THE TROUBLE WITH DIMLY LIT RESTAURANTS
Once upon a time, a young couple brought their newborn son to the pediatrician for his very first checkup. The doctor looked at the baby and said, “You have got the most beautiful baby!” The baby’s mother smiled, thanked the doctor, and said, “I’ll bet you say that to all the new parents.” The doctor said, “Actually, I don’t. I only say that about those babies that are really cute.” The woman then asked, “So what do you say to those people whose babies aren’t really cute?” The doctor replied, “I simply say, ‘He looks just like you!’”
Isn’t it funny how we question compliments? If someone says something bad about us, we have a tendency to believe it right away. But if someone says something good about us, we tend to question it. We think they have an angle or some ulterior motive. Why is it that belief has become such a difficult concept for us?
I think it’s a consequence of the postmodern era. We tend to question anything and everything these days. Insurance companies now require us to get a second opinion from doctors. And have you noticed how many opinion polls our society gathers anymore? Facts aside, what seems to be most truthful these days is what most of the people think! It’s hard to know anymore what we should believe and what we shouldn’t.
In the passage we read from the gospel according to John, Jesus seems to be calling for wholehearted belief. “For God so loved the world,” Jesus says, “that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Jesus doesn’t leave much room for second opinions here, does he? He is clearly calling us to believe in him. But what does it really mean to believe in Jesus Christ?
Last week I told you that the Greek word translated “belief” is “pisteuo.” It means literally, “belief in a special sense, as faith in the Divinity that lays special emphasis on trust in his power and his nearness to help, in addition to being convinced that he exists and that his revelations are true.” That’s how the Greek lexicon defines the word. Let’s see if we can make that definition come to life.
Biblical commentator William Barclay says that belief in Jesus Christ contains three elements: 1) belief that God is our loving Father; 2) belief that Jesus is the Son of God and therefore tells us the truth about God and life; and 3) belief necessarily entails unswerving and unquestioning obedience to Jesus Christ. Let’s try to take that definition apart.
To believe in Jesus Christ is to believe with all our hearts that God is as Jesus declares him to be. It means believing that God loves us, that God cares for us, and that God wants nothing more than to forgive us. Two thousand years ago, it wasn’t easy for a Jew to believe that. The Jews of Jesus’ day looked upon God as one who imposed his laws upon them and punished them if those laws were broken. It was hard for them to not think of God as a judge waiting to exact a penalty; it was hard for them not to think of God as a task-master waiting to pounce. Jesus revealed God as a Father who wanted nothing more than for his erring children to come back home. It cost Jesus his life to teach us that. And perhaps we cannot begin to be Christians until we believe that with all our hearts.
We are called to believe that God is our loving Father. We are also called to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and therefore tells us the truth about God and life. How can we be sure that Jesus knows what he’s talking about? What guarantee is there that the good news of the gospels is true? We must simply believe it. We must believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that in him is the mind of God. We must believe that Jesus knew God so well, that he was so close to God, and that he was so one with God, that he – and only he – is qualified to tell us the absolute truth about God.
And finally comes the third element of belief. We must stake everything on the belief that what Jesus says is true. Whatever he calls us to do, we must do. Whatever he commands of us, we must obey. We must take Jesus at his word. Even the smallest action in life should be done with unquestioned obedience.
That’s what it means to believe in Jesus Christ. But we have to ask to what end, do we not? Why do we believe in Jesus Christ? I mean, what’s in it for us?
Jesus assures us in verses 15 and 16 that those who believe in him may have eternal life. But you need to listen to this very carefully, because we’re not just talking about heaven here. The Greek words translated “have eternal life” here are “eckay zoane aioneone.” “Eckay” means to have or to hold. “Aioneone” means eternal or without end. “Zoane” means life, but it means a special kind of life. The Greek lexicon says that this life is a result of faith in Christ. But it also says that the follower of Jesus possesses this life even in this world.
So we’re not just talking about heaven here. To believe in Jesus Christ is also to possess a special kind of life even in the here and now. What does that mean? I think it means this.
To possess life in Christ is to have a life that envelops every relationship in life with peace. Let me repeat that. To possess life in Christ is to have a life that envelops every relationship in life with peace. It gives us peace with God. We are no longer cowering before a tyrannical king or seeking to hide from a vindictive judge. Instead, we are at home with our Father.
