Clough John Lesson 18

God’s Love in History – John 3:14-16

The entire section of John 2:11 to John 3:36 is Jesus’ first official encounter with the religious establishment of His time. And therefore in this encounter in John 2 and John 3 we have human viewpoint and divine viewpoint at their purist contrast. This is why we insist that John 3 has a seed within it for all apologetic and evangelistic strategy, because Jesus Christ in challenging the religious establishment of his time challenged it all the way down to its very roots. It wasn’t just a surface challenge; it was a total challenge. We’ve seen how this has functioned. The first 20 verses we have seen how Jesus Christ contrasted their puny idea of salvation by some sort of a religious program with the powerful work of God and new birth, the water and the wind, elements nearby in the physical environment. But if we pause to reflect we also notice something even bigger, because the very same two elements, the water and the wind, that are prevalent in this illustration of new birth are exactly the same two elements found in Genesis 1:2 at creation.

And so Jesus Christ argues that to see the kingdom of God requires a recreation, a work is profound, is miraculous and is God-dependent as creation itself. And therefore argues Jesus, your salvation must be by grace; always Nicodemus by grace, and you who are a religious authority, you ought to know better than to ground your salvation in something manmade. So the first 10 verses were devoted to that contrast, that salvation must be wholly God-centered. It cannot be accomplished by anything within the creation, and if we understand that we’ll understand why it is so important today to avoid attributing salvation to one of the divine institutions. Every heresy attributes salvation to one of those institutions. The person who is trying to pull himself up by his own bootstraps and be saved that way is arguing it is the first divine institution that saves, not God above the divine institution that saves. A few are willing to say that marriage saves, or family saves though there have been those that argue that the seed of the Messiah would automatically save so you could argue that in history there have been those that have at least the third divine institution saves; because I am born physically into Abraham’s family therefore I am saved; because I am born into respectable Lubbock, Texas society, therefore I am saved; I am saved by virtue of the third divine institution. And then there are those, most of those today who are heretics in the area of salvation, people who are big in manufacturing and labor circles who argue that the fourth divine institution saves; our savior is in Washington DC and it’s from Washington that all blessings flow, and therefore we must change Washington; Washington supports us all. So today you read in the papers how one of the leading labor leaders has called for a new 35 hour week and a $3.00 an hour minimum wage and further deficit financing so we can have more inflation, because the solution always has to be the fourth divine institution, for the blind ignoramuses who are leading our society.

Therefore this is not just a small little point in John 3, it’s a point that to go along with George Meany you’d have to deny your faith; it’s a point that to go along with various manufacturers and big businessmen you’d have to deny your faith. No way could you go along with their programs and go along with John 3. Either you go with Jesus and make salvation wholly dependent upon God or you go with these lesser people and make salvation wholly dependent upon some creature, some source within the creation. Then we have those that believe that salvation comes by world law, and therefore since salvation comes by world law we must have world government, the one great society on earth, the fifth divine institution is the author of all salvation. Promoters of the United Nations, many of them are heretics who accept the fact that the United Nations saves; it is not Christ, but the UN, not Washington but the UN. And then there have been those in history that even argued that the Church, that even the Church saves and that’s even one of the worst heresies; The Church doesn’t save either. So you can’t make any of these divine institutions the subject and the base and the ground of salvation and not even the sphere of grace, even the Church itself. Nothing, not one of these areas saves. And Christ insists that the same God who created is the same God who is absolutely necessary to your personally in your own individual salvation. Man is not saved by the Church, the state, or himself; he is saved by a recreation of God.

And then in John 3:11-13 Jesus Christ went even deeper, He not only challenged the mode of salvation of the religious establishment of His time but Jesus Christ went to the very center and starting point of all authority and He argued that they’re wrong because they start in the wrong place. And all human viewpoint basically is wrong because all human viewpoint starts with a finite man. The one thing that the sinner is always sure of is that the universe can’t be the way the Bible says it is; one thing that we know certainly is that we know nothing certainly. That’s the plan of the sinner, the plan of the person who thinks in human viewpoint. Though everything has come from Chance and is total chaos in its origin point, nevertheless we have perfect order and knowledge. So the feature of human viewpoint is that we are always trying to ride the same horse in the opposite direction at the same time. And this is at the base, the destructiveness of all non-Christian thought… all non-Christian thought assumes the ultimacy of Chance. God and man together are in the universe but beyond them both is a higher order, an order of Chance. And that we understand this and understand the point that Jesus makes, Jesus is not denying that on the human viewpoint base you can’t have God. Oh yes you can, you have God here and you have man over here and they are both islands on a sea of Chance. God is a bigger island and He has more information than man but He is still an island on a bottomless ocean of Chance. And so God is God but He’s not ultimately the first cause, something else is. And this is a favorite feature of human viewpoint.

And Jesus said no, He said I speak, in John 3:11, I speak and those around Me speak of things which we have heard and our word is true, and our word becomes your starting point, and if you don’t start with us, you’re wrong. Rebellious man doesn’t like to hear that; it insults his intellectual pride to be told that he must be dependent upon an authority outside of himself. And that’s exactly the offense of the gospel, and there’s no way the Christian can ever sugar coat it so we might as well let it all hang out. That’s exactly what the offense of the Scripture is saying; there’s not one man on the face of this earth that can start from himself; he always must start with God first; he always must start with God’s Word. This must be his presupposition before he can take an inch walk in life or thought.

So therefore Jesus finishes up in verse 13 by saying that He alone has the authority to convey information because He has been in heaven and He has seen the book of truth that we saw in Daniel, he’s seen all this, I, he said, am the Son of man, and I come down from heaven, that makes Me the authority. And when Jesus sits down in a Jerusalem street with Nicodemus it’s not one finite rabbi talking to another finite rabbi, it’s an infinite God-man rabbi talking to a finite rabbi; in that case it’s not a dialogue, in that case it’s a servant. There is no dialogue here in that sense of the word, of equal authority. Jesus never accepts the fact that He “a” opinion among many opinions; He is always THE opinion against all opinion. That’s always the position Jesus takes and it is always the position the Christian ought to take. We do not have an option for some people who might consider it; we have THE option which must be considered or men go to hell. That’s the Christian message and that’s the offense of the cross that Christ makes here. And ultimately of course, immediately in verses 14-16 what does He do but come to the cross. And so this very, very well-known section of the Bible, John 3:16, falls right after the discussion of starting point. And Jesus goes on in John 3:14-16, which is probably all the verses we’ll discuss tonight.

John 3:14, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, [15] That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” it says in your King James, it’s wrong. [16] “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

So he starts with Moses; “Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” it says, an Old Testament illustration for a believer who should have known the Old Testament. Many of us are not acquainted with this incident, we haven’t studied under the rabbinic circles of Nicodemus, so therefore we ought to go back and look at the incident. Numbers 21:5, remember this from Wednesday night, you know the terrain these people were in, they are coming around the south end of the Dead Sea, here’s the gulf of Eilat, they have come down this way to Eilat and then around Edom. It’s horrible terrain, it’s awful, and this is a complete extra diversion because Esau and his sons refused to let the people through. And so verse 4 as the believers walk and walk and walk and walk through this awful, awful terrain, the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the terrain, because of the way.

Numbers 21:5, “And the people spoke against God, and against Moses,” believers did the same thing then they do now. “Wherefore have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For this is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loathes this light bread.” There’s no water—oh there isn’t? What has God been providing for the last 38 years in the middle of the Sinai. Hasn’t God provided the water? Does the Word of God report one person has died of thirst during all this 38 year period? Does the Word of God report that anybody starved to death? No, no one starved to death, unless they refused to eat the manna. But here God’s provision, we “loathe” it, the “light bread” which is the manna, we loathe God’s provision. Now this is just rebellious believers and to a degree every one of us in this room tonight has the same kind of heart and so don’t look down your pious nose at this kind of behavior pattern because at one time or another every one of us has exactly this attitude, I loathe the provisions of God.

The provisions of God are not good enough for me. I am a married person and the right person isn’t good enough for me, I need someone else; I am a single person and I don’t like my single status and I loathe the provisions of God. I’m a person that doesn’t have a degree and I loathe my status because I don’t have a degree. I’m a person with a degree and I loathe my status with the degree. Always something that we loathe and always something that God has provided and always we loath it when we’re in this rebellious attitude. So all of us ought to be able to understand. Now this is a good night, probably 40% of you are loathing something right now so you should just join right in with the text and the rest of you who are in fellowship can just remember the recent five minutes when you were out and you can also empathize.

