One of the most overused pieces of scripture is John 3:16. We all know it and have recited this verse since we were young. We see it on billboards, on hand made signs at sporting events and on the covers of a multitude of books. Unfortunately, this extremely beautiful verse in the story of the nighttime visit of Nicodemus to Jesus has lost it's power with the public and has become a symbol of normalcy. This verse however is anything but normal. The verse describes an all powerful, benevolent, connected God and His love for a sick, fallen, desecrated world. An image of eternal mercy and love is painted by this one verse and the gateway to eternal life is opened up to us. The idea that this verse is just used as an everyday symbol is sickening.
The point of this rant is due to the degeneration of this verse, churches have taken the verse and tried to use it as a "save the world" philosophy or build church membership ideology. The idea that many churches have is to make sure they preach the love but, not the blood. To offer salvation without the sacrifice. To preach mercy and grace but, forget the penalty of our transgressions. Why? Sacrifice and death do not sit well with the masses. These ideas make us feel uncomfortable and make us face the reality that there is a cost to our actions. We work so hard to cover this up we seem to even forget God. We tell people we love them and that if they love Jesus (the man) and go to church they will go to heaven. We push the very thing that saves us aside and we are never covered in the blood of the Lamb. Sadly, most Christians horizontal relationship makes up so much of their lives, they have no room for their vertical relationship with God.
The easiest way to remember the horizontal and vertical relationships is to look at the cross. The vertical beam represents our relationship with God and the horizontal with others. If you remove one of the beams you no longer have a cross which lets us remember our sin and the price that was payed for us. A problem though that has seemed to infiltrate the church is the removal of the cross inside the church. It bothers me when a church says they do not have a cross because they "do not have room". My problem with this is they are basically saying we do not have room for the sacrifice of Christ. My advice, make room. "It makes people uncomfortable", my response is good! It should because it reminds us of our sins and the we should not be comfortable with our sin. "It offends people", my response is: perfect! It should offend people because the Bible offends our sin and makes us look at our lives not through the eyes of men but, those of a holy God. Church is not about gaining souls for heaven (although this is a huge part and is one of the main focuses and should not be taken that it is not) but, it is for us to glorify God. All that we do should be for His glory, not the approval of man. If claim to be a Christian then make sure your relationships are balanced and don't worry, you will offend people but, thats ok we want people to see their sin and come to Christ because they want salvation of their sins.
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