Thoughts On: John 5:18-29

The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

John 5:22-24, ESV

When I was 18 and falling in love with Scripture, I had no idea what drew me in. I knew that I loved the words on the page, and that something about it rooted me down. I knew that there seemed to be a magic in the way the words affected me. But at the time, I thought I already knew everything there was to know about the Bible. At the time, I thought I was a great Christian. I didn’t know that I still needed saving.

Part of the Christianity I preached up until that point in my life said that Jesus came only to love on people. I believed he was soft, and that he went wherever people needed him to be. I created him in my own image: A codependent God who came to fix people by telling them what they were doing wrong and how his love would change that. All of that, it turns out, was a lie - that Christ only came to love on people, mostly in ways that they didn’t want to be loved. 

In so many ways I don’t feel like I met God until I was 18. T. B. Leberge writes that “to think you can love God without being changed by him, is to think you can jump into the ocean and not get wet. To really love him, you must understand that your life is going to be wrecked by him, and built again into something beautiful, something lasting.” That is what I began to realize as I opened my Bible during those winter mornings of my senior year. That is what I didn’t want to give into, all the nights I spent on the floor of my bedroom, crying out to go back to a world I actually knew. 

After nearly six years, though, I can see now that being wrecked is the best thing that will ever happen to any of us, and I think it all begins with the truth that Christ has the authority. When I began to believe that my attempts to control my life weren’t working, I needed someone to trust - someone who wouldn’t betray me or sell me out. And that is what makes following Jesus different. He is not a God who goes wherever the wind takes him. He did not come to this world to do our bidding, and he does not take orders from us now. Jesus is in charge. He runs the world, and while he does it with all the love we could ever need, he also runs the world because he is God. We don’t get a say in that - he has the authority, and we do not. 

After years of wrestling with that truth, I have come to love it. If Christ has the authority, I can let go. If he is in charge, I can finally breathe. There is something awful about letting go of what you thought you had a say in, especially when you realize it may never turn out like you’d planned. But there is only comfort in knowing that the God of the universe has it covered, and that he’ll take care of it. 

And that’s why I love Scripture, too. It doesn’t do what you tell it to do, and it doesn’t bend to anyone’s wishes besides God’s. It soothes me to know that finally I have found something on which it is possible to build a life that is strong, and good, and lush. I love that both Christ and Scripture have a backbone, because maybe, just maybe, that means I can have one, too.