THAT’S what Christ told those Jews who could not believe that he was the Son of God. “We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy,” those Jews said. “You, a man, are making yourself God.” (Jn 10, 33)
That’s when Christ told them directly, “Is it not written in your law: ‘I said you are gods?’ If he called them gods, to whom the word of God was spoken, and the scripture cannot be broken, do you say of him whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world: Thou blasphemes, because I said, I am the Son of God?” (Jn 10, 34-36)
Then Christ appealed to them so they can believe that he was the Son of God and that we are meant to be children of God, sharers of God’s life and nature, by saying that if they found what he told them difficult to believe, then to consider the works he was doing, for they showed he was doing the works of God, his Father.
It’s very understandable for these Jews to find it difficult to believe that Christ was the Son of God, and God himself. It took time for some of them to believe him to be so. Christ had to perform so many miracles and many wonderful signs as testified by John the Baptist before some of them could believe he was the Son of God.
Now, that we are also children of God or that we are gods ourselves since we share in the very life and nature of God, as Christ clarified, that indeed is more difficult to believe. Before this truth of faith, what we have to do is to humble ourselves to be able to accept such truth, so unworthy we may feel to be, and then start aligning our thoughts, and will and all other faculties we have to such truth.
We need to level up our understanding of who we really are. We are not just a creature ruled by the laws of nature — be it biology, chemistry, physics, etc. With our intelligence and will, we also are a spiritual and personal being, poised to enter into the supernatural level of God.
Our life and world are not just natural. The reality that governs us includes the supernatural. And we can actually live in it because as Christ has shown and shared it with us, we are given God’s grace, which is God’s way of sharing his supernatural life and nature with us.
That God has to become man and that a woman can become the mother of the Son of God and can be rightly called as the Mother of God, since the Son is the same God as the Father and the Holy Spirit — all these should lead us to conclude that we are meant to be children of God, sharers of the divine life and nature.
We obviously would feel unbelieving before such tremendous truth of our faith about ourselves, but that’s just how and who we really are. The only way to accept this truth of faith is when we are humble enough to accept this truth in faith.
This is indeed a big challenge, a very tall order. And so, we just have to work it out as early and as earnestly as possible. We have to make this truth about ourselves more known, understood and appreciated. Let’s turn it into our life itself — with God’s grace and our relentless effort!/PN
