Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-march-2-2023
John 3:16-21
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done through God.
The late Bruce Thielemann, a great Presbyterian preacher and a mentor to me, used to shake his head about how often people would hold up signs reading “John 3:16” behind the goal posts at football games. He used to say he doubted anyone was going to “lunge for a Bible” because they saw one of those signs after an extra point attempt.
Today’s reading starts with that famous verse, maybe the most widely quoted verse from the whole New Testament: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” Kids learn it in Sunday School, and it does shows up in everywhere – including public events like football games.
This reading is the second part of a conversation between Jesus and the Pharisee leader Nicodemus. Yesterday we read and thought about first fifteen verses of the passage, in which Jesus speaks the other famous verse from the conversation: “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
It’s been said that today’s reading can be understood as a short summary of the whole gospel message, and that makes sense. But this passage can also be understood as setting out the ideas that are at the heart of the Gospel of John. So wrapping your head around the central message of the Gospel of John requires having a good grasp of those ideas.
The passage starts out by saying, “For God so loved the world . . .” That phrase – the world – can mean different things. It can mean planet earth, it can mean all people everywhere, etc. But when the Gospel of John uses the phrase “the world,” it uses it to refer to all those who are alienated from God by the power of sin and evil.
There’s a common (and strident) voice coming from a part of the church that proclaims that God is hostile to the world – maybe even that God understands himself to be at war with everyone outside the church. These Christians often quote passages from the apostle Paul that have very belligerent wording. But it’s hard to square the idea that God hates the world with John 3:16. God’s love for the world is so powerful that he was willing to leave behind the glory of heaven and come down into this world for the sake of all of those people who were alienated from him.
If that’s true, if God really loves the world and its people that much, it cranks up the urgency of the work we’ve been called to do as followers of the “one and only Son” God gave to save the world. It’s our job to be doing whatever we can to let those who are alienated from God know how much he loves them. And that must include doing whatever we can to let people know what a great price he was willing to pay to bring them back into relationship with himself.
There’s another central idea of the Gospel of John that shows up in this passage. In this gospel, there’s really only one sin: failing to accept Jesus as the Messiah and Lord of your life. In John’s mind, when you accept Jesus and turn to follow him, you step out of the darkness and into the light.
That’s a little different than our usual way of thinking about sin. But John would probably say that all the other stuff we think of as sin is secondary to the main question of accepting and following Jesus. I think John would say that if you accept him as the Messiah and Lord of your life, you will naturally turn aside from all of the things that displease God, as a way of saying ‘thanks’ for your new life in Jesus.
The vision here seems to be that anyone who refuses to accept Jesus will just go on living according to the world’s standards, doing all those things that displease God – things that fail to show love for him and for other people: dishonesty, violence, sexual immorality, exploitation of others, etc. Those things show that a person is still alienated from God. According to John, we can’t blame God for somehow ‘being unfair’ by condemning those who are living in darkness. God has come into the world and sacrificed himself on the cross to bring them back to himself.
This passage always leads me to think about an idea that appears in the C. S. Lewis book The Great Divorce. Lewis wrote that it’s a mistake to think of God angrily ‘sending people to hell.’ Instead, Lewis said, the Bible suggests that God stands brokenheartedly calling, “No, come back!” to people who insist on moving further and further away from him into the darkness of alienation and despair.
Which sort of sheds new light on what Jesus says in another gospel – in the fifteenth chapter of Luke. There, Jesus says that there’s a celebration in heaven each time someone acknowledges the lordship of Jesus and embraces him as Lord and Savior. It’s a powerful thought that at some point in our lives, the maker of the universe stopped to celebrate each of us being brought into the fold as followers of his Son.
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you for your great love for the world, and for the great price you paid to reconcile it to yourself. Help us to embrace your one and only Son more joyfully day by day as a sign of that love, and to join in your work of making him known to all those who have not yet come to acknowledged him as their Savior. Amen.
Blessing,
Henry
(The other readings for today are Psalms 27 and 147:12-20; Deuteronomy 9:23 – 10:5; and Hebrews 4:1-10. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.com, the website of the International Bible Society.)
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