This week’s Gospel text comes from John 3:14-21 (MSG), where we enter halfway through a conversation with Jesus who is speaking to Nicodemus, a highly educated Jewish leader:
“In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people could have something to see and then believe (see Numbers 21:4-9), it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up— and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant, will gain a real life, eternal life.
"This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person's failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.
"This is the crisis we're in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won't come near it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is."
Many people were encouraged to memorize this version of John 3:16: “For God so loved that world that he gave his only begotten son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Disclosure: when the broader context of John 3:16 is presented, most scholars focus on the parallels between Jesus being lifted up on the cross and Moses lifting up the bronze snake. It was an intentional connection for John to illustrate the reversal God used to bring about healing. The very thing that was identified as the source of pain is the very thing that offers healing. That’ll preach. But not today, because I want to focus on a word that is too often overlooked, misunderstood, and ignored in the passage: believe.
Before we look at what it means to believe, we need to handle a key theological point as well as a biblical interpretation issue. First, note that the impetus for God’s action with Moses/snake and Jesus/cross is love. Shalom had been violated in each context, and God sought to offer a remedy to all who wanted it. Second, when Jesus referred to eternal life, he was not referring to life-after-death, but life here and now. In short, eternal life for Jesus refers to a quality of life infused by the Spirit of God and can also be understood as the Kingdom of God, salvation, and the Hebrew word shalom. They are all in the same circle. While we have hope in life of some sort after death because of Easter’s surprise, John 3:16 simply isn’t about that. Please let that sink in, which is more difficult than it may seem given the cultural emphasis of faith leading to heaven in the future.
Believing in the loving act of God yields eternal life, salvation, and shalom. But what did Jesus mean by believe? While we almost always think of intellectual assent (agreeing to a series of statement about God), the actual meaning referred to something more holistic that includes our mind, our heart, and our behavior. We understand it. We are passionate about it. We live it out with our hands, feet, mouth, our entire lives. This makes so much more sense than signing off on a confessional statement. When we are fully aligned with the Good News of the love of God with our whole being, NATURALLY we find ourselves more likely swimming in shalom.
So, if belief is a whole-life thing, what did that look like for Jesus? A survey of the Gospel of John provides a glimpse. Jesus embodied shalom in his teaching, life, and ministry because he put into practice the full meaning of belief. While it is no guarantee that by following his example will mean we will be aflush with shalom, it will certainly increase your odds, much like drinking water regularly increases your odds of being and staying hydrated! Motivated by his experience of shalom, Jesus incorporated the following five “belief movements” into the rhythm of his life: stretch, kneel, grace, connect, and incarnate. What do these movements entail?
Stretch: Lifelong Learning. Jesus didn’t know everything when he was pushed out of the womb. Neither did he know everything at the start of his ministry. He spent his life learning, from start to finish. Theologian Karl Barth once quipped that the Gospel of John is a text where babies can wade, and elephants can tread. Shalom is like that. We can get it and get a lot from a shallow understanding of it, yet there are depths that we can explore until we draw our last breath. Jesus chose to go deeper and deeper through to the very end, even forgiving the people who put him there (who were watching him gasp). The Bible’s Rebecca (Isaac’s wife) comes to mind as she surely learned how to manage the family estate given Isaac’s apparent lack of nerve and vision. Elizabeth Blackwell comes to mind as well, the first woman credentialed as a Medical Doctor in the US. Can you imagine the conditions she endured to learn all that was required of her? How are you choosing to grow deeper in your understanding of your faith, shalom, love, grace, God, etc.? Simply attending our service is a step – the teaching is meant to help you grow in your faith, which is why I often incorporate books into the mix.
Kneel: Service. Jesus was known for serving people wherever he went, becoming famous for his ability to heal, and infamous for proclaiming forgiveness of sin. We are called to serve our neighbors and world, especially those who are more vulnerable than others. The Gospels speak of Martha, sister of Lazarus, who loved to serve. Eleanor Rooseveltcould have simply enjoyed the benefits of being the FLOTUS, but she decided to use her public voice to serve the vulnerable in the United States. How are you making room in your life to serve other people and/or the natural world in which we live?
