“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten
(one and only or unique) Son, so that all who believe in him shall not perish
but shall have eternal life.” This verse
is a, if not the, cornerstone verse for Evangelical Christianity. It describes quite precisely what God has
done in, through, and as Jesus Christ to save the world because he loves
it. I consider myself to be an evangelical
Christian rather than Liberal or Conservative because I truly want people to
know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour, to know the love of God the
Father, and to have and live eternal life through the presence of the Holy
Spirit within them. I am evangelical,
but I do not throw my hat into the camp of what goes by the name of
Evangelicalism in North America. I am
rather a Trinitarian or Orthodox Evangelical and therefore, for me John 3:16
says something different than the way it is typically used by North American
Evangelicals.
John 3:16, as it is a cornerstone verse, is easily taken out
of context and left to stand on its own where it is indeed read wrongly and
therefore it has become the flagship verse of a deviant form of Christianity
that is propositional and contractual with respect to the grace free given us
by the Trinity. It uses an individual’s
ability to make a purely rational decision about matters pertaining to Jesus to
determine whether he or she goes to heaven or hell upon dying. Propositional Christians say that a person is
not saved until they have fulfilled the contractual condition of professing
belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.
In propositional Christianity, human reason trumps grace. It says “By reason through profession of
belief in propositions about Jesus you will be saved” rather than, “By grace
through faith you have been saved.”
Propositional Christianity ultimately turns faith into a work.
Faith in God is not something we can just decide to
have. It is not blind belief of
religious propositions brought about by persuasion or even coercion. Rather, faith is a gift from God, the
by-product of God’s gracious work in history and in each of our lives. It comes about from God’s directly acting
upon us in the real, historical events of our lives. The theologian, Karl Barth said, “Faith is
what happens when the faithfulness of God encounters the fidelity of man.” The Triune God of grace in his great love for
us does something real in our lives that hits us right at the core of that part
of us that is capable of trusting others and in that moment, true faith is born
and it continues to grow. Faith is
therefore a relationship, not simply a decision to believe something.
Sometimes it is easier to say what you mean by saying first
what you don’t mean. So, this is what
I’m saying I don’t mean. We know people
who say, “I believe in God because I should have died in that car wreck.” Events like that can’t lead us to believe in
God the Father of Jesus Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit. They lead us to suppose that there is a god
and from there we may surmise whatever we want about who or what that god
is.
Now what I am saying is faith, on the other hand, arises from
something real that God has done in our lives by which he makes his "self" known
to us as present and involved rather than distant and leaving us guessing. God makes himself present with us as the Holy
Spirit. The Holy Spirit in all humility
rather than saying “Believe in me I am Spirit” remains anonymous and in all
humility points us to Jesus so that it is Jesus whom we meet and come to know in
the Spirit. Jesus also in all humility
does not let the buck stop with him but rather points us to the Father saying
“Come. Know me as the Son of God by
sharing in my relationship with my Father in the Spirit. Know my Father as I know him. You are his very loved child too.” Thus, we come to know the steadfast love and
faithfulness of God the Father as Jesus himself knows it and we desire to be
faithful and to serve just as Jesus himself does.
The how of how that happens is infinite. Along with this knowing and confessing, a
change happens in the way we understand ourselves. We become aware that, “I am a new
creation. The old life is gone. A new life has begun. I do not make sense to myself apart from
Jesus and therefore I have to follow him to figure out what is going on. Something has radically changed about me.” In the end, faith, as it is a gift created in
us by the relationship building work of the Holy Spirit pointing us to Jesus,
keeps us looking to Jesus and his purpose for us and striving to fulfill it
because apart from that we just don’t know ourselves in a way we can really
live with anymore. It’s knowing I need
to be different and Jesus holds the key to that transformation.
Yet, I think most of us have been accustomed to hearing John
3:16 in a way that is propositional – believe in Jesus and you will have
eternal life. But, that reading is not
the best reading of John 3:16. The Greek
it was written in doesn’t sound that way.
Furthermore, when you consider it’s meaning within the context of the
conversation that Jesus is having with the Jewish elder Nicodemus, it is a
statement of reality rather than a proposition for conversion that spells at
the consequences if you refuse it. Jesus
was not saying to Nicodemus believe in the Son of God so that you can have
eternal life. He was rather simply
stating that all who are in the present state of having faith and living
faithfully in union with him in the Holy Spirit are presently not perishing,
but are experiencing eternal life. John
3:36, the last verse in this chapter, agrees.
It reads: "He who believes in the Son
has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the
wrath of God abides on him."
