the world of sin and righteousness and truth.  The Word of God proclaimed has its divine power by the Holy Spirit, preached in full as both Law and Gospel, and remaining as the Light of God’s saving Love in the world.  Thus we worship the only True God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God now and forever, and unto ages of ages without end.

 

The world will have its darkness and deceptions until the Last Day, but the reality of God’s Eternal Word will continue to shine long after this world has faded away.  That Light and Love of God for the salvation of the world, by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, will resound in the vaults of heaven and the hearts of men for all time, because our saving God, the Most Holy Trinity, has made it so.  Hear the Light and Love of God come to you this day, calling you out of your slavery to evil under the suffocating cloak of darkness, that you might rise into the liberating Life of His Word and Will forever.  Soli Deo Gloria!  Amen.