So they had to bitch at someone and Moses was to bitch at someone and Moses was the nearest person and he’s the leader and the best way of doing it is always blame it on the leader, it’s always the pastor’s fault or somebody. “…you brought us up out of Egypt to die.” Moses had nothing better to do in life than to take two million characters out through a 38 year tour to lead them to death; marvelous career objective of the man. But really, all our loathing and when we get in this attitude we are equally pathetic. I have heard people gripe about something, gripe about this, gripe about that, God hasn’t done this and God’s after me and God wants to do this to me and God wants to do that to me, the pastor hates me and all the rest of it. I don’t have to be a pastor and God doesn’t have to provide you with the things that He’s provided you with. I just as soon be not in the clergy, frankly, I can’t stand clergymen. Whenever I go out socially I absolutely refuse to go around any religious areas. I like to go to some good worldly place because people are relaxed. The place where people are up tight and they can’t stand a damn or two is always in a religious circle and this is ridiculous.

But Moses wasn’t that kind of man and he just patiently stuck it out, even though he could have done many, many other things. Moses was a highly qualified individual…highly qualified individual. But he was the kind of individual that understood that he was never going to be happy in life unless he got with the plan, unless he did what God wanted him to do, whether he liked it or not, you do it. Big lesson, basic lesson of life. There are things that God wants you to do and you must do them whether you like to do them or whether you don’t like to do them, that isn’t the issue, what you like to do and what you don’t like to do.

So continuing in Numbers 21:6, “And the LORD” had enough of it too, so He decided to say okay, you don’t like to pick up the manna off the ground, how would you like to have poison snakes all over the ground. And so He “sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many people of Israel died.” Now keep notice what’s happening; get the physical picture because Jesus is going to pick up the physical picture and take it one step further in John 3. So what is the situation; somebody crawls out of the sack in the morning and gets bit by a snake, first thing that happens, hasn’t even had a cup of coffee yet and a snake bites him. And then he steps outside the tent and he steps on one. And he turns around and his loved ones are being bit by snakes. This goes on throughout hundreds and hundreds and thousands of tents throughout the Hebrew camp. And these people are dying, this is lethal.

Numbers 21:7, “Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned; for we have spoken against God, and against thee; pray unto the LORD, that He will take away the serpents from us.” And by the way there is a typology for the believer in verse 6 and the typology for the believer is that when we rebel and have that attitude we are asking for demonic affliction. That’s what we’re asking for, and we’re asking, maybe, for the sin unto death, which is that God will just give us a terminal illness of some sort, or arrange a convenient accident, or some other way to simply remove us from phase two. So God backs up His own character and backs up the authority of Moses and the people confess their sin. So Moses intercedes for the people.

Numbers 21:8, “And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole; and it shall come to pass, that everyone that is bitten, when he looks upon it, shall live. [9] And Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass that, if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.” Now you’ve all seen what Moses made, and few of you have ever seen it in church. That’s a symbol of the medical profession and where did it come from? It came from Numbers 21. And what does that sign say? Regardless of whether the person who is a medical technician that wears the emblem is an atheist or not, when he’s wearing that emblem he’s witnessing to the fact that all healing comes from God. The sign itself is a Biblical sign, a sign that centuries ago when the Christians dominated the field of medicine they made that their sign. Today no one knows what the sign stands for, at least now some of you know. The sign means that all healing comes from God; it may be mediated through human technology but ultimately all healing comes from God. It’s the symbol of orientation to grace.

And why, if we look upon this symbol, why is it a serpent? We have to ask a few things. Why was Moses to make a serpent upon the pole, of all things to look at, we know what the serpent is, it’s a sign of Satan. Why put a sign of Satan up on a pole? And of all things, why make that a type of Jesus Christ. Do you know that this kind of a typology is one of the most difficult to understand in all of Scripture. Jesus Christ being shown by a type of Satan. Christ’s ministry pictured through a Satan symbol? What’s going on here.

