The WORD in LENT - Fifth week, Thursday
March 30, 2023: Genesis 17:3-9; John 8: 51-59
Though they claimed to be people of the covenant, they did not grasp the real meaning of the covenant that the Lord had made with them. They considered it to be only a material blessing, giving them prosperity and posterity. Jesus tries to drive home to their minds the holistic difference that the Lord makes in our lives, in and through the covenant: the covenant actually makes us like God - eternal and all spiritual.
Whoever keeps my word will never see death, declares Jesus. Never seeing death, or becoming immortal or eternal like God, is to participate in the very nature of God. That is what our covenant with the Lord makes of us - immortal, eternal, spiritual beings destined for the Glory of God. This is what Jesus wishes to introduce us into - that would fill us with a peace that is eternal.
In Jesus we have a profound reality to observe and accept: that God wants to share with us God's very nature -the nature of eternity, the aspect of timelessness, the fact that our earthly life is just a tiny part of the entire existence we possess, in the mind of God earlier and in union with God later. If we accept this perspective, we would understand the folly of an exaggerated insistence and dependence on material prosperity. In this vision, we would be able to understand what Jesus meant when he said, before ever Abraham was, I am!
Are we ready to understand the true meaning of the covenant we have with God or are we picking up stones against it? Oh, what a peace that God has in store for us, a peace that is eternity!