Grace. Jesus offered grace to one and all, which got him in trouble with those who restricted it. For individuals, grace means freedom from the oppression of sin – the disturbance of shalom – often from things we’ve done or things that have been done to us. Jesus reminded people that God loves everyone unconditionally and that grace is freely given. Grace sees everyone as beloved equals and treats them accordingly. Jesus also recognized that entire groups of people were not being treated lovingly and certainly not as equals. This was a disturbance of shalom for entire swaths of people – an injustice. Jesus instructed his followers how to resist injustice in ways that did not disturb shalom. Nonviolent resistance challenges those in power who are mistreating others. Shalom is about grace, which is also inherently about justice. The Bible’s Queen Esther comes to mind here, doing what she could to avert the genocide of her people. Are you familiar with Victoria Woodhull? She was devoted to helping women experience greater equality, even running for president in 1872! How are you offering grace and supporting justice in our world?
Connect: Spirituality. Jesus regularly took time to be in solitude, to reflect, pray, meditate, and contemplate. Long before mobile phones, the Internet, and unlimited streaming services, Jesus knew he had to carve out room for silence. Mary, Martha’s sister, was one who set aside time to be around Jesus (to her sister’s chagrin, in fact). Hildegard of Bingen was someone who developed her connection to God and helped others do the same. How much more is this necessary today? How are you carving out time and space for stillness, silence, listening, noticing, considering, and responding to the movement of the Spirit of God?
Incarnate: Spiritual Community. Jesus wasn’t a rugged individualist. He wasn’t like John Wayne, swaggering into town to save the day. Jesus ordered his life and ministry with other people from the very beginning for a reason: community matters. More specifically, faith community matters because we are aligned with the same Spirit which helps us support each other along the way. In times of joy, grief, frustration, celebration, and endless days of meh, loving people around us help us stay connected to Love, help us be more loving, and offers a space to live it out with each other. The Bible’s Ruth comes to mind here, completely devoted to the wellbeing of her Mother-in-Law, Naomi, who returned the favor. Mother Teresa chose to live among the poorest of the poor in Calcutta – not just service them but being among them. How’s your connection with community?
Drinking water doesn’t guarantee that you won’t get dehydrated but definitely increases your odds. Building Jesus’ rhythm into your life doesn’t guarantee that you’ll have a deeper faith, but it definitely increases your odds because all these movements are part of what it means to believe, to drink from the well of living water that never runs dry.
May you be inspired to drink more deeply from the source, to truly, fully believe, that you may enjoy eternal life now, giving you greater confidence in eternal life to come.
Questions to consider...
How was “belief” defined for you growing up? What value did it hold for you? What were its limitations?
What internal resistance, if any, do you experience after considering a broader definition of belief?
What areas of your life have you held beliefs yet struggled to live them out?
Is this just semantics? Does defining belief matter? Not just in faith but in life?
What aspects of believing like Jesus come easy for you? What aspects are more difficult? Why?
Bonus Nerd Notes:
· Moses’ snake lifted on a pole and Jesus lifted on a cross: In both cases, something representing death and dying was transformed into a symbol of life and living. In both cases, God provided grace and life without condition, to be freely received by any who gave it attention.
· Condemnation and judgment is common sense: relative levels of believing lead toward related levels of eternal life; the less we believe the less eternal life we experience. This rings true of the human experience everywhere, putting the burden of responsibility for living a full and meaningful life on us, not God. What are we doing with the life we have? How are we embracing The Way that leads to life infused with the source of life?
Commentary from SALT: Lent 4 (Year B): John 3:14-21 and Numbers 21:4-9
Big Picture:
1) This week’s readings include one of the most famous verses in the New Testament, John 3:16, a citation frequently seen on placards at sporting events, in graffiti along roadsides, and so on. For all its familiarity, the verse is frequently misunderstood, partly because of a holdover from seventeenth-century English (see below), and partly because so much is packed into it and the surrounding passage. Martin Luther called John 3:16 “the gospel in miniature” — and like any summary, it pushes us to clarify how we understand God’s love and God’s justice to be related. If we distort this key relationship, we can render the verse not the Gospel but rather the anti-Gospel, a proclamation not of love and invitation but of contempt and exclusion. In other words, this verse presents us with an excellent opportunity to contemplate and crystallize what Christian “good news” is really all about.
2) As the Israelites wander in the wilderness, there are nearly a dozen stories in Exodus and Numbers describing the people complaining or rebelling along the way — and in this week’s passage from John, Jesus alludes to the very last of these stories. It’s arguably the most serious of them all, since the people speak “against God and against Moses,” a formulation unique to this story (Num 21:5). Hungry and impatient, the Israelites ungratefully describe the exodus from Egypt as “bringing us out into the wilderness to die,” and so God sends poisonous, deadly serpents to slither among them, wreaking havoc (Num 21:5-6). The people promptly confess (“we have sinned”) and plead for help, and God directs Moses to fashion a serpent of bronze and put it up on a pole, such that any bitten Israelite can “look at the serpent of bronze and live” (Num 21:7-9).
