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What God wants from us.
What does God really want us to do while we are
here on earth? Although this is answered
in the concepts of cgod3, let's examine
some prescriptions for eternal life as a means
to determine what we need to focus our lives on.
Really, if we want eternal life, the key is to
focus on living a life that is consistent with
the Eternal God. Let's set aside for a
moment the fact that a focus on what we have to
do to get eternal life is a dichotomy from the
very beginning, because it focuses on "me,
me, me". It focuses on us as being
separate, and it is a selfish ambition.
But given that it is the premise of a lot of
discussions, let's cover it.
Let's start with a common theme presented in
John 3:16:
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in
him should not perish, but have everlasting
life."
Pretty simple, but it confuses a lot of people,
or at least is mis-interpreted by a lot of
people. Many don't spend time considering
what it means exactly. Let's start with a
focus on the key element: whoever believes in
the Son shall have eternal life.
First question - what does believe mean
exactly? Does this mean that if a person
believes the story of Jesus that eternal life
results? Actually, as the Bible states,
even the demons believe, so that can't be right.
Our answer comes from John 3:36, just a few
verses down the page:
""He who believes in the Son has eternal
life; but he who does not obey the Son will not
see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."
This spells out for us that to believe in Jesus
is to obey Jesus. That of course makes a
lot of sense. We have already covered what
it means to obey Jesus, and we can turn to the
two greatest commandments to see what that is
exactly.
Now let's look at what obeying Jesus
means. Consider
John 7:16: Jesus answered, "My teaching
is not my own. It comes from Him who sent me".
Now we have successfully drilled down so that we
can understand that to believe in Jesus is to
obey God. What does God want from us?
In the most simple terms, it is to love God and
to love others. Now of course we can spend
a lifetime working towards this, but at least we
now understand what our mission here on earth
is. We also can see that we can't narrow
our definition of God down to a specific set of
rules or even some specific religion, and that
we have to be very careful and not judge others
too quickly.
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