For God So Loved
John 3:1-21
John 3:16. If you’ve ever watched a major sporting event on TV, you’ve likely seen someone in the crowd sporting a homemade sign with the numbers of that Bible chapter and verse on it. From the NRSV translation, which we use, John 3:16 reads, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” As far as summary statements of the Gospel go, you could do a lot worse. For example, you could go with John 3:19: “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” Yes, I think I prefer John 3:16.
For many Christians John 3:16 is the go-to verse for evangelism. For evangelistic purposes, the emphasis tends to be placed on the second half of the verse, “so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” The crucial question then forms itself: Do you believe in Jesus? Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior? Or to quote Alec Baldwin’s in-your-face salesman from the 1992 film Glengarry Glen Ross, “Have you made your decision for Christ?”
Have you made your decision? “Let’s go! Hurry up! You’re on the clock. God is waiting. What is your answer?” As Christians, and as Protestants, in particular, who are not guided by a central teaching authority like the Roman Catholic magisterium, there is a constant temptation to turn the spotlight of the Gospel away from Jesus and on to ourselves. All this talk of making a decision for Christ plays right into that. God the Father may have sent Jesus the Son, but now it’s your responsibility to accept that truth by professing your faith. To this line of thinking, Jesus did his part, now you need to do yours. Salvation is a team effort. Jesus carried the ball to the goal line, now you need to punch it into the end zone.
I appreciate that there are Christians who still heed Christ’s call to evangelize. I really do. We in the mainline Church have largely given up on the idea of evangelism, even as we lament that our congregations are shrinking. Evangelism—the very word itself carries a boatload of baggage for us, suggesting charismatic but manipulative TV evangelists who pay lip service to God Almighty but worship at the altar of the almighty dollar. But what I want to try to do today is make the case for how John 3:16, and indeed this entire passage, are less about the decision that we must make for God than the decision that God has made for us in Jesus Christ.
Straight away, in verse 1, we are introduced to Nicodemus. We are told that he is a Pharisee. The Pharisees were a group within Judaism who believed in strict observance of the religious law, not only the moral law, such as the Ten Commandments, but laws that regulated all aspects of life, such as what to eat, what to wear, how to worship, and much much more. We’re used to thinking of the Pharisees as opponents of Jesus. Their strict interpretation of the law is often at odds with Jesus’s teachings on grace. Yet here Nicodemus comes to Jesus not to pick a fight but to praise him. “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.”
By “signs” Nicodemus is referring to a couple of things, both of which are recorded in chapter 2 of John’s Gospel. The first is the wedding at Cana. When the wine at a wedding reception is about to run out, Mary asks her son to do something about it, which he somewhat reluctantly agrees to do. I must say, it always amuses me that Jesus’ first miracle, at least according to John, is not healing the sick or feeding thousands with some bread and fish, but keeping a party going by turning water into wine.
Immediately after the wedding at Cana Jesus travels to Jerusalem where he enters the temple and unleashes a righteous fury, overturning the tables where money is being exchanged and chasing out the merchants with a homemade whip.
Nicodemus is impressed by these signs, as he calls them, but not so impressed that he is willing to be seen with Jesus in the light of day. John points out that Nicodemus comes to Jesus under cover of night, as though he doesn’t want word to reach his fellow Pharisees that he’s been fraternizing with the enemy. Still, the openness that Nicodemus shows toward Jesus, so uncommon among his peers, is remarkable. He is not so set in his ways to think that he has all the answers, even as he is baffled by much of what Jesus tells him, beginning with Jesus’ first words.
Mind you, Nicodemus has just praised Jesus as a man who clearly has come from God. And how does Jesus respond to this compliment? “Why, thank you. You’re too kind. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Not exactly. “Truly, I tell you,” Jesus says, “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
I don’t know what Nicodemus was expecting to hear, but I’m sure it wasn’t that. Jesus foregoes any pleasantries, any small talk. Instead, he seems to be responding to a question that Nicodemus didn’t even ask. “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Some Bible translations render “born from above” as “born again.” The Greek can be translated either way. Of course, no one has ever heard of a “born from above” Christian, whereas we all are familiar with born-again Christians. There’s a lot more that can be said about that, but I don’t want to keep you here all day. Maybe we’ll discuss it in Bible study.