All right, Jesus Christ judged Satan on the cross; He put to death the effectiveness of the sting of death. “O death, where is thy sting,” now, Christ has risen from the dead. Jesus Christ has terminated the effectiveness of the poison and the venom of Satan and therefore Moses will take the brass serpent and put it on a pole and everybody would have to look up to that and every time they did, they were looking up to God is what they were looking at. The Jews knew this; in the times of Christ, here’s how the Jews interpreted Numbers 21. In Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 3:8 it says: “But could the serpent slay or the serpent keep alive? No, it is rather to teach thee that such time as the Israelites directed their thoughts on high and kept their hearts in subjection to their Father in heaven they were healed, otherwise they pined away.” So they very clearly understood, it was orientation to grace orientation not to experience, orientation not to one’s heart, but orientation upward, orientation to grace. Healing and salvation come from above, they come from God. And the serpent symbol now is understood; the serpent symbol is there, just as a monument is erected to somebody who has died, Satan has died in his effectiveness; Satan’s ministry has been cut and so therefore we take a Satan symbol and we put it up and say look, this is what God has done, He has destroyed the power of Satan, the venom of Satan.

So Jesus Christ uses this whole incident of the serpent and if we come back to John 3 we’ll see how He uses Numbers 21. So Moses “lifted up the serpent I the wilderness, even so” Jesus said, and here He makes a transition from the concrete physical easy-to-understand historic illustration, the type, over to the spiritual truth, the coming historic event, the antitype. Type—antitype; the type is what happened in Moses’ time in Numbers 21; the antitype, as He says, “the Son of man” in exactly the same way must be “lifted up,” and John in his very unique way is busy using words again. Remember we said when you read John be very careful; this Gospel isn’t like the Synoptic Gospels; in this Gospel there’s finesse in a very strange and unique way the usage of words; words stand for multiple things that are true. This is not the same thing as saying that John is ambiguous in what he’s saying; that’s not what we’re saying.

What John is doing is that he’s communicating five things at you with one word. This is very dense communication, a very dense kind of literature. When he says the Son must be lifted up he’s not just talking about the cross, he’s talking about the ascent to heaven, he’s talking about the whole complex, not just the Son of man must be lifted up, but the Son of man must be taken up to be at the Father’s right hand, and then forever after we’ll look at the Father’s right hand for their salvation, just as the people in the Old Testament looked up on the pole to the serpent of brass for their salvation. And so in like manner he says, the Son of man must be lifted up.

And then He uses for himself the title, not Son of God, not Messiah, not Christ, but He uses the title “Son of man.” Why does Jesus use this title, “Son of man.” What is this? The Son of man is a name that begins in the Bible in Daniel 7. It was the character that was given to the five kingdoms; remember, the four kingdoms of the Gentiles, the Neo-Babylonians, the Medo-Persian, the Grecian, the Roman and all those four kingdoms were pictured how in Daniel 7 as to their moral character? They were all pictured with beasts. And the last one, a beast of steel that treads people down indicating that in the final days to come man will destroy himself morally. It won’t just be an animal like society but will be a man-made society that will destroy man because it’s a man-made society and not a God-made society. And so the four kingdoms are pictured as beasts but when God chooses a symbol for the future kingdom, the millennial kingdom and eternal state what does He use but one like the Son of man. And so we know from the origin of the symbol in Daniel 7 that whenever you see Son of man and Jesus picks that title up and calls Himself Son of man He’s identifying Himself with the eternal plan of God and He’s identifying Himself with the human race. And He’s saying I am the God-man and I am the One that will restore the human race to fellowship with God. And I alone will be the author of the truly great society, the redeemed society. This is His social term, the Son of man.

And so He’s arguing by using the title in verse 14, the Son of man, He’s arguing that His ministry is not just to the Jew, and just to Israel but His ministry is to all men because one like the Son of man… do you know what that says in the Hebrew, Beni Adam, or Ben Adam really, Ben Adam, the son of Adam; that’s what it means. I, Jesus said, am the Son of Adam, I have to come to fulfill the destiny of Adam and Eve on this earth and in this history. Adam and Eve was given the commission to subdue nature and I will subdue nature and all the angelic agencies of nature. And so I call Myself the Son of man and identify Myself with the linear relationship with Adam and Eve, so if you don’t accept a literal Genesis you can forget the New Testament also.

