For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16-21)
In this passage, John introduces a theme he comes back to again and again in his Gospel and his letters: love. Here is right where it starts: God loved the world. The word there is cosmos, and it means that God loves the whole creation and everyone in it. He demonstrates his love in a very particular way: he gave his only-begotten Son. This is the good news.
God’s love in self-sacrifice
God showed love for the world by means of self-sacrifice. The eternal Son of God became a human. He became a human with the intent of being rejected and dying on a cross. God’s love by way of self-sacrifice is what the Apostle Paul said was the great stumbling block for Jewish people and foolishness for Gentiles (1 Cor. 1:23). Through history, it’s proved to be exactly that, a stumbling block. Why, many ask, did Jesus have to die to save me? Why couldn’t God snap his fingers, so to speak, and save everyone automatically?
The answer to those questions centers on what it means to “be saved.” Salvation involves rescue from hell, but it’s much more than that. Salvation is eternal life. Salvation is turning to Jesus Christ, knowing that the depth of our sinfulness will be brought to light. Paul, again, says that Jesus died for us, knowing full well that we were and are sinners (Rom 5.8).
Jesus teaches elsewhere that all of Biblical morality can be boiled down to the principle that we should love God with our whole being, and that we should love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:28-33). Paul restates it this way: love fulfills the law (Rom. 13:8-10). Just think about the problems that hit the headlines. If we truly loved our neighbors we wouldn’t despise them or take advantage of them in so many ways: racism, sexism, abuse, and so on. Closer to home, if we truly loved each other we would never be short with our spouses, or impatient with our family members, or rude to our coworkers. If we truly loved our neighbors, there would be no need for the perennial anxiety that comes with seeking promotions at work, or being a perfect omnicompetent mom.
The problem is that our typical frame of mind is self-oriented. When we do good, we want to make sure people see it. When we do bad, we hide. As our passage says, “everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.” We are afraid of exposure. Whether our sins are big or little, public or private, everyone knows when we engage in any kind of self-oriented behavior, we are walking along a path that will only ultimately lead to sorrow. That’s what Jesus means by “whoever does not believe is condemned already.” Self-orientation leads to death.
But the good news is that whoever believes in Jesus has eternal life. The doctrine of justification is what we typically think of when we hear the word “salvation.” The word references a judgment that God makes. If you trust in Jesus, then God judges you to be righteous for his sake. But salvation in the broader sense also involves forming you so that your life actually matches God’s prior judgment. Salvation includes living our lives so that we practice following Jesus in his self-sacrifice, or other-orientation (John 15:13).
Christ our only hope
God’s law makes a very high demand of us. We are to be fully other-oriented, loving God with our whole being and loving our neighbors as ourselves. But in order for us to live this way, we require a fundamental change. Jesus teaches that in order to be saved one must be born again (John 3:3). Salvation requires a gracious act of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, because as Jesus teaches, our hearts love the darkness. That’s why Jesus had to die to save us. Not only was he removing a guilty verdict and a death penalty, he was also enabling and empowering change; he was showing us the path to true freedom.
This is Christianity’s radical idea: that love is demonstrated in self-sacrifice, and that the way of love is the way that leads to life. The good news of John 3:16 is that God loved us first. This is how God loved the world: He gave his Son.
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Thursday, 3/15/2018
Today’s Readings: Exodus 26, John 5, Proverbs 2, Galatians 1
Image credit: NASA
Chuck Anderson 