John 3:16-21
Notes
Transcript
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 in the sight of God.
We have come this morning to the most familiar verse in the Bible. I was going to say “most well-known”, but I think that’s pushing it.
It’s certainly the most referenced, but I don’t think that everyone who references John 3:16 knows what this says or fully grasps the significance of the verse.
To write the word “John” and the numbers “3:16” on a sign or wear them on a shirt doesn’t mean you understand what’s written here.
Here in John’s gospel, the words of the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus are followed by explanatory reflections from John the Apostle.
Ancient texts didn’t use quotation marks or other indications, so the point where the words of Jesus stop and the explanation of John begins has been long debated.
If you have a red-letter Bible, your Bible might have all of John 3:16-21 in red text. Or the red (the words of Jesus) might end at verse 15.
I tend to think that John 3:16-21 is the author’s meditation, John’s explanation, the apostle’s comments as he’s writing his Gospel.
One part of John 3:16 that people often overlook is the first word.
We just say it without thinking… “For God so loved the world...”
The word for connects verse 16 to the verses before, namely verses 14-15.
So, let’s get our bearings, FOR John 3:16 doesn’t stand alone.
Hear again the words of Jesus:
14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
This is a reference to that great story in Numbers when the people were grumbling against the LORD and against Moses, so the LORD sends poisonous snakes to bite the people. Lots of people died. The people confess their sinful grumbling and the LORD tells Moses to make a bronze snake a put it up on a pole. Anyone who is bitten can look at the snake that was lifted up and they’d live.
The snake was lifted up.
The Son of Man must be lifted up—lifted up on the cross, where He would die.
It’s by looking to Jesus, the crucified Savior, that we find eternal life.
14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
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.
The mission of Jesus and the consequences of that mission are the theme of these verses.
John begins his explanatory comments by saying this: Jesus’ mission was itself the consequence of God’s love.
It’s the intensity of God’s love that stand out. The greatness of the gift God gives should strike us (more so than it does).
God the Father gave His best—His unique and beloved Son.
32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
For God so loved…
The idea of love is found all over John’s Gospel. I’ve put a list of verses on the back of the bulletin sheet.
It’d do us good to spend some time this week reflecting on what John has to say about the love God has for us and the love that is shared between the members of the Godhead.
The Father loves the Son (3:35; 10:17; 15:9–10; 17:23–24, 26; using another verb, 5:20), the Son loves the Father (14:31); Jesus loves his own, his true disciples (11:5; 13:1, 33, 34; 14:21; 15:9–10, 12; 21:7, 20), and they must love him (14:15, 21, 23f., 28; 21:15–25).
They must also love one another (13:34–35; 15:12–13, 17; 17:26). Sometimes John speaks of the Father’s love for the disciples (14:21, 23; 17:23), but more frequently the Father’s love for the disciples is mediated through his Son.
The world, fallen and rebellious human beings in general, does not and cannot love God (3:19; 5:42; 8:42).
More than any other NT author, John develops a theology of the love between the Father and the Son, and makes it clear that, as applied to mankind, the love of God is not the consequence of man’s loveliness, but rather a consequence of the sublime truth that God is love (1 John 4:16).
If/when you go through those verses on the back of the bulletin sheet, you’ll see that it is odd for John to speak of God’s love for the world. It’s atypical.
That’s what makes this truth found in John 3:16 stand out all the more; it’s a wonderful truth, a marvelously true statement that has a bearing on each of us.
The Jews of John’s day readily believed that God loved the children of Israel.
Here, John says God’s love is not restricted by race, ethnicity, tribe, nation, language, tongue—there is no restriction at all! For God so loved the world…
Beyond this, God’s love is to be admired, not because the world is so big and includes so many people; God’s love is to be admired because the world is so bad (has been since the fall).
The world is so wicked that John elsewhere forbids Christ-followers to love it or anything in it.
15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. 16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.
John’s teaching seems contradictory, but it’s actually quite clear:
Christians are not to love the world with the selfish love of participation; God loves the world with the selfless, costly love of redemption.
God loves the world, sending His Son, to REDEEM the world.
Believers are those who have been chosen out of the world.
No one is something other than ‘world’ when the Good News about Jesus comes to them.
No one would become a disciple of Jesus apart from the love that God shows the world.
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.
In the verses that follow this, we read about the terrifying condemnation pronounced because of the world’s sin…and yet God loves the world so much that the gift He gave to the world—the gift of His Son—remains the world’s only hope.
It’s absolutely true that the wages of sin is death, and equally true that the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Anyone who is a Christian wasn’t born a Christian. They were once, by nature, children of wrath (Eph. 2:3). Once children of wrath they have been made alive with Christ because of God’s great love for them, because God is rich in mercy (Eph 2:4-5).
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.
