For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that everyone who believes into Him would not perish, but would have eternal life.
*John 3.16, The New Testament~Recovery Version
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In April 1996 Sotheby's auctioned the estate property of past first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Prices the bidders were willing to pay exceeded expectations of everyone at the auction house. A rocking chair exceeded the selling estimate by two hundred times. A faux pearch necklace, once tugged on by toddler John F. Kennedy, Jr., now seen in a famous photo, sold for $211,500, though selling price was estimated at less than one-hundred dollars. A textbook of French verb conjugations sold for forty-two thousand dollars. The final bid for a humidor was five-hundred thousand dollars.
Helyn Goldenberg, of Sotheby's, attempted to explain the phenomenon: "This auction is merely a vehicle to get a piece of the magic, a piece of the dream. This is about a woman who was once the most admired woman in the world."
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We place a high value on persons highly esteemed among us. These persons range among sports stars, movie stars, artists, authors, religious leaders, political leaders, ... Many among us have, at one time, had the ambition of being so admired greatly.
The Wholly Other admires you, as much as persons admire the likes of a Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Indeed, Spirit admires you more.
Yet, Scripture takes us beyond admiration to an innate virtue in God, what we could call the principal virtue~Love. Indeed, God is so inherently Love that we can call God "Love." I wonder how many persons knew what it was to love with divine Love Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. How many who paid so much for the things linked to her would have given their lives for her, or for anyone?
John 3.16 shares with us consummate loving. "God so loved," not just God had love. Divine love is a process, a self-pouring out of the Divine Essence, in which the Love~within~God loses nothing and is never exhausted. Yes, "He gave" His "only~unique Son."
Likewise, this loving reaches to everyone. God expressed Himself as Love to "the world."
We respond not with believing regarding or about the Son, Jesus the Messiah. Such believing about is not true spiritual understanding: "You believe there is one God. That is good! But even the demons believe that, and because they do, they shake" (James 2.19, NLV).
The Recovery Version gives a true rendition of the Greek preposition en. It reads "into Him." Here is explanation from that New Testament:
To believe Him is to believe that He is true and real, but to believe into Him is to receive Him and be united with Him as one. The former is to acknowledge a fact objectively; the latter is to receive a life subjectively.
Here, we have a glimpse of the contemplative dimension of the Gospel. To be Christian is to be able to say, "I have trusted into Christ Jesus. I have received His life into me. I have entered into Him, and He into me. We are one Body. We live together."
This passage reflects, then, like the Gospels, that the Divine places inestimable worth upon us each. Not only does God give Jesus the Messiah for us, as God's Self-Expression in Loving, Divine Presence invites us to participate in the Mystery of the Trinity through incorporation into the resurrected Christ. To be in Christ means to be in the whole Trinity, the Oneness of God, through the Unique Son. Do not try to understand this: believe into the Mystery of this Loving~Three.
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*Story from Craig Brian Larson, Ed. Choice Contemporary Stories and Illustrations.
*Brian K. Wilcox lives with his wife, Rocio, their two dogs, St. Francis and Bandit Ty, and their fish, Hope, in Southwest Florida. Brian is vowed at Greenbough House of Prayer, a contemplative Christian community in Georgia. He lives a contemplative life and inspires others to experience a deeper relationship with Christ. He advocates for a spiritually-focused Christianity and the renewal of the focus of the Church on addressing the deeper spiritual needs and longings of persons and empathic relating with diverse spiritual traditions, East and West. Brian has an independent writing, workshop, and retreat ministry, for all spiritual seekers.
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