User Manual

Text: John 3:16
Other texts: John 3:14-21

For many Christians, John 3:16 is the most significant verse in the Bible. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that all who believe in him should not perish but may have eternal life. In one view, this verse answers all questions about the nature and purpose of Jesus and summarizes God’s plan. It is amazing because it bundles in a neat, small package the essence of theological cosmology, telling us all we need to know.

But in another view, this verse is amazing for the opposite reason. Rather than providing answers, it raises all sorts of important questions. The verse is significant not because it is the end of an important quest but because it is the start of one.

First, some context: The Gospel of John was the last of the four Gospels to be written. By then, followers of Jesus—no one was called Christian yet—had begun to coalesce into competing groups, organized into communities of like mind, background, or origin. John likely wrote for one of those communities. It was an sectarian endeavor. Like all such things, each group thought it had the truth and that the competition did not. John’s task was to define his community, encourage its members in their choice, to recruit new members to it, and to defend it against others. The dualism we hear so much in John—people described as inside or out, walking in the light or the darkness, condemned or saved—is largely the result.

John’s emphasis is on recruiting and encouraging more than it is excluding and judging. His portrayal of other groups as evil is more by way of contrast than condemnation. This is an invitation. John is arguing through the tactic of elevating one group while at the same time diminishing others. John is promising, more than he is threatening.

Seen in this light, John 3:16 seems to be a promise coupled with a method, or an instruction, about how that promise might be realized. Yet if that it so, it opens up some hard questions about how to go about things. For example, what is belief? What is it that people are to believe? Must they believe it all the time or can they have doubts from time to time? Or can they just believe it once and have done with it? Must they be fervent in their beliefs; or can they hold them grudgingly? And what if they do not believe; do they forfeit salvation? Must they perish?

This last question is central. There seems to be conflict here between—using the words of Reformation theology—between grace and faith. God so loved the world, Jesus begins. The world in John’s view is not a very nice or good place, and yet God loves it. God seems to wish to save the world from perishing. At the same time, the offer here is partially qualified by the necessity of belief in God’s son and a few verses later much more vehemently. Does God love the whole world or only those who believe in Jesus? Is this good news for the world or only good news for those who have faith?

We teach that God loves all of us unconditionally. This is grace: grace equals undeserved and unconditional love. Yet we also teach that faith—belief—is essential to salvation. But isn’t faith something we do, some work on our part? Is faith a condition, therefore, to God’s love? And if so, how can we call God gracious?

There seems to be a tension between these two teachings. We cannot resolve it easily because we can see the danger. If we focus solely on grace, then salvation is (possibly arbitrary and) independent of human action. And if we focus solely on faith, then it becomes a result of human action or accomplishment. If salvation comes through grace, then is faith good but redundant? If it comes through faith, is grace nice but unnecessary?

There are two things going on here that tangle us up. The first is that though grace and faith might be in tension, they are not in competition. The Bible is a story of the interaction between God’s love for the world and people’s response to that love. We know from our own experiences that our understanding of and gratitude for God and what God does affects what we do, which in turn affects our connection with God. We are in a relationship with God, which is sometimes rocky and sometimes sweet, but which is always developing somehow.

The second tangle is that belief is not a very good synonym for faith. For one thing, it is not the best translation of the meaning of the word used by Jesus here in John. For another, it is much more about doing something than thinking or saying something. In fact, and amazingly, the noun for faith never appears in this Gospel at all. Only the verb form. Faith is not intellectual assent. Believing in Jesus is not agreeing to something he said or naming what he is, but following his guidance. Doing what he said to do. The opposite of belief is not disbelief, but disobedience. To believe in someone is to trust them into the future. When you tell someone you believe in them, it means that you trust in the way the future will unfold, and, often, that you are willing to follow them. To believe in Jesus is to trust Jesus with your future.

The Bible is one long love story. A story about God’s love for us, God’s people, God’s creation. Even when we were acting like idiots, even when we did not repent, even when we did not believe God cared one way or the other. God’s love is not in question. It is not in short supply. There is plenty of it. That is grace.

This means that John 3:16 cannot be about a transaction, a trade, or a deal. God does not require us to believe in Jesus in order to gain God’s love.

In the Gospel of John, the phrase “eternal life” describes something that happens now, in our actual lifetimes. Abundant life, or the good life. Or life in Christ, as Paul says. Something not started by but also not changed by death. Not quantity of life but quality of life. A non-anxious or confident life, or a trusting one. To live in any other way is to perish. To be disconnected from God. That is the way most of us live much of the time. But it does not have to be so. That is what Jesus promises here.

What Jesus offers in John 3:16 is like one page from the user manual of the world. 1) Introduction: God loves the world. 2) Do this: trust in Jesus. 3) Get this result: eternal life. Believing in Jesus, trusting Jesus with your future, is a method, a way, given to us by God because God loves the world. Because God is gracious. It is not some kind of payment to God or requirement of God. It is not a moral issue. It has nothing to do with God’s righteousness. Rather, it is the physics of faith. It is something that Jesus tells us will work to get abundant life. If we want that. It seems that God wants us to.

John 3:16 is sometimes used as a weapon to attack others with. But it is not a weapon. It is instruction. Belief in Jesus is not a one-time event nor a one-time proclamation. It is an ongoing, sometimes uneven, often surprising, life-long development. As we respond to God’s gracious hope for us: trust Jesus; do not perish.