Sermons on John (Page 5)
God is a being unlike us, so unbelief questions the ways of God, but faith accepts God’s Word as truth.
The Lord is at that bittersweet moment in His earthly ministry. Judas has just left to betray Him, and Jesus knows that he will despair and ultimately drop into the eternal condemnation of hell. Yet, at that very moment, Jesus is on the final leg of His journey to the cross, and as He goes to receive the punishment for sin, He goes in the sure knowledge that His work will make manifest the infinite, forgiving love of God for humanity. This bittersweet moment reveals the motivation of God’s plan to declare us righteous for the sake of Jesus’ perfect life and innocent death and to begin the work of making us righteous and fit for the heavenly place by the work of the Holy Spirit through Word and Sacrament. All this is God’s doing, and this fact gives us courage in the bittersweet moment of this life.
Many heard Jesus’ word and saw His miracles and yet did not listen and did not see that He was and is God, our Savior, because they were looking for another, more fashionable savior. By God’s grace, He has worked faith in our hearts, so that we have heard and seen and believed. By that same Word, He draws us together in His flock to guard and keep us unto eternal life.
The first twenty chapters of St. John’s Gospel account are about erasing any doubt that Jesus is truly God. The twenty-first chapter is an encore, and its focus is on preparing Christians to let it be known in the world that Jesus is our God, our brother and our Savior.
The Christian God is not a God of moral excellence, rather He is a God of moral perfection. Since we are unable to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, we need a Savior. And have a Savior we do. He is none other than God Himself in the flesh, Who lived a life without sin and died in our place as our substitute under God’s perfect justice. Let there be no doubt! Let us proclaim as Thomas did, “My Lord and my God.”