March 10, 2024 Fourth Sunday in Lent The text is John 3:14-21.

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[Jesus said:] ¹⁴“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.  ¹⁶“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.  ¹⁷“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. ¹⁸Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. ¹⁹And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. ²¹But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

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May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to You, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.

Grace, mercy, and peace are yours from God the Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

John 3:16 is arguably the most well-known, most often quoted verse in all of Scripture.  And in many cases, one of the most misunderstood.  And very often, oversimplified.  And, strangely, Jesus didn’t proclaim this earth-shattering truth, which is at the core of Christian belief from a mountaintop or during one of his messages to the crowds that followed him.  It was said to one person during a nighttime visit when Jesus was attempting to explain a number of aspects of God’s kingdom, to someone who really should have already known all this.

This morning’s gospel reading from John recounts the continuation of Jesus’ discussions with Nicodemus, a Pharisee who has come to Jesus under cover of darkness to better understand Jesus’ message and his nature.  This evening meeting takes place soon after Jesus’ table-turning incident in the temple and it’s safe to say that Jesus’ actions have begun to draw a great deal of attention to him and his proclamation of the coming of the kingdom of God.  Not included in the assigned gospel passage for this week is the portion of Jesus’ discussions with Nicodemus that led to the utterance we read in John 3:16. Nicodemus came to visit Jesus at night, presumably to avoid being seen by other religious leaders; not surprising when we consider the chaos that Jesus has already caused by scattering people and animals from the temple, right in the middle of the Passover observance.

When Nic meets with Jesus, the first words out of his mouth are his belief that the signs that Jesus performs could only have come from God’s authority.  What follows is a dialogue that consists of Jesus making statements to Nicodemus regarding the truth of God’s kingdom and Nicodemus’ struggle to understand what Jesus is teaching him.  In order to see God’s kingdom, you must be born “from above”; (also translated as “born anew”), Jesus declares.  Nicodemus questions this.  Next, Jesus states that in order to enter the kingdom one must be born of water and Spirit.  Poor Nicodemus still has difficulty with these, let’s be honest challenging statements by Jesus.  It’s at this point in the conversation that we join Jesus and Nicodemus this morning, and Jesus makes the rather profound proclamation that whoever believes in him will have life everlasting.  The very next verse is 3:16; “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”.  This is where the dialogue has ended and what follows is Jesus drawing the distinctions between condemnation and salvation, belief and unbelief, goodness and evil, and darkness and light.  Pretty heady stuff and all these revelations are tied up within the statement of 3:16; again, taken on its own, without context often leads to oversimplification.

Case in point; immediately after declaring that all who believe in him are saved, Jesus states that those who do not are condemned.  In Jesus light has come into the world, yet there are those who would choose to remain in darkness, doing evil.

And here is where the oversimplifying of Jesus’ statement might appear, and also where the misunderstanding of condemnation versus salvation tends to arise.  Some folks tend to read verse 16, skip over 17 and head straight to the last portion of the 18^th verse.  This interpretation of Jesus’ discussions with Nicodemus has been used for millennia to preach condemnation by God to generations of Christians, often causing great harm.  These words of Jesus in verse 18 are among the misunderstood in this passage; “those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”  It is often inferred that this condemnation is brought about by God; apparently, many have chosen to disregard the message Jesus conveyed to Nicodemus when, in verse 17 he said; “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  It’s difficult to imagine how, or why some have sought to interpret Jesus’ words in ways that blame God for punishing any who haven’t come to believe in Jesus, in spite of Jesus’ own teaching to the contrary.

God saves by grace; we condemn ourselves by our sin!  We are afforded the opportunity to live in the light that is Christ Jesus.  In doing so we are saved by the grace of God.  Thise who choose to remain in darkness, doing evil, sinning against the will of God, well it is that choice that results in condemnation.  Again, God saves by grace; we condemn ourselves!  People take the easy way out when God is blamed for withholding eternal life from those who do not believe in Christ as God’s Son.  The truth is that “God so loved the world” that Jesus was sent to save it and everyone in it.  It was never God’s intention to condemn those who do not turn to Jesus; the invitation is offered to all.  It is the choice that some make to refuse to come into the light of Christ that causes them to remain in darkness.  God does not condemn by excluding those who don’t believe; instead, all are invited to enter into the light that is Jesus, to experience the eternal life that is promised, simply by believing that Christ was sent to secure this life for everyone.  God saves by grace; we condemn ourselves by our sin! 

This understanding of God’s invitation to everyone to live lives of belief in Christ’s saving mission, is at the center of what we are called to do during Lent.  We are tasked with examining our relationship with God through the Lenten practices of fasting, giving to others, and prayer.

And part of our prayer lives may be devoted to intentional contemplation of what Jesus proclaimed to Nicodemus.  Jesus has come to save the world; all of us, and we are not condemned by God.  Nicodemus spent most of his time with Jesus questioning, and often not understanding what Jesus declared to him.  He struggled to grasp the truth of God’s love for the world, the promise of eternal life through faith in Jesus, God’s grace, and humankind’s self-condemnation by sin.  As we continue in our Lenten journey toward Holy Week and Easter, we ought to devote ourselves to prayerful examination of our understanding of the meaning of John 3:16 in our lives.  We should accept that Jesus was sent to save the world through the grace of God, without any strings attached; all that is required from us is that we believe this.  We should also remind ourselves that only our sin condemns us and that God wants only for us to live in the light of Christ.  Only when we fully embrace this truth can we acknowledge that unlike Nicodemus and so many others, we know that Jesus’ words in this otherwise oversimplified and misunderstood verse, convey the essence of God’s love for God’s people.

 “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.             

Will you pray with me?  Good, and gracious, and holy God, guide us as we strive to embrace the kind of faith that opens us up to accepting your grace for what it is; unmerited salvation simply because you love us.  And we pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ, the One in whom we believe; the One who gave his life for us; the One who won for us life eternal.      Amen.

God is Good, all the time.  All the time, God is Good.  Amen.