Further, a lot
hinges on how we define eternal life.
People have debated for the last few decades with Evangelicals who think
it simply means life after death in heaven that goes on forever. These folks simply say that eternal defines a
quality of life to be participated in now.
This is closer to how John uses it, but we must set all that aside and
accept the fact that Jesus himself defines what it is later in the Gospel when
he is praying on the night he was arrested.
John 17:3 reads: “And this is eternal life, that they know you the
only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Eternal life is as I described in a moment
ago; knowing God the Father as Jesus knows him because we are given the gift of
participating in their relationship by the work of the Holy Spirit with and in
us. John 3:13 is not about how we get to
Heaven when we die, it is Jesus explaining to Nicodemus what is happening to
him now that he has the curiosity surrounding Jesus. Nicodemus is being brought into eternal life
by the work of the Holy Spirit who is drawing him to Jesus who will share his
relationship with the Father with him.
Now, let’s take a look at Jesus’ conversation with
Nicodemus. As I said earlier, Nicodemus
was a Jewish elder, a member of the ruling council of Israel. The conversation begins with Nicodemus coming
to Jesus at night because he was afraid of being seen and somehow being
identified with Jesus (v. 1). That sends
us looking to the last verse of our passage where Jesus says the light has come
into the world but mankind loved the darkness more than the light and continued
to do evil. Nicodemus’ fear of the power
of the Jewish authorities was keeping him from the truth. Nicodemus then states that he has come to
Jesus to acknowledge that the Council does indeed recognize that Jesus is a
great teacher from God because no one could do the miracles that Jesus has done
without being from God (v.2). Then,
recognizing their short-sightedness, Jesus instructs him that no one can see
nor enter the Kingdom of God unless born again, unless they are born of the
Holy Spirit; which means God has awakened faith in Jesus Christ in that person
(vv. 3-7). Furthermore, God by the work
of the Spirit is as indiscriminate and unpredictable in whom he awakens faith
as the wind blowing where it will blow (v. 8).
Jesus then gets personal with Nicodemus and confronts him about
his blindness: “You are Israel’s teacher and you do not understand these
things? (vv. 9-10)” Then he starts to
speak in the collective “we” in order to include his followers: “I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we
have seen, but still ‘you people’ do not accept our testimony (vv.
11-12).” By “you people” Jesus means the
rulers of Israel who are blinded by power and can’t see who he really is. If they were truly “of faith” they would see
he is the Son of God, but being “not of faith” and rather “of power” they see
him as only a teacher.
Skipping ahead a bit, when Jesus says in verses 19-21 that
light has come into the world but men love the darkness because of their evil
deeds, he is using a generalized statement to speak prophetically and
specifically into Nicodemus’ own life asking the question why it is that
Nicodemus himself has come to him in the darkness. Nicodemus can then only realize that he is
using the cover of darkness to protect himself from those who love darkness
because they do evil. Yet, Nicodemus’
coming to Jesus is in a small way his coming to the truth, his coming into the
light, his coming to faith. Something
then changed with Nicodemus for we know that after Jesus died, Nicodemus along
with a man named Joseph of Arimathea got permission to take Jesus down from the
cross and bury him. In this conversation
the Holy Spirit brought Nicodemus to faith with respect to Jesus and did so even
though Nicodemus didn’t understand all of the theological stuff surrounding
Jesus.
So, what should you carry away from all of this
rambling? Firstly, if you find that you
have faith that in, through, and as Jesus Christ God has saved you, freed you,
transformed you from an old life by means of drawing you to himself and given
you a new live that centres on being Jesus’ disciple, then know this, not only
will you live after you die you are presently partaking of eternal life, life
in its highest quality. Unfortunately,
in this world that cannot see the light because it loves the darkness,
faithfulness or believing, which is participation in eternal life, ends up
being the way of the cross in which we must renounce claim to ourselves and
devote ourselves to Jesus and a way of life that is for him and others and not
for ourselves so that people might know the love of God. Believing is living according to the Holy
Spirit, indeed a wind-driven life, going where the Spirit leads us to do the
work of Christ. Secondly, eternal life
is a life of devotion, of letting ourselves be open to hearing God speak to us
in prayer, praise, and the study of Scripture both by ourselves and with other
Christians. Finally, it is discovering
our God-given gifts for ministry in the church and utilizing them for the
building up of the church. So then,
faith is not so much about belief or beliefs.
Rather, it is about believing, being in relationship God the Father in,
with, and through Jesus the Son by the relation building work of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
