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Who Condemns?

             For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (John 3:17)

I suspect that when some people read this verse, they focus on the first 14 words. They take it to mean that God doesn’t condemn the world, period. And they’re right. God doesn’t need to condemn the world. It has condemned itself, just as a traitor condemns himself as we condemn ourselves.

How often have you read a story in which the villain turns around and saves the victims from himself? More generally, a knight in shining armor shows up to defeat the monster. And if the victims decline to be saved? Is that the knight’s fault? Certainly, we could twist a plot in that direction, and we do, but it is an effective plot twist only because we are so accustomed to the knight as a hero.

God sent His Son to save us, but in this twisted plot, we’re victims not only of the monster, but of Stockholm Syndrome. We’ve come to identify with our abusers and have a choice. We can either remain with the villain or turn away from our error. If we don’t, it’s not the Hero who will abandon us, but we who have abandoned ourselves.

And the rest of the verse makes it clear that abandoning ourselves won’t lead to anything good.

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