Life Before Death – and after
Sermon for the 4th Sunday in Lent, year B
Bible reading: John 3:14-21
Mal Garvin’s mother is 99 and she has just become a Christian. Mal has been a committed Christian for years. He is the founder of Fusion and the head of the Awakening Movement. But his mum has just become a Christian, or at least had her 99 year old eyes opened to see what it means to be a Christian.
She had been going to church. No doubt Mal had witnessed to her. But suddenly the scales fell from her eyes and she announced to Mal that she had become a Christian. Why so long? Why so late? Because, she said to Mal, she had never understood what it meant to become a Christian.
So I want to tell you today. I want to tell you in the words of Jesus.
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him, may not perish but may have eternal life.
God loves you so much that he sent his only, dearly beloved Son, into the world, to die on the cross in love for you. He did this because he could not bear the thought of you living separate from him in rebellion on earth, and in the torment of hell forever. And so God calls you to trust in Jesus as your Saviour and join him in the fellowship of eternal life, which begins now on earth and never ends in heaven.
Becoming a Christian is all about the love of God for you, and about you no longer running away from the love of God, but coming home to God and his love, and living with God and his people in love and trust all the days of your life.
My friend, Erwin Raphael McManus was in the Middle East speaking to Muslims about Christianity. They asked him why Jesus came into the world. This is how he explained it:
I once met a girl named Kim, and I fell in love with her. I pursued her with my love,and pursued her with my love, until I felt my love had captured her heart. So I asked her to be my wife, and she said NO.
At this his Muslim listeners were noticeably sad.
I was unrelenting and asked her again, pursuing her with my love, and I pursued her with my love until she said YES.
There was huge relief in the entire room.
I did not send my brother, nor did I send a friend. For in issues of love, you must go yourself.
This is the story of God’s love: he pursues you with his love and pursues you with his love and you have perhaps not said YES. And even if you reject his love, he pursues you ever still. It was not enough to send an angel or a prophet or any other, for in issues of love, you must go yourself. And so God has come.
This is the story of Jesus, that God has walked among us and pursued us with his love. He is very familiar with rejection but is undeterred. And he is here even now, still pursuing you with his love.
McManus goes on to say that the story of Jesus is not about who is right and who is wrong, and what God’s name is, and who the true prophet is, and who can do the biggest miracles. God had sent plenty of people before Jesus to do this.
There is only one reason for God to come himself, because in issues of love, you can’t have someone else stand in for you…When it comes to love it has to be face to face. There has to be contact.… Love exists because God is love. Our souls will never find satisfaction until our hearts find this love we so desperately yearn for. God is not passive, for love is never passive, but always passionate, and passion always leads to action.
God so loved the world he gave his only Son
, for you… on the cross… to give you eternal life.
In this blessed land in which we live we often fail to see our great need for eternal life. It took poisonous snakes to wake up the rebellious Israelites to see their desperate need and cry out to God for help – help that God gave via a bronze serpent raised up on a pole.
St Paul makes clear how great our need for salvation is:
you were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world … by nature children of wrath…
But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved.
Life without God is death, and it leads to hell, whether we know that or not, whether we feel that or not. But that is not God’s plan. That is not God’s desire. God wants all people to be saved
, and to wake up to the slippery slope we are on without him. And he sends Jesus to bring the love of God to us all – to show it by the way he treated people – to show it and give it on the cross, where sin and death is swallowed up, and in the resurrection, where eternal life springs forth and is offered to all who believe.
What the world needs, more than anything, is eternal life – a way of living that doesn’t lead to death but can go on forever… Often when we talk about ETERNAL LIFE we mean life after death… we’re excited about life after death (though we’re not in any rush to get there)… but people are asking whether there is life before death…We have to stop promising people life after death when what we are all really asking is if there is life before death. And the good news is – there is. Eternal life begins now. It is living in the presence of God.
—Shane Claiborne
There is life after death alright. That is the sure and certain hope we have through Christ.
But the promise of God is that in Christ there is life before death.
There is life after death alright. That is the sure and certain hope we have through Christ.
But the promise of God is that in Christ there is life before death. Throughout John, having eternal life is in the present tense. All who believe in Jesus Christ have eternal life in the present. All who believe in Jesus Christ and are baptized are born again into the life of Jesus Christ. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.
John 3:36. Life and death issues don’t wait to be sorted out on judgment day. Anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
John 5:24.
John is so certain that God has given all believers eternal life that in his Epistle he says:
God gave us eternal life and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life… so that you may know that you have eternal life… so that you may know that you have eternal life…
I want you to leave here today knowing you have eternal life – now & forever.
I want you to leave here today believing in Jesus Christ, and knowing that through your faith in Jesus, God has given you the free gift of eternal life. Nobody needs to leave here without faith and eternal life today. You are saved by grace, through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.
God pursues you with his love and pursues you with his love until you say ‘Yes’, until you trust him, and receive his love.
I want you to leave here today living the eternal life God gives you through faith in Jesus.
Go into the world today knowing you are loved by God… walking with God… enjoying the fellowship of God’s people… happy to live God’s way in the world. Amen.