3) Both in Numbers and in John, there are indications that the negative consequences described in these stories are less divine punishments and more aspects of the self-destructive nature of sin. In Numbers, the Israelites’ complaints themselves are conspicuously “serpentine”: poisonous, bitter, and self-contradictory (given manna to eat daily, the people say both “There is no food!” and “We detest this miserable food!” (Num 21:5)). And in John, Jesus casts those who do not believe in him as afflicted by a self-sabotaging desire to stay in the shadows; in this sense, they condemn themselves by choosing to stay away from the light (John 3:18,21). In any case, the center of gravity in both stories — and the key link between them — is the saving action of God, as well as God’s intention to save not just a select few but rather “everyone” who looks upon the bronze serpent (Numbers), and indeed the entire world (John).
4) Jesus’ other allusion in this passage from John — by way of the phrase, “gave his only Son” — is to the harrowing story of Abraham and Isaac, in which God calls on Abraham to give his “only son” as a burnt offering (John 3:16; Gen 22:2,12,16). As it turns out, the instruction is a divine “test” to see whether Abraham’s fidelity and devotion to God are genuine or driven by self-interest (Gen 22:1). Abraham loves Isaac, of course, and in addition, since Isaac is Abraham’s only heir, his death would apparently invalidate God’s promise that Abraham’s descendants will be “a great nation” (Gen 12:2; 15:3-6). God is asking, in effect, Are you truly devoted to me — or merely to the promise of a great legacy? Thus, the instruction to sacrifice Isaac “tests” the nature of Abraham’s devotion — and in the end, the ordeal demonstrates that his devotion is extravagant and true. By alluding to this story, Jesus is signaling that God’s devotion to humankind is likewise extravagant and true, and that Jesus’ mission — his life, death, and resurrection — should be understood accordingly. (Here’s SALT’s full commentary on the Abraham and Isaac story.)
Scripture:
1) Shortly after Jesus’ provocative disturbance-of-the-peace at the Jerusalem temple, Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader, visits Jesus by night. Nicodemus has begun to suspect that Jesus has indeed “come from God” — though he’s not yet convinced. He has questions about what Jesus means by being “born anew” or “born from above” (the Greek phrase here can mean either), a phenomenon Jesus then calls being “born of the Spirit” (John 3:3,8). This is a late-night, clandestine conversation, and Jesus’ words are part of an attempt to persuasively explain his identity and mission to an interested, well-educated leader who has asked to hear more.
2) To make his case, Jesus alludes to the Israelites in the wilderness (Numbers 21) and to Abraham and Isaac (“gave his only Son”; John 3:16; Genesis 22). Both references are well-tailored to Nicodemus, a Pharisee who would have known scripture exceedingly well — and they also serve as a compact, anticipatory portrait of Jesus’ coming crucifixion. Jesus puns on the phrase, “lifted up”: Moses lifted up the bronze serpent and Jesus will be lifted up on the cross, and at the same time the phrase also alludes to Jesus' resurrection and ascension (John 3:14). Above all, however, the reference to the story from Numbers highlights God’s character as the One who saves even and especially in the face of rebellion. The Israelites had self-destructively turned against God, but when they asked for deliverance from the consequences of their sin (and please note, their plea isn't out of any high-minded piety, but rather is driven by self-preservation!), God gracefully delivers them.
3) There’s a fascinating theology of the cross evoked here, distinct from both “penal substitution” theory (the idea that Jesus absorbs punishment on our behalf) and “Christus Victor” theory (the idea that Jesus conquers the powers of death). While God could have saved the Israelites by having them look upon any object at all, or in some other way entirely, the chosen remedy is to look upon a bronze serpent, a vivid reminder — even in the midst of healing and restoration — of two things: first, the deadly, self-destructive nature of sin; and second, God's gracious transformation of even our worst into part of our redemption. Likewise, the Christian cross can play this dual role, reminding us of the many ways we turn against each other in violence and betrayal, and at the same time, of God’s graceful, transformative forgiveness and deliverance.