In either case, Nicodemus hasn’t a clue what Jesus is talking about. “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” he asks. “Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Indeed, thinking of birth in such a literal way as Nicodemus does, it certainly does sound uncomfortable, and in more ways than one.
But of course Jesus isn’t referring to literal birth. “Very truly, I tell you,” he says to Nicodemus, “no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.” In other words, what rabbi Jesus is trying to teach the teacher of Israel Nicodemus is that birth—whether “from above” or “again”—is not something over which we have any control. I know that I was present for my birth, but I didn’t have any say in it. I’m sure the same is true for you.
Trying to help Nicodemus understand, Jesus reaches for another metaphor. “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” We hear the wind rustle the leaves. We feel the effects of the wind on our bodies—the chill of the winter gale, the warmth of the summer breeze—but we have no say in how or where or when it blows. That’s just like the Holy Spirit is what Jesus is teaching Nicodemus.
And, of course, to be born of water and Spirit suggests baptism. In the Presbyterian church when someone is baptized—whether as an adult or as an infant—it’s a sign of God’s grace, a sign that God has made the first move. Before we respond by saying “yes” with our baptismal vows, whether we make them ourselves or, as is the case with infants, someone makes them on our behalf, the Holy Spirit has already begun the work of giving us new life in Jesus Christ. And that work started long before we were physically born.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” God gave his Son. The Son is God’s gift to the world, a gift given in love. God does not wait for us to climb a ladder, build a tower, or launch a spaceship to attempt to make our way to God, although Lord knows we try. We so desperately want to believe that we are in control, that we can have God on our terms and know God through our own effort.
“Listen, I’m not waiting for you to come to me,” God says. “I’m going to you. I’m giving you my Son. He is going to take care of everything. Just like that business in the wilderness when Moses lifted up the serpent and the people were healed.”
Oh, yeah, about that. That was weird, right? What Jesus is referencing is a story from the book of Numbers in which the Israelites, while they’re journeying through the wilderness, are plagued by venomous snakes, which they interpret as God’s judgment for their sin. And yet God tells Moses to fashion a snake out of bronze and set it on a pole. Then when Moses holds the pole aloft and the people look at it, anyone who was bitten will be healed.
Now, I grant you, this story doesn’t resonate with us the way it would have with a first-century Jew like Nicodemus, who was steeped in the Hebrew scriptures. But you can still pick up what Jesus is putting down, or lifting up, I should say. “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” Jesus says, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Jesus is talking about the cross. The Son of Man will be lifted up on the cross. And all who look to that cross with the eyes of faith will be healed, transformed, and born again—not from anything that we have done but solely from what Christ does for us in dying so that we can live.
That eternal life is born of death is one of the great ironies of the Gospel. It’s counterintuitive. It’s not easy to accept, especially if you’re hearing it for the first time as Nicodemus is. In some ways Nicodemus, although a man of his time, is like many people today. He is a member of the religious establishment struggling to understand how God is moving in a new and unexpected way. That’s not unlike so many of us in the pulpits and pews of shrinking Presbyterian congregations. We’ve done things the same way for so long, but those things no longer work in the way they once did. We can’t expect people to show up at church on Sunday because that’s what people used to do way back when. Maybe the Spirit of God is blowing us off course to set us on a different course to unfamiliar shores where God is already at work, waiting for the church to catch up.
Nicodemus is also like the many people out there who are curious about the Gospel but have little or no experience with the church. As such, they hesitate to come to church, just as Nicodemus is reluctant to visit Jesus in the light of day. Nonetheless, like Nicodemus they are curious. They have questions. They are seeking something beyond themselves, something that they may not even be able to name.
And Nicodemus is all of us because we were all once in the dark. We all loved darkness rather than light. We were all subject to the judgment of God. “But God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.” And so there is hope for us all, even for those who are still in the dark—a hope that we see manifest in our friend Nicodemus.
Chapter 3 is not the only time that Nicodemus appears in the Gospel of John. He reappears in chapter 7 to speak up for Jesus when the Pharisees try to arrest him. And he appears once more in chapter 19 after Jesus has been crucified, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloe with which to anoint Jesus’ body for burial. Nicodemus’s story may begin in the dark, but it ends in the light of day at the foot of the cross, the very place where faith is born.