This is an iconic passage . . . it contains arguably the best-known verse in the Gospels
– “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever
believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” We’ve all seen it on billboards and heard it
preached countless times, but my favorite is in the end-zone seats on
televised football games . . . you know, the guy who after every touchdown,
when the camera’s glued to some 200-pound running-back’s victory dance, holds
up a placard that simply reads “John 3:16?”
I've always wondered how many
folks at home rush to their Bibles and look up the verse.
Anyway,
it's such a beloved and well-known verse, that we tend to do what we do with verses that are beloved and
well-known, we read over them without really thinking. Or at least,
that’s what I tend to do . . . but John
3:16 is actually part and parcel of a larger storyline, of Jesus' teaching to
Nicodemus . . . you remember Nicodemus,
the Pharisee, the temple authority, as John calls him "a leader of the
Jews?" He comes to Jesus at night, and the whole episode revolves around him
being in the dark. First, he – along
with a whole lot of evangelicals– misunderstands Jesus when he says you must be
“born from above,” and then he can’t figure out what he means when by
"the wind blows where it will . . .”
And now, in the
final part of Jesus’ teaching, he no doubt doesn’t understand either . . . Jesus says “And
just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man
be lifted up” and it’s another one of the word-plays in John – the Greek for “lifted
up” has multiple connotations, multiple “horizons” as one scholar puts it . . .
it can mean lifted up, as in the story about Moses hoisting up a snake, but it
can also mean “exalted” as in a synonym for “glorified.” And so, Jesus is saying that the Son of Man
–that’s him – the Son of Man must be lifted up, as in on a cross, but he's also
saying it's his glorification, his exaltation
And
it's not an accident that John includes this story . . . it's right in line
with his theology of the cross – on display throughout his Gospel – where the
moment of Jesus’ crucifixion, the moment of his brutal death, the moment that
will come less than three weeks from today, is the precise instant of
his glorification, his exaltation, his “lifting up,” so to speak. But why does he associate it with the story
from Numbers about snakes in the woods?
Well, you’ll recall that in the wilderness, poisonous serpents were
slithering around biting the Israelites, and God told Moses to make a bronze
serpent, hoist it up on a pole, and all those Israelites who gazed upon them
would live. In just this way, all those
who gaze upon Christ lifted up on the
cross shall live . . . and indeed, in the next breath John
spells it out – the Son of Man must be lifted up so that “whoever believes in
him will have eternal life.”
And
here's one of those pesky participles . . . our translation has “whoever believes in him” and that’s correct, but
I find it helpful to translate the participle more literally – believing, as in “whoever is believing
in him,” and the reason I like to do so is that it’s a little easier to see
that it’s a state of belief that
Jesus is referring to here, it does not imply a beginning or, for that matter,
an end . . . another way to say it is that “whoever is in the state of believing may not perish but
have eternal life” . . . it doesn’t say anything about who or what initiated that belief, whether it was
God – as Calvin and Paul would have it – or whether it was the believer’s
choice.
Another
thing to notice is the phrase “eternal life” and you say “what’s so hard about
that,” that’s probably the least problematic phrase in the whole passage, it
means heaven, it means life after death, it means salvation . . . doesn’t it?
Well . . . not so fast. We tend
to think of eternal life as life without end, and it does have that connotation
in John’s Gospel, but to a Jew like John the phrase had an apocalyptic sense, a
sense of “life in the age to come,” in the kingdom of God . . . it tends to
refer to a quality of life, lived in the presence of God. In fact, later on in John’s Gospel, Jesus himself
defines what he means by
the phrase . . . speaking to God, whom he called Father, he says “This is
eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom
you have sent” . . . thus, whatever
happens after death – and Jesus doesn't say a whole lot about that in any
Gospel, he was a Jew, after all – whatever happens after death, “eternal life”
begins before then, and it is defined as “knowing God.”
Well. God did not send the Son into the world to
condemn the world – and here I like the New American Standard Version's
translation of "judged" – God didn't send God's Son into the world to
judge the world, but that the world might be saved . . . and note that
Jesus uses "world" four times in two verses: God so loved the world so that God didn’t send Jesus into
the world to judge the world, but that the world might be
saved . . . world, world, world, world . . . this is one of the most inclusive
passages in the New Testament. God loves
the whole world, as a friend's bumper sticker reads, no exceptions. And what is this salvation he gives to the
world, what is this eternal life? It is
as Jesus said himself, that we might know God. And it's important to understand that this is
perfectly consistent with what Jesus says elsewhere in John . . . for example, Philip
asks him “Lord, show us the Father.” And Jesus says “Do you still not know
me? Whoever has seen me has seen the father.” As Paul
would later say, Jesus is the image
of the invisible God. If you've seen
Jesus, if you have looked at him lifted up on the cross, like those Israelites
did that golden snake, you will have eternal life, you will know God.
But
wait just a first-century minute . . . if God didn't send Christ into the world
to judge the world, to condemn
the world, what about
Hell? What about all those souls
swimming – as Dante would have it – in lakes of fire? Well, just as we're not talking just about
life after death when we say "eternal life," we're not talking about
it when we say "judged," either. Look at what it says – those who are believing
in him, those who are in a state of belief, are not judged, are not condemned,
but those who do not believe are judged already . . . and by what? Themselves, their state of unbelief. God doesn't condemn people, Jesus is saying, people
condemn people . . . they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God,
so they do not have eternal life, which is to know God.
God
doesn't have to judge people, they're already judged. And what is the judgment? Jesus tells us – “this is the
judgment,” he says, “that the light has come into the world” -- and we know who
that is, don’t we? “that the light has come into the world and
people loved darkness rather than light.”
The judgment is that people walk in darkness, rather than the light. They do not know God through God’s son Jesus
Christ. Because they are not in a state
of belief, their judgement is to walk in darkness right here on earth.
The
movie Crash follows a collection of L.A. citizens as they give vent to
their dark sides. An otherwise heroic
cop molests a woman at a traffic stop . . . a shop-keeper almost kills a little
girl . . . a housewife suspects that a workman's a gang-banger simply because he's Hispanic,
while her D.A. husband plays vicious racial politics . . . All these folks have
good sides, as well, all are multi-dimensional, but they all are condemned to
walk in their own darkness, the darkness that comes from within . . . As
Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it "the line separating good and evil passes
not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties
either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.” Without belief, we are judged already, we
are condemned to walk in the shadows, crashing into one another in the
darkness.
There's a tremendous
psychological sophistication here . . . peoples’ worst behaviors are often
driven by a need to feel good about themselves.
Many of us feel inadequate, less than successful . . . and as society
gets more competitive, as the sense of being only as good as your job,
only as good as how much money you make increases
. . . as the pressure to succeed by society's very narrow standards
builds up, anti-social, even violent, behavior is on the rise. The need to feel worthwhile, to feel
like somebody often results in abuse of the other, of our friends and
associates and neighbors, as we seek to build ourselves up at their expense . .
. and people do feel better – at least for a time – after doing this . . . As
Jesus said, we seem sometimes to prefer
the darkness rather than the light . . . But it doesn't last, and we continue
to act out again and again . . . Paul wrestles with this conundrum over
in Romans, he says “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is
what I do.” John would no doubt agree – there
is a dark side to everyone, and it’s often expressed whether they like it or
not.
But those
believing in Christ – those who are doing what is true – come to the
light, they come to Christ, they gaze on him lifted up on the cross like those
Israelites looked at that snake on a stick . . . and they have eternal
life. They know God, they are able to live
a life more in consonance with the already present kingdom of God.
But there’s one
word that’s used over and over in our passage, and we’ve not talked about it,
but maybe we should . . . what does Jesus mean by "belief?" Well, we know it doesn't mean simply an
intellectual assent to a set of propositions, as the theologians put it, we
know it not simply acknowledgement in our minds that God exists, or that God is
love, or even that Christ came to Earth to save us from our sins . . . we know
that it doesn't just mean these things, but that it often includes – in
its various New Testament contexts – an element of trust, an element of laying
down all your cares, all your insecurities, all your shame at the feet
of the cross. So let’s substitute trust
for belief, shall we? All those who are
believing, all those who trust that God
has forgiven them, all those who know that God finds them
worthwhile, and that God is all that counts, they'll find their worth in their relationship with God,
and not in attacking and belittling others.
Brothers and
sisters, that old hymn ain’t whistling Dixie when it says only trust him now .
. . All who understand this, all who know that God loves them so much that
God sent his only begotten son will be
saved. All who are in a state of trust that God has forgiven them, that
what the world thinks of them doesn't amount to a hill of beans beside
the unconditional love of God, all those who are believing will not
perish, will not walk in darkness,
but they will know God. They will
have eternal life. Amen.
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