Some good news for a change

I came across this nugget at the end of my morning reading.

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life...

That sounds great, but that's only the first part of the verse.  It's an idea that 99% of Christians can abide.  I will go so far as to assert that most folks with a theistic worldview could agree with the premise.  For many within Christendom, though, believing in the Son is akin to believing in Santa Claus.  They have shifted the mythology of their childhood to a more mature mythology in their adulthood.  He's like a supernatural rabbit's foot, certainly not something real that needs to be feared or reverenced.

Others believe in the teachings of Jesus.  That Son of God stuff is a little hard to get your arms around, but they love those love your neighbor and judge not ideas. 

Others who have different thoughts about getting right with the cosmos or with their god-idea won't besmirch the Christian their belief in the Son.  What works for one might not work for the other, as though the aeronautics that lift my airplane is somehow different than their aeronautics.  Spiritual equivalence.  Unfortunately, it doesn't get close to passing the reality test.

The problem with these three groups comes with a proper understanding of belief.  R.C. Sproul aced the hole this week when, on his radio program, he argued that many who believe in Jesus, do not believe in the biblical Jesus.  This has two prongs.  You have the content of belief and you have the impact of that belief upon your life.  You might like some of the teachings of Jesus, but to believe in the Son, means to believe in the true testimony about him as contained in the Bible.*  And if I really believe in something, like gravity, I will live my life in accord with that which I believe to be true, and in accord with how much that thing matters to me.  If I step off the top of a building, I know I will plummet to the concrete.  As such, I honor gravity though I cannot see it because I know the consequences of ignoring it are mighty steep.  I see the evidence of gravity in the world around me though I cannot see, taste, touch, smell or hear gravity.  And so with God.  Those who have believed him to be true in his word and who have lived their lives in devoted submission to him have experienced him to be reliable (trustworthy, faithful) in their lives as well.  He is true to his word.

That takes me to the second half of the verse, and therein we find good news and bad news.

...whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

Wow.  That looks mighty bleak.  So what's the good news?  Look back to the top.  Accepting the free gift of restoration to God through the sacrificial work of Jesus Christ moves one from being under God's wrath to being an adopted child and the recipient of eternal life into fellowship with him.  The wrath of God is not upon the one who has eternal life.  That is really good news.

Now for the bad news, and the bad news shatters all the delusional and nonsensical ideas about Jesus.  A mythological Jesus is not one whose lordship you are likely to accept.  And to assert him to be a good teacher and not to follow his teachings to the letter still leaves one guilty before a holy God.  Paul made the point in his letter to the brand new church in Rome that even the most meticulous law-keeper could not attain to perfection through the law.  James, Jesus' brother, said the same thing. 

It rips a hole in the "that's okay for you" mentality, too.  The Bible draws a stark line in the cosmic sand.  In a nutshell, you're either in with the eternal-life crowd or you're in with the wrath-of-God crowd.  What's the delineator?  A biblical belief in the Son.

Let's pretend that the Bible is utterly false and Christianity is a nonsensical belief system.  The line in the sand would not dissolve.  It still asserts that the only acceptable doorway through which to pass for eternal life is the Son.  Folks who believed in the Son would be a camp full of sorry loons.  An aside, If Christianity was a false religion, why would the non-Christian say that it's okay for you to believe it when the "it" is utter nonsense?  That's worse than giving the alcoholic keys to the liquor store.

But God has spoken to man plainly, clearly, and accurately in his word.  The good news?  He still holds out the free gift (Romans 6:23) to any who would turn to him believing on and in his Son.  The bad news?  It's no joke.  The consequences, not seeing life and dwelling with the wrath of God upon you, are most severe.

Forgiveness, fellowship and adoption into God's family or eternal separation and ever crushed by a wrath for which I am most deserving?  For many this is great news.  For others...

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*I did not intend in this post to get into the issue of the Bible's veracity (truthfulness and accuracy), but it is relevant to the discussion.  Most denominations do not hold the Bible to be inspired and inerrant or if they do, they have so neutered down the definitions of inspired and inerrant to mean anything but.  I offer here some aspects of the unique nature of God's word.

• Authorship:  Penned by God through the hands and minds of some 35+ different men (2 Peter 1:21, 2 Timothy 3:15-17) 
• Claim:  It claims to be true (Psalm 119:160, Proverbs 30:5).  That doesn't necessarily make it true.  If I assert to you that I am a truth-telling man, the proof is in the pudding.  Do I bear that out in your experience?  So it is with God's word.  Is it accurate in its history?  Crazier still, the Bible is a prophetic book.  Did those prophecies bear out?  In vivid and literal detail.
• The historical accuracy of God's word:  One brief example.  Sir William Ramsay, a prominent British chemist, set out to prove Luke's accounts in the book of Acts to be inaccurate from an archaeological point of view.  This would render the rest of the Bible nothing more than a book of fairy tales.  What he found turned the skeptic into a believer.  The artifacts of Greece and Turkey bore out the veracity of Luke's accounts in Acts in breath-taking detail.  He wrote, "Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy...this author should be placed along with the very greatest historians."

Many look at the "numerous" contradictions within the Bible.  A modicum of willingness to examine the passages within their contexts and with reasonable amount of textual criticism melts away those apparent contradictions.