4) Think of it this way: the bronze serpent takes what was for the wandering Israelites one of the very worst things in the world (a lethal snake) and remakes it into one of the very best (an instrument of healing). Accordingly, the Christian cross can be understood as an imperial weapon of torture and death divinely transformed into a sign of hope and new life, a sword remade into a ploughshare. Viewed this way, the cross epitomizes and proclaims the Great Reversal now underway: God is turning the world around, redeeming even the worst of the worst, swords into ploughshares, serpents into salves, crosses into trees of life — making all things new!
5) In seventeenth-century English, “so” frequently meant “in this way” — as in, “like so,” or “so help me God.” In the King James Version of the Bible, then, it made perfect sense to translate the Greek houtos (WHO-toes, “in this way”) with the English word “so” — and that's exactly what the KJV translators did in the famous sentence, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son...” (John 3:16). But today, we more often use “so” to mean “very” or “to a large extent” — as in, “I’m so sad,” or “She’s so smart!” Thus John 3:16 is often misunderstood today as a statement about the extent or degree of God’s love — whereas actually it’s a statement about the way or pattern of God’s love, as in, “For God loved the world in this way…”
6) Remember, Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, a student of scripture, and in order to describe the character of God’s love, he makes two allusions to ancient scriptural archetypes: one underscoring God's desire to save sinners, as in the story of the bronze serpent in the wilderness; and the other underscoring God’s extravagant fidelity and devotion to humankind, as in the story of Abraham and Isaac (the link is the phrase, “gave his only Son”; in this sense, in Abraham’s extravagant devotion to God we can catch a glimpse of God’s extravagant devotion to humanity). In what way does God love the world? In this way (houtos): God graciously delivers us from the self-destruction of sin, and God faithfully, astonishingly gives God’s only Child for the sake of our deliverance.
7) For the sake of whose deliverance, exactly? The scope of salvation has long been a topic of debate among Christians, and this passage in John is a case study. On one hand, some emphasize the idea that “eternal life” is only granted to those who “believe,” as if the sentence were italicized like this: “For God loved the world in this way: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” On the other hand, others emphasize God’s intention to save all people, as if the sentence were italicized like this: “For God loved the world in this way…” — that is, everyone!
8) On balance, there are at least three reasons to lean toward the latter emphasis. First, throughout John’s Gospel, “the world” (Greek: kosmos) is a term typically used as shorthand for sin or estrangement from God — and this makes it all the more striking that Jesus says, “God loved the world” (kosmos) and not “God hated the world but loved the remnant of those who believe.” Second, in Numbers, when God provides the remedy of the bronze serpent, the strategy isn't to save a few well-deserving Israelites, but rather to save “everyone” who had turned against God and then (for arguably less-than-noble reasons) sought deliverance (Num 21:8). And third, as if to clarify this very question, in the next verse Jesus underlines that God sends the Son not “to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).
Takeaways:
1) As we move through Lent toward Holy Week, this passage provides another angle on how to think about Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The reference to the story in Numbers points to the cross and resurrection as divine acts of love and mercy for the sake of all — even and especially those who are caught up in sin’s self-destruction, not the best and brightest and most pious. And the reference to the story of Abraham and Isaac ("gave his only Son") points to the cross and resurrection as signs of God’s extravagant faithfulness and devotion to humanity. In short, God loves “in this way” (houtos): graciously, mercifully, faithfully, devotedly — and universally, for the sake of “the world” (kosmos).
2) For many people, this passage raises questions about the nature and scope of salvation. Does God love the world, but intends to save only a remnant, only those who “believe in him”? Though some Christians try to read this passage in those terms, at least four key factors point in the other direction: (1) the emphasis on unearned deliverance for “everyone” in the Numbers story of the bronze serpent; (2) the emphasis on extravagant devotion in the Genesis story of Abraham and Isaac; (3) the emphasis on love (and not condemnation) for the whole world (kosmos) in John 3:16-17; and (4) the foundational ideas in Christian theology that love and humility should govern our reading of scripture, and that we have no right to impose limits on God’s graceful, saving work.
3) In the end, while offering assurance and encouraging fellow disciples and interested seekers to “believe in Jesus” is well and good, we dare not put boundaries around what counts — from God’s perspective — as “believing,” or indeed whether such belief can emerge after death, and so on. After all, salvation is God’s business, not ours. What we are charged to do is to proclaim again and again the good news of God’s extravagant love and mercy for “the world” — the kosmos, the whole creation! — without exception, indeed for “all the families of the earth” (John 3:16; Gen 12:3).