Today's Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 3 verses 17 and 18:
17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
The Son of God came to save the world and not to condemn it; for we were doing plenty good enough of a job condemning ourselves already.
We dwell upon and berate and beat ourselves up over all that we ought not have done but did, or all that we ought to have done but didn't. Our sons of commission and omission eat away at us and we end becoming prisoners to our own sin, wardened by our own sense of guilt and shame.
But the Apostle Paul says, "There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." In other words, there is no condemnation for those who believe what God was trying to say to us in Christ. Again, "God did not send His Son into the world to condemn us, but to save us."
So self-condemnation is an abnegation of what God was trying to say to us in Christ -- it is an act of dis-obedience (literally, a refusal to hear). It is an assumption -- implicit or outright -- that God's verdict of not-guilty is unlawful and erroneous, and an insistence that I must be in the judgment seat. It is an insistence that I play God.
So here it is a third time, "God did not send His Son into the world to condemn us, but to save us." To refuse this word salvation, to demand our guilt, is to set ourselves up in the judgement seat and try play God. And that's the real condemnation -- self-condemnation.
A Prayer:
God of salvation, your word of mercy and of life was spoken through your Son Jesus the Christ. May we be open to hear this word and to receive it, and to reject all other words of judgment and condemnation -- especially when they are spoken by ourselves. The Son has set us free; may we be free indeed.
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