Eternal life depends on our ability, willingness to hear, believe, accept him

A reflection on the daily readings, for Thursday of the Fourth Week of Lent, by Father Perry.

By Father Perry D. Leiker, pastor

+ What an incredible contrast of words describing God’s thoughts, actions, and intentions.

In Exodus Chapter 32, Moses implored the Lord to “turn away from his wrath,” and to “relent in punishing his people” for their idolatry and their stiff-neckedness.

What would people think of this God, who with evil intent brought them out to kill them in the mountains and “exterminate them from the face of the earth“?

Yikes! —

“So the Lord relented in the punishment he had threatened to inflict on his people.”

I know! I know! What about the immutability of God? How changeable he is in this story.

He doesn’t sound like an almighty, immutable, unchangeable God.

Either he isn’t, or he is.

And maybe what we see and hear here is man’s description of their God seen through their human and very changeable minds and eyes.

In any case, we get quite a very different description of God in the very famous book of John Chapter 3, Verse 16, that is the Gospel verse today —

“God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life.”

Not only does God love, but God is love.

And it must be noted not because we are so loveable, but rather because God is love, and always loves.

And in fact, God’s love is so total and unchanging, and based not on us but on him.

He loves because he is love!

Just to believe in the Christ, the only begotten Son, brings eternal life!

And Jesus, in John’s Gospel, clearly says that so much depends on our ability and willingness to hear and believe, and to accept him.

And then, referring to their own source of authority and the logical conclusion they should draw for themselves, John’s Jesus, speaking to the Jews, says —

“For if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me, because he wrote about me.
But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”

Jesus tells it! His words are compelling and damning at the very same time.

And it is words such as these that will soon draw us into the holiest of weeks, and the holiest of days in our entire liturgical year.

And we will tell the story, once again, of a love that was without limits or conditions — a love that is eternal.

A love that is ours!