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Gospel Reading for March 24, 2026 – John 8: 21-30
CONSISTENTLY
Jesus said to the Pharisees: “I am going away and you will look for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going you cannot come.” So the Jews said, “He is not going to kill himself, is he, because he said, ‘Where I am going you cannot come’?” He said to them, “You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above. You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world. That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” So they said to him, “Who are you?” Jesus said to them, “What I told you from the beginning. I have much to say about you in condemnation. But the one who sent me is true, and what I heard from him I tell the world.” They did not realize that he was speaking to them of the Father. So Jesus said to them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.” Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.
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They could not understand what Jesus was saying because they belonged to what is below, while Jesus belonged to what is above. Yet what they could have grasped from his words was this: because they belonged to the world, they would die in their sins.
The only way for us to be lifted from our sins is to be lifted up with the Son of Man. If we truly desire salvation and the gift of eternal life, we must pattern our lives after Jesus—striving to be CONSISTENTLY Christian in all that we do, wherever we may be, just as he was always one with the Father.
Lift us up with You, Lord, that we may not sink into the quagmire of sin!
