“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.
20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.
21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”
The most well-known verse in the Bible! So well-known that it must be completely without controversy…not quite. For example, in the day of our Savior this thought
would have been revolutionary! If it had said, “For God so loved the Jews…” no one would have batted an eye at such a thought. It was not thought that God loved the world, or that he loved men from every nation and language. No one has been able to find a
statement in Jewish materials from the period that speaks of God loving the whole world of men.
Could it be, however, that we read this verse in a sentimental way? Christians love the verse for its great statement that the salvation of men flows from the loving
heart of God; and because it is a perfectly clear, straightforward articulation of the summons of the gospel: believe in Jesus and you will live forever.
But, left there, we are in danger of reading John 3:16 and even believing its great statement in a merely sentimental way, by which we think about something in the
way we would like to be true, not necessarily the way that is true. For the fact is, this great verse is
brimming with controversy, with thunder and lightning. There may be wonderful sweetness in it, surely there is, but there is power behind it.
And all of this is demonstrated beyond question in the five verses that follow and explain and develop the thought of
John 3:16.
If we follow the thought from v. 16 to v. 21 we see it is all connected. The fact of God “sending his Son” is repeated in v. 17. The necessity of men and women “believing
in him” is taken up in v. 18. Martin Luther called John 3:16 “the Bible in miniature.” And he was right. But he was right only because there is a great deal more in this verse than many see at first glance.
The word ‘world’ means different things in the Bible. Sometimes in the context it is the entire world, meaning every single person. Sometimes it refers to the “Roman
world”, or the “unbelieving world”. But in John, we find that the world typically means, ‘fallen humanity and its ways.” Therefore, we are talking about the community of men and nations that are in rebellion against. Jesus will say in John 7 that ‘the world’
hates me. The Devil is the prince of this world. (14:30) His disciples do not belong to the world. (15:19) The Lord said in his great prayer in John 17:9, “I pray for [my disciples]. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me.” And many
other texts like that! As J.I. Packer puts it, “[world] is simply a synonym for bad men everywhere.”
BB Warfield wrote one of the best explanations of John 3:16 that has ever been penned, he explains: “The world is just the synonym of all that is evil and noisome and disgusting.
There is nothing in it that can attract God’s love… the point of [the word’s] employment [in John 3:16] is not to suggest that the world is so big that it takes a great deal of love to embrace it all, but that the world is so bad that it takes a great kind
of love to love it at all, and much more to love it as God has loved it when he gave his Son for it.” [Biblical Studies, 514ff.]
The point in John 3:16 is that God has loved the community of men and women in rebellion against Him. A beautiful example of this is in Jeremiah where God judges Moab with harsh
words and actions. And then says: I will wail over Moab…my heart laments for Moab…” God’s love is so great, He loves the very humanity that has rebelled against Him!
Second, we see in the context the two kinds of people in the world; those who believe in Jesus and those who do not. Every other distinction that separates and defines people
is irrelevant. Those who believe have life eternal and those who do not, are damned eternally. Verse 18 says that not only are the destinies in view but so is the life lived!
John 3:16, in its context is a great divide! This divide has only one of two sides that every man and woman find themselves on: Darkness or light, life or death, eternity
of joy or of wrath. Far from a sweet, sentimental verse, John 3:16 is a verse of ultimate discrimination! The frightening or at least sobering part of the text is what the Holy Spirit says about mankind. God is loving mankind, but mankind loves darkness.
And because man loves darkness, he lives in the darkness and does evil.
The light, which is the love of God in Christ Jesus, exposes the darkness, it shines in the darkness and here is what most men and women will not endure. We don’t
want to be exposed. We live in a culture that has a great investment in protecting folks from being exposed. Our world has decided that the only truth that matters is what I believe as an individual is true. Therefore, no one can judge me, or expose what I
am, or what I am doing as wrong, because to me, it is right.
Christianity comes along and says that God loves the world so much that He is going to shine THE light of truth into the darkness, even the darkness of men’s hearts
so that they would be exposed. And not just expose them, but then call men and women to confession and repentance of the evil, of the behavior that flows from that darkness.
The text’s explanation is as straightforward as it can be: But men loved the darkness rather than the light. And in our day, it is darkness that is winning the battle,
darkness that is encroaching and being called light! So, men and women are living in the darkness but proclaiming that they are the enlightened ones!
Sometime ago I read: You might very well think that, given the message, the world would want Christianity to be true. Eternal life in a world of endless and perfect
bliss, joy, and love! And, to obtain that life nothing is required of you but that you receive it as a free gift and love the one who gave it to you! We think, “Who could possibly
not want that to be true?” But they do not want it to be true. They would be delighted, perhaps secretly, perhaps quite openly, delighted to learn that the bones of Jesus Christ had been dug up in Jerusalem or that
somehow it could be definitely proved beyond any dispute that there is no God, and that the whole of religion was a pure invention, a superstition. Why? For goodness sakes, why? Because men love the darkness rather than the light. They love themselves, sinners
that they are, and do not want to be exposed. Do not want to be condemned. Do not want to be shown to be bad. People do not say this openly or admit this about themselves, of course. To do so would be tantamount to loving the light and hating the darkness.
But it is the truth about them. And modern man shows it as well as any generation of human beings. For he is willing, so it seems, to give up meaning, purpose, and hope in life, just to protect himself or herself from exposure. As Flannery O’Connor, the novelist,
once wrote, ours is an age “that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.”
The amazing thing about John 3:16 is that God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, has cast His love over all of that!!! His own creation that He made to have a relationship
with…hates Him. But God’s love will not be put off, but will win the day! But it is a love that exposes, uncovers the darkness that we might live in the light!
Prayer: Father, thank you for the light of Jesus Christ that has and continues to uncover the darkness that is in the world and the darkness that still seeks to
reside in me. Thank you for your grace that causes me to love the truth and to hate the darkness. Give me grace to walk in the light of your love and to honor my King of Love who has given Himself for me, in Jesus name, Amen.
Hymn: O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus
