Love is a big deal for Christians. It’s because of the centrality of love to Christianity that it appears so prominently in our culture. We all love to love.
But as soon as we say this, it begs the question: how? How does God love the world? What does ‘love’ mean in that context? In culture, ‘love’ is often a synonym for sex. Yet at the same time grown men will say they ‘love’ their football teams.
When Scripture talks about God loving the world it has something very powerful and particular in mind. It isn’t something that can adequately be summed up in words – it has to be shown rather than told.
The best I can do is to say that love consists in choosing to give oneself completely for the good of another. Thus, in John 3:16 we read that, God loves the world by giving his only Son that whoever puts their trust in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
That’s an idea that is quite easy to repeat. It is sufficiently well known that the wrestler, Stone Cold Steve Austin, used to parody the endless references to it on signs at Wrestlemania with his own version: Austin 3:16.
The rest of this post is trying to explain what these verses actually mean and why they matter.
I’m not going to quote John 3 here. But the rest of this post will make a lot more sense if you have read it.
- What’s Going On Here?
Our scene opens at night. That is significant. It is dark. As you read John’s gospel you will notice that he often mentions light and darkness as symbols of a spiritual or mental awakening. For example, we are told in John 1 that Jesus is the light that shines in the darkness.
So we are on the alert for someone who does not understand – who is, so to speak, “in the dark” and to whom Jesus is going to bring light.
Into the scene comes Nicodemus. Nicodemus is a very senior leader and religious teacher in Israel. He is part of the council that runs Jewish religious life and is a brilliant man.
I find this story so poignant.
Here is someone who is faithful, who is clever, who has worked hard and achieved an enormous amount. But even with all of that he knows he needs Jesus. He has seen something in Christ that goes beyond all the power and all the prestige and all the wisdom he has acquired. And he knows he needs it.
Whether you are the Teacher of Israel or a street Prostitute, eventually you have to come to Jesus and ask for help.
I love Nicodemus. I love his humility. I love the way a supreme official in the religious hierarchy has come to sit down with a provincial street preacher in order to ask him about the Kingdom of God. He reminds me of the best of brilliant people.
Nicodemus comes to Jesus and asks him about what Jesus is doing. He and his colleagues have seen Jesus at work and they get there is something going on here. But they don’t quite grasp its implications.
Maybe that is how you feel about church or Christianity. There is something you have seen that you recognise as good. It might be a feeling you get in worship, a peace that comes when you pray or hike, or a deep hunger you can’t quite understand (like an itch you can’t reach) but which seems to be satisfied when you listen to the Bible.
If that resonates with you then you are the type of person Jesus is speaking to in this conversation.
- Why Jesus Came
Jesus tries two ways of explaining this to Nicodemus.
First, he says, getting into God’s kingdom is like having a fresh start, almost going right back to the beginning, like you are born for a second time. But instead of this being a physical birth, it comes from two things: God’s Spirit moving on you and you being baptised; from Spirit and water.
Nicodemus doesn’t get that metaphor. So Jesus reaches for something he is very familiar with – the Old Testament.
There is a story of the people of Israel in the desert after God had set them free from Egypt and before they had entered the land they would call home. They were bitter and angry and complained about God, about being set free, about the food they had and the lives they lived. They began to reject God as provider and leader and look back towards the slavery of Egypt.
And so God allowed an invasion of snakes to come into their camp. They were biting the people and causing pain, even death. The people were sick.
God provided a way out for them. He commanded Moses to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole. Moses lifted it in the air. Whoever looked up to the bronze snake was healed from the effect of the snake bites. It was as if the bronze snake had taken all the effects of the snake bites into itself and the people could be healed.
This is what the kingdom of God is like, Jesus says. In fact this incident was put there in the Old Testament so people like Nicodemus could recognise this moment when it came and know what they should do about it.
Human beings are sick and they are dying. They are dying from the inside out – spiritually killed by the decision to reject God and to turn inward to selfishness and pride. This is what we call sin – the human propensity to mess things up, particularly our relationship with God and each other.
And so Jesus has come, and would be lifted up on a cross and die, punished as a sinner, taking all the world’s sin on himself and offering healing to everyone who would look to him.
Notice three things about this description:
- The people aren’t condemned by Jesus.
They are sick already. It is their choices, our choices, which kill us. That is why Jesus didn’t come into the world to condemn the world but to save it. The world is already dying. Naturally we are already dying, mortally wounded by a thousand rebellions, petty hurts, treasured prides and self-centredness. - It is God who takes the first step to redeem us.
Jesus came to us, we didn’t go to him. The point about the bronze snake is that God (through Moses) gave it to the people so that they could be healed. This is what we call grace – the free gift of healing and forgiveness and a future. It isn’t earned, like exchanging a day’s labour for a fair wage. It is given, like receiving medicine. - It has to be accepted and trusted.
The gift has to be received. It has to be trusted. The people had to look up, away from themselves, away from the snakes, away from their staffs and solutions, and trust the provision God made.
This is what we call faith. To paraphrase St Thomas Aquinas, it is the response of trust to the testimony of someone we believe. The way Jesus (and the Church after him) teaches we should exercise this trust is by turning away from ourselves and being baptised; be born of Spirit and water.
- Why Do We Choose (or Not Choose) the Light?
The conversation finishes with John (or possibly Jesus – the Greek is unclear) explaining how people react to this.
We can react in one of three ways.
- We can hold on to our sin because of shame (misunderstanding what the light is there to do – he came to save, not condemn).
- We can refuse the light because we actually prefer our sin. This gets worse the more we choose darkness. When we refuse the light, it gets harder to choose it next time.
- We can choose to say yes to the light and find it brings healing. This has the opposite effect- we find the light is pleasant and good and so the more we choose it, the easier and more desirable it is to choose it again.
Application
What does this mean for us?
- The first response is for those who haven’t yet trusted themselves to Jesus. Maybe you’re one of those, like Nicodemus, who senses there is something good, vital, even divine about what Jesus says and does. God’s word to you is that he loves you and came for you.
But you need to know that the yearning you feel is a symptom. It’s like a hungry body’s craving for food, a thirsty man’s need for water. Your soul is sick and it craves the cure.
Put your trust in Jesus, be baptised, and you will receive a new start and a new life. - What about showing hope to others? Here we need to remember that Jesus came to a world that hadn’t asked for him but needed him. He came in love, to bring help and healing to people who had rejected him.
Ask God to show you who needs your help. And then give it. That is the way of God. - Finally, what about sharing hope? Learn from the way Jesus deals with Nicodemus. He listens to him, knows him, and talks to him in a way he can understand. The first step to sharing Jesus effectively with others is to listen to them.
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