God sent His Son, Jesus, into the world. Just as verses 14-15 allude to the death of Jesus, verse 17 points to the incarnation of Jesus (the moment Jesus took on flesh and made His dwelling among us).
Jesus came into a world that was already lost and condemned. Understand.
Man first sinned in the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve—fools like us—stepped out from under God’s perfect and wise rule, deciding they knew what was best. The result was condemnation.
They weren’t only expelled from the garden; they were placed under a sentence of death.
Jesus did not come to a neutral world in order to save some and condemn others. Jesus came to a LOST world in order to save some.
Not all of the world will be saved (this is made clear in verses 18-21).
God’s purpose in Jesus was to bring salvation to the world. Jesus is “the Savior of the world.”
17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Notice the last words of this verse: through Him.
By allowing Jesus to be lifted up (vv. 14-15) on the cross, salvation was made available through Him.
Only through Jesus Christ can we be saved.
It’s not through works or effort, neither through toil nor goodness, not through nationality nor political alignment; no other person, religious leader, or organization—no one but Jesus can save you from your sin.
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.
It’s here that John stops speaking of “the world” in a holistic sense. “The world” here is divided in two: between the one who believes and is therefore not condemned, and the one who does not believe and stands condemned already.
Whoever believes in Jesus is not condemned. To condemn means “to judge a person to be guilty and liable to punishment.”
We, in Christ, are no longer guilty! Our sin has been removed, and nothing can be held against us.
Jesus did for us what we could not possibly do for ourselves—not in a million lifetimes.
One of my favorite TV series in the last 10 years is called “The Good Place.” It imagines the afterlife, and, of course, gets almost everything wrong (even Doug Forsett).
The show does unwittingly get one thing right: the main characters find out at one point in the timeline of the afterlife that no one—not a single person—has made it to the actual “Good Place” in more than 500 years. Everyone was condemned simply by virtue of living their lives in the world. And when they died, they went to “the bad place/hell.”
I’m sure Hollywood didn’t intend to make an astute theological point, but they sure did: no one is good. Certainly no one is “good enough.”
If making it to heaven was based on being “good” or “good enough”, doing more good things than bad things in this life, tipping the scales, no one—absolutely no one—would make the cut.
Here’s what the Bible says about us: we all, on our own, stand marked for death. Condemned already.
But for those who believe in Jesus, sin and guilt are washed away, and we are declared innocent. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned.
The other side of the coin is just as true: whoever does not believe stands condemned already.
Your sin makes you guilty before God, and someday you will stand before the Holy God and experience His awful and terrifying judgment.
If you have not believed in Jesus, you stand condemned.
Every man, woman, and child is a sinner in need of a Savior.
John pictures condemnation in metaphorical terms:
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 in the sight of God.
The verdict is a negative one.
With the incarnation of the Word—Jesus coming into the world—the light shone in the darkness.
Jesus, the light of the world, is the revelation of God to man. He is divine holiness and purity. He is God, come to save.
But men loved darkness. People prefer to live without knowledge of God, without the brilliant purity of Jesus.
The deeds of mankind were evil. Not willing to live by the truth. They were full of pride and prejudice (not the Jane Austin book).
Everyone in this camp hates the light. Refuses to come to the light? Why? Because the light exposes their evil deeds—and that brings shame and even worse than shame: conviction.
The alternative is to live by the truth or to walk in the truth.
This expression means to act faithfully.
The person who acts in this way happily comes into the light; there’s no reason not to.
The person who loves the darkness, you see, practices evil. His counterpart does the truth, that is, adheres to the truth as it is in Jesus.
The lover of darkness shuns the truth out of fear of being exposed, shamed, convicted.
The lover of light doesn’t prance forward to show off his/her self-righteousness, but comes into the light so that it may be seen plainly what they have done has been done through God.
If a person enjoys the light, it’s because of what has been done in them through the work of God, in the person of Jesus.
The purpose of these verses, then, is to make people see the danger before them. The verdict is being declared: people love darkness and left to themselves stand condemned.
What’s the answer? What can be done?
Turn to the lifted-up Son of Man. Turn to Jesus, look at Jesus with the same simple, desperate, unqualified faith as the Israelites when they looked to the bronze snake in the desert.
Only by such faith, faith in Jesus Christ alone, can anyone experience new birth and gain eternal life.
Regeneration/new birth makes clear the radical difference between Christians and non-Christians.
We are either one or the other, born again, or dead in sins; we have come to the light, or are still in darkness; we are saved from condemnation, or under condemnation.
There is no middle ground.
John 3:16 and the verses that surround it communicate “the good news that snake-bitten people, people infected by a poison that goes to the depth of their souls, those sin-infected people can look to the cross of Christ and find salvation.”
Eternal Life instead of condemnation.
Joy instead of despair.
Light instead of darkness.
How is this possible? How can we know this to be true? We know this is so,
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.
