Published by Jesus loves you
This is the catch phrase every evangelist uses as his preamble, at least in India. Will this leave any mark on the listeners? Even an average person among the audience would retort, “My father loves me, my mother loves me, all my friends love me, so what’s great about it?” Accordingly, the creator too would naturally love His creatures. “This again is nothing extraordinary..”
May I share a thought with you? The contents of Bible are not a straightforward reading material at all. It contains too many figures of speech, similes and metaphors and implied meanings. Sometimes it does not mean what it says but means something else. Or, if you go by one verse, your understanding might turn out to be wrong. Every Bible verse must be supported by a minimum of one more verse and even then the meaning may not be clear and so you have to have your own interpretation. Compare notes with others, as a general rule, and then draw your own conclusion.
“Jesus loves you” is one such verse which means something else than what it says. This expression has baffled me right from my Sunday school days and it is only recently that I understood its real import. And here is my explanation. Read John 3:16, which says, that “Go so loved the world that…..”The verse doesn’t say that “He so loved you ..” Therefore, to construe this, to mean an individual or individuals would not be correct at all. The reference is to the world or all people in the world and not particularly you.
God loves everyone in the world. This again would sound hollow. Any father would love all his children, equally so too. Hence, God loving everyone in the world is nothing astounding for that matter. Its indirect meaning has to be something different. I look at it this way: Besides the people in the world, there are angels in Heaven. It it is God who creates them and they are His children too. So, between the angels and the people of the world, He has a slightly greater fascination for the women born human beings. His love for us, the earthlings, is a shade more than His love for His other off springs in Heaven.
Initially when God ‘created’ Adam and Eve, the purpose must have been that they and their descendants would enjoy everything He would put on and under the Earth, lead a good life and come to Him in Heaven, at some stage of their life on Earth, to be with Him for ever along with the angels.
This plan misfired when our first parents disobeyed and thus had made themselves ineligible to step into Heaven because they had become sinners. [One cannot enter Heaven unless one is 100% holy. One cannot see God if he/she is a sinner] The world as of now consists of ‘sinners’ and sinners only. Since Man has alienated himself from his Creator, God could have written them off and removed their names from His book once and for all. But, His love for Men and Woemn of the world being so exceptional that He wanted to go out of His way to ‘rescue’ them and bring them back to Him in His Heavenly abode. He would do every thing possible to get them at Heaven. So, “Jesus love you” would have to be seen in this context.
We often use the term, “Lord and Saviour” rather mechanically. This phrase seems to have lost the intended meaning, the ‘saviour’ part in particular. Lord Jesus came into the world as a Man to ‘save’ a race which has chosen ‘extinction’ as its ultimate end. God wouldn’t agree. Because of His singular love for the earthlings, He wanted them to come and live with Him for ever whatever the cost. And He has shown a Way, a very easy Way of how the fallen race could reach Him despite their evil nature. Hence the title, Saviour.
He had become a saviour to resuscitate us from extermination because “Jesus loves us all” tremendously.
