Smile, God Love You?

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. (Jn. 3:36)

​In the gospel of John, John the Baptist says two things interesting about Jesus.  First, he says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life;…”  That is, having eternal life, receiving forgiveness of sins from God, being brought into a saving relationship with Christ, is simply a matter of believing in the Son of God.  The word “believing” from the Greek (pisteuō) means more than intellectual accent.  It’s more than simply believing Jesus was who he claimed to be or that he died on the cross for sinners or that he rose from the dead after three days.  The devil believes all those things as facts but is not any closer to getting into heaven than the day he first rebelled against God.  Rather to “believe” (pisteuō) means to entrust the whole of your life to Jesus.  It means to fully believe that he died on the cross for our sins and then, in light of that total belief, be willing to follow him and to live as he wants us to live.  But the second interesting thing John says is that “whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”  He does not say the wrath (anger) of God will come upon the person who refuses to believe, but that the wrath of remains on him.  In other words, God is currently angry with all those who steadfastly refuse to believe in him.  We send a confusing message to the unbelieving world when we tell them, “Smile, God loves you!”  Why bother to believe in Jesus if God loves them?  We might get a better response if we wore t-shirts that said, “Frown, God is angry with you!”