15 April, Wednesday — He Did Not Send His Son to Condemn

Wednesday of the 2^nd Week of Eastertide

Acts 5:17-26
Jn 3:16-21

“For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through Him the world might be saved.”

Today’s Gospel defines the core Christian message of salvation through God’s love, stating that God gave his only Son to provide eternal life for believers rather than to condemn the world. This passage, part of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, highlights that belief brings light, while rejecting him leads to condemnation.

I know this Gospel invites me to be free from shame.

For God so loved the world – I have known this verse since childhood. I have heard it preached, quoted, printed. And perhaps because I have known it so long, I have sometimes let it sit at the surface — a truth I affirm without letting it reach the parts of me that most need it.

But this morning, I am reading it as a father.

I think about how I love my children. The feeling that rises when I watch them sleep, or when my son L reaches for my hand without thinking, or when I catch my daughter, M, doing something kind when they think no one is watching. It is not a love I calculated. It arrived with them. It is the most uncomplicated thing I know.

And I think: if I, with all my impatience and distraction and imperfection and of course – my ADHD, love my children like this — how much more does the Father love me?

Verse 17 stops me every time I read it carefully. God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. There is a voice I carry — I suspect many fathers do — that is quick to condemn. That tallies the moments I was short-tempered, the evenings I was mentally elsewhere, the times I chose the easier thing over the better thing. That voice sounds authoritative. It sounds like accountability. But it is not the Father’s voice.

The Father sent love, not a verdict.

That does not mean I stop growing or stop caring. Light has come, and I am called to walk in it. The passage is honest — those who love darkness will resist the light, not because they are judged, but because they prefer hiding. I know what it is to hide. To stay busy enough that I don’t have to examine what is underneath.

But the invitation here is not to hide and not to be condemned. It is to step into the light. Not perfectly. Not all at once. But, honestly.

As a father, I want to model this for my children — not a performance of having it together, but the quiet courage of a man who keeps walking toward the light, even on the days he has stumbled. A man who knows he is loved before he has earned it.

That is the kind of father I want to become. And it begins here, in the receiving.

(Today’s OXYGEN by Gerard Francis)

Prayer: Lord, give me a heart that recognises Your love and compassion, and help me to stand fully on Your side, allowing Your Spirit to move within me and guide me.

Thanksgiving: We give thanks for the messages you deliver to us to guide us along our way.