Day 24 - John 14:15
Let me teach you all a bit of logic (which is a branch of philosophy and maths). Some sentences have the following structure: "If P then Q", where P and Q are statements.
For example, "If it rains, then water will fall from the sky." In this case, P is the statement "It rains" and Q is "water will fall from the sky". Get it? Quite simple right?
The contrapositive of an "If P then Q" statement has the form "If not Q then not P". Basically you reverse the P and Q and consider the negatives of the statements.
A contrapositive of a conditional statement is known to be equivalent to the original statement, ie they have the same truth value and they mean EXACTLY the same thing. (Whether or not the statement is rediculous is not the issue here)
Now apply that to the following verse which appeared quite a number of times during the retreat.
"If you love me, obey my commandments" - John 14:15
The contrapositive of the above statement is "If you do not obey my commandments, then you do not love me". From a logic standpoint, those 2 statements are equivalent. Scary isn't it?
Everytime we disobey the Lord, everytime we sin, everytime we do something that does not please the Lord, we are saying, "I do not love You". At ONE Camp, Dave put it in a much more explicit manner, that everytime we sin we are actually saying, "God, I hate You".
That is the extent of sin. We have all sinned and so we are actually haters of God, and death as a punishment is just. Then why do we not die but instead have eternal life?
It because of the blood that Jesus shed for us on the cross. His grace and His mercy towards us. We cannot earn salvation for ourselves, we cannot get to heaven without the covering of His blood.
