"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 live" (NIV)
I have never given this verse a second thought, I have always thought good of this verse. It has never crossed my mind (until recently, that is) that people could think of this verse as sinister and even evil!
Just the other day I was talking to one of my friends in my school lunch line and we got to talking about beliefs. He asked if I was a Christian when he saw the cross around my neck, and I told him I was. He told me he didn't have a religion and he told me he had actual reasons to back it up, I was eager to hear his reasoning.
He told me he didn't get why God would send His own "flesh and blood", His own son down here to die. He asked me what kind of a Father would do that to His son.
To understand the significance of God sending His only son to die for us, we must first understand the relationship between God and Jesus, and between God and man. God and Jesus have always been eternally together, neither of them have a beginning.
Let's step away from that for a few seconds and dive into some Theology. Have you ever heard the word begotten? To beget is to make something of the same kind as yourself. Do not confuse this with creating. Creating is different, when you create something you make something different from yourself. I create posts for my blog; beavers beget baby beavers. Now that we understand the difference between the two we can move on to the interesting part.
God begot Jesus, God the Father begot God the Son. Just because the Bible uses the words "father" and "son" doesn't mean that the Father came before the Son, it's just the closest thing on earth to resembling the relationship between Jesus and God in Heaven. God is the source of Jesus like a lamp is the source of the light it emits, but the source doesn't have to come before the effect. For example, you just imagined the lamp emitting light, you willed yourself you imagine it and you imagined it. Your will to imagine it was the cause of your imagining, but those two things happened simultaneously. God is the source of Jesus but God never came before Jesus, both are equally eternal.
Have you ever heard the phrase, "God is love"? What exactly does this mean? It means this: Love has to be shared between two beings. Love has forever been the pulsating force binding Jesus and God. That unity between the Father and the Son is so strong it is another being by itself! This third being is called the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the connection between God and Jesus, and our hearts. The Holy Spirit made a very grand entrance in Acts 2. Jesus' disciples started speaking languages they didn't know and everyone thought they were wasted.
What if I told you that these three beings (the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) were actually one being? I know it's difficult for you to wrap your mind around, hopefully this example will help:
We can move three ways in space. These ways are left or right, backwards or forwards, and up and down. Every direction is a compromise between two of these.
With one dimension we can make a line. With two dimensions we can have multiple lines that make a shape, lets say a square. With three dimensions we can have multiple shapes to make up a 3-D figure like a cube.
If we only knew 2 dimensions it would be difficult to grasp the concept of a 3 dimensional object. What we know as humans--the human experience on Earth--is very different from the Divine experience in Heaven.
On the Human level I am a person and you are a person--we are two completely separate beings. Much like two dimensions can have different shapes, like two squares on a sheet of paper--they are two separate squares.
On the Divine level, the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are three distinct beings but at the same time they are all one being. Much like three dimensions--a cube is made up of six different squares but it is still one cube.
God sent His own "flesh and blood"--His own son down here as a sacrifice. He wasn't just sending His own son down here--He sending Himself down here. He sacrificed His begotten son so that you and I could have a chance at becoming His created sons. God sacrificed Himself and stepped down to the Human level so that you and I could be united to Him like we were created to be. The beautiful thing is that we don't deserve it.
