Thoughts for the Day

God so loved the world …                               John 3:16

This week we will look at some of Jesus’ statements about love.  Where else could we possibly start?  God’s love runs like a river through the whole Bible, and today’s so very well-known scripture stands as a summary of the gospel and of God’s sacrificial love for us.  “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  Did God really say this?  Well, yes … but not exactly!  We lose so much by taking it out of context, as we usually do.

Out of context, it reads as if it were part of John’s narrative, spoken alike to Jew and Gentile looking back after the resurrection; and that little word ‘so’ seems to emphasise that God loved the world ‘so very much’.  But this is not how it is written.

In fact, these are Jesus’ own words from his discourse with a member of the Jewish ruling council, Nicodemus, early in his ministry.  And, that little ‘so’ means ‘in like manner’; it emphasises not the depth of God’s love but the connection to the previous sentence.  There, Jesus says that he must be ‘lifted up’ just as Moses ‘lifted up’ a bronze snake on a pole in the desert to heal the Israelites from venomous snake bites that were the consequence of their sin.  The parallels seem clear.  Already Jesus was pointing to being ‘lifted up’ in an ignominious death.  And, just as the Israelites had only to look at the bronze snake to be healed, so people had to believe in Jesus to be saved. But, outrageously, as it must have seemed to Nicodemus, this wasn’t just for the Jews, but for the world.

What confidence too for Jesus to express what had yet to happen as already done!