John 3:16-21
God Loves the World
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
John 17:3
Eternal Life is Knowing the Father and His Son
3 Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
John 20:30-31
30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Isaiah 55:8
God Thoughts are Not Man's Thoughts
8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD.
God LOVES the world so much that He gave His One and Only Son to die for us, and to save us from our sins...And whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life...Jesus tells us what eternal life is...Jesus tells us that eternal life is that we may know God, His Father, and that we know His Son, whom God has sent...
Now for me it is hard to understand why God would Love us...It is hard to understand (for me, at least) how Jesus became a child, impregnated by the Holy Spirit...It is also hard to understand why He would send His Son to die for us -for we are certainly sinners...Yet, He does Love us...St. John writes much about His Love in his Gospel According to John, in his three Epistles, and then in the Book of Revelation...The ultimate show of His Love is God sending His Son...And His Son would be called Immanuel, which means God with us...So God wants to be with us...And even that, for me, is hard to understand...But St. John was with Jesus and an eyewitness to Him (and a disciple of His) and saw the things He did and could do...And John tells us the purpose of his gospel...St. John wrote his gospel, so that we may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name...St. John does not say he understood how Jesus did the things He did, but he saw the signs and heard His teachings and believed...
Yet we do not have to understand how God thinks to believe in Him or have faith in Him...Why God sent His Son to us in the flesh maybe hard to understand, but understanding things does not have to get in the way of our faith...God thinks differently than men, and His ways are much different than men...So even though we do not understand God and His ways, we still can have faith, have hope, learn from His Love, and believe and rejoice in Him...
God crossed a chasm and became a Man, if it is fair to call Jesus a Man...Jesus left the world of Spirit and entered this world as we know it...He entered the world of mankind, with all its sufferings, troubles, grief, and evil...Yet, man loves, sees beauty in things -and has faith and hope in many things...Jesus came to earth with the mind of His Father, and would teach us things no other Teacher has ever taught us before or after Him...He would expand on the good in man...He taught the eternities, and His whole teachings were on and about His Father...
And by His coming to us and for us, we can celebrate...Jesus brings us the beauty and joy and the Love of His Father...He teaches us that the real treasures are faith, hope, love, and forgiveness -the things that are from the heart...For the heart is the spiritual center of our soul and our very being...His teachings has had an everlasting affect on mankind...His words and teachings are still being taught today, some two thousand years later...So we do not have to understand God and His Plans and His ways to believe...But we do have to believe, have faith, and get to know Jesus and His Father to have eternal life...