Life in Christ gives us peace with others. If we have been forgiven, then we must be forgiving. It enables us to see others as God sees them. Theoretically, it makes all of us into one great human family joined together in love.
Life in Christ gives us peace with life. If God is our Father, then God is working all things together for good. When we believe God is our Father, we believe our Father’s hand will never cause his child a needless tear. We may not necessarily understand life any better, but at least we will resent it no longer.
Life in Christ gives us peace with ourselves. In the last analysis, perhaps we are more afraid of ourselves than of anything else. We know our own weakness; we know our own temptations; we know our own tasks and the dreads of our lives. But now we know we are facing those things with God. It is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives within us. There is peace founded upon strength in his life.
Yet perhaps most of all, life in Christ makes us certain that the deepest peace on earth is but a shadow of the ultimate peace to come. It gives us a hope and a goal to which we travel. It gives us a life of glorious wonder here, yet at the same time it gives us a life in which the best is yet to come. To believe in Jesus Christ is to have eternal life. Yet that life begins with peace in the here and now.
I think I need to add at this point, however, that that does not mean that we will have a life of luxury and ease. I don’t care what Robert Schuller and Joel Osteen and their ilk say. Life in Christ does not mean that there will no longer be suffering in the world, or even in our lives. As Mother Teresa once put it, “I know God will not give me anything I cannot handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so much!”
R. Leslie Holmes addresses this issue in the March-April issue of Preaching magazine. He writes:
Stories abound of how, after the death of his 11-year-old son Willie, Abraham Lincoln went into severe periods of grief. In those dark days of early 1862, Lincoln looked often to Presbyterian preacher Phineas D. Gurley, whose church Lincoln attended…for a word of comfort. In the eulogy for Willie, Gurley preached that when tragedy comes, one must look to “Him who sees the end from the beginning and doeth all things well.”
He also said that when one trusts God, “our sorrows will be sanctified and made a blessing to our souls, and by and by we shall have occasion to say with blended gratitude and rejoicing, “It is good for us that we have been afflicted.” Dr. Gurley paraphrased Psalm 119:71. Such was the influence of Gurley’s words that it was reported that after Willie’s service, Lincoln asked Gurley for the words of the eulogy and that they became his life-raft during his intense sorrow.
Holmes later adds, “…it is amazing to me that there are still some people in the church who have bought into the erroneous notion that Christ always shields his followers from pain and heartbreak.” I don’t know if I can go along with the idea that, “It is good for me that I was afflicted,” but I do know that Christ shielding his followers from all pain and suffering is an erroneous notion.
Yet when we have life in Christ, we can be moved with compassion. The word “compassion” itself comes from the Latin roots “cum” and “passio.” “Cum” means “with” and “passio” means “to suffer.” Thus, compassion literally means “to suffer with.” Our own suffering brings compassion because we know what it means to suffer. Life in Christ may not save us from all suffering, but we will be able to transform it.
Life in Christ begins in the here and now. We’re not just talking about heaven here. Life in Christ comes to those who believe in him. Jesus goes on to say that those who believe are not condemned, yet those who do not believe are condemned already. He adds, “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” Jesus Christ is the light who leads us to life.
It reminds me of having lunch in a dimly lit restaurant. Imagine you leave a bright, sunny day to go into a dimly lit restaurant. You have a hard time seeing at first, don’t you? You get led to your seat, but then you have a hard time reading the menu.
Yet after a while, your eyes adjust. You can read the menu and it doesn’t seem dark at all. It’s not until you leave the restaurant and step back outside that you realize how dark it really was. That’s the trouble with dimly lit restaurants. You don’t realize how dark it really was until you step back out into the light.
In a way, I think that’s an analogy of our own world. Things can get so dark – wars and crimes and school shootings, and now even a church shooting – but after a while our eyes adjust. It’s not until we step into the light of Jesus Christ that we begin to realize how dark our world has become.
Believe in Jesus Christ and you’ll have life everlasting, beginning in the here and now. The closer you draw to Christ, the darker you will see our world become. But maybe that’s a good thing. After all, we have to see what’s broken before we can try to fix it. Amen.
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