God Did Not Send His Son Into The World To Condemn The World

Nicodemus answered and said to Him, “How can these things be?”

Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things? Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

“He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”

John 3:9-21

We may wrongly instill a judgmental spirit in new believers. We do it accidentally by creating lists of things to do and not to do as a Christian. Instead of showing new converts God’s loved and letting the Holy Spirit reshape them, we urge them to “behave like a new believer.”

Jesus did not come to condemn us. But by giving these new Christians a checklist of behaviors, We actually are teaching them to condemn themselves, which leads them to judge others. Instead of being agents of condemnation, we are to be ambassadors of God’s love and mercy.

If Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world, that’s probably not our mission either!

Our Daily Bread – May 12, 2016