For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. – John 3:16-17
I can remember the exact moment John 3:16-17 struck me as more than a nice verse to memorize, but as something that speaks to the fundamental truth of who God is. It was one of those rare moments of clarity we experience through music that changed something deep within me.
Going into college, my faith took a back seat. I didn’t necessarily lose faith, I just didn’t make time for it. I prioritized other things. Late in my sophomore year, I started feeling a deep desire to be in the church again, accompanied by guilt for neglecting my relationship with Christ. That summer, a friend helped me get a music internship at St. Thomas More, the Catholic church serving the OU campus. It was such a joy to sing Mass with fellow music students and friends and to be in a house of God consistently once again.
In truth, though, I still felt separated. It felt like I was looking for God, and He just wasn’t there anymore. There was a part of me that was certain I had wandered too far away, for too long. That I had lost a connection to God, and I would never be able to reclaim it. I still felt shame and guilt, the same as I had when I wasn’t going to Church. The moment that changed was on Good Friday, my junior year. At the end of the service, we sang God So Loved The World, a choral work by John Stainer. We had been rehearsing it for weeks. I had sung it countless times, but that was really the first time I heard it. I wept. Truly, I couldn’t sing a single note. I was overtaken with the reality I had been ignoring. “God so loved the world…God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved.”
God had never condemned me; I was condemning myself. Tears streamed down my face. God had been right in front of me all along, and I was just too lost in shame to see Him. The revelation of His love in that moment shook me free. I have a habit of trying to make God’s love for me conditional. A pattern of feeling I’m not good enough and then inflating it to Godly proportion. In the moments where my own condemning voice gets so loud that I’ve drowned out God’s, I’m going to return to this verse. I hope you take a moment to be still and listen to Stainer’s piece today. God loves you. Know that He does not want you to live in guilt or shame, so let it go.
George Soter, Director of The Table – Young Adult Ministries