The Son of man must be lifted up, [John 3:15] “That whosoever believeth” and here the grammar gets tricky and the text gets tricky, but if you’ll look you’ll notice verse 15 is almost a repeat of verse 16, and that’s what’s happened; in the transmission of the text scribes would be writing and you’d have a dittography, they brought up into verse 15 what was down in verse 16. And so there’s a whole element there that shouldn’t be there; it should read: “And whosoever believeth in Him should have eternal life,” there’s nothing about perishing there, and there’s a point about it which we’ll get to and get to verse 16, why “perish” is added.

But in John 3:15, “That whosoever believeth in Him should have eternal life,” that’s what Jesus is saying, but He’s saying even more than that. Those of you with a Greek text, you’ll notice after the word to believe, usually you see this, eis auton, believe into Him. Now that’s the usual way you see the verb in the Greek, “believe into Him,” there’s a movement where you place your trust into the Son. And John uses this peculiar instruction; they believe not on Him but they believe into Him. We don’t have that construction in the English so it comes across very anemically and weak in the English translation. But those of you with a Greek text and you look at verse 15 you’ll be interested to see that that’s not what’s there. And it comes across in the English the same but boy, there’s a world of difference if you know the Greek. “Whoever believes into Him,” and Jesus writes this in verse 15, “Whoever believes,” and the Greek, I’ll just translate it literally, “believes in Him,” I forget the sequence of the other words but I think it might have a subjunctive, “life eternal” if I recall, I don’t have the text in front of me but this is the important one here, “believes in Him might life of the age.” Now because this isn’t eis but is en, it must be translated differently, and so instead of saying whoever believes in Him might have eternal life, that’s not what Jesus has said. He said, “Whoever believes,” obviously “in Him,” but “in Christ will have life eternal.” The “in Him” doesn’t go with the verb, the “in Him” goes with “life eternal.” It’s a locative, it locates where the eternal life is available. It doesn’t have anything to do with the act of faith at this point in the sentence.

This sentence isn’t talking about the object of faith; it’s understood, yes, but that’s not what “in Him” means here. “In Him” is the location for the life everlasting, and you see how this connects because what has He just said of Himself in verse 14? “I am the Son of Adam,” and “whoever believes in Me,” in the Son of Adam, “in the Son of Adam has life everlasting. So this is your positional truth and this means that any person who believes, eternal life is available only in the Lord Jesus Christ, period. I am the Son of Adam and I must be lifted up in order that the curse given upon Adam, that dying he will die in that day God threatened Adam and Eve, and so Adam comes under a curse and Jesus in grace must be lifted up, He bears the curse, He discharges … there’s a charge, you know, like a capacitor builds up and then shoooo, discharge. And so the curse of God built up and built up and built up and Jesus grounded it in Himself. And now He says because I am the ground and I’ve grounded out the charge, “in Me is life eternal.” So in the Son of man is where there is eternal life.

And then further of interest to Nicodemus is the fact that he says “whoever believes,” individually, the same theme raised a few years ago by John the Baptist; John the Baptist came into a Jewish society that believed in national salvation, not individual salvation. And furthermore he insulted the Jews by requiring a baptism; he said all of you who believe must be baptized. And baptism was up to that point only applied to Gentiles who came into the Jewish nation, never applied to Jews. And for a Jew to have to be baptized meant he would have to put himself down to the point of a Gentile and this was insulting, plus the fact that he had to walk 30 miles to get to hear the Word under John the Baptist. So John made the issue that salvation is an individual personal thing; it is not part of your family. What your grandmother believed doesn’t make a particle of difference to you spiritually; it’s what you believe or don’t believe. Jesus makes the same point to Nicodemus; “whoever,” individually believes, then “in the Son of Adam he has life of the age.”

There’s something else here, what is this “life of the age” business? What’s that? “Life of the age,” that’s a technical term and it was reserved for that future millennial kingdom and the eternal state, that golden era coming in the future and wasn’t properly in the domain of the Son of man. In the Son of man’s domain the life of that age; now it’s come over in the English translation as eternal life, but I want to hold here and make sure everyone understands something about that word “eternal,” and about the word “life.” Many, many Christians walk around and talk about eternal life and they haven’t the foggiest notion, because I’ve tested a few of them, I say oh, Christians have eternal life, does that mean they live forever. Yes. Well, don’t angels live forever? Yes. Then all angels have eternal life including Satan? No. Well then what do you mean by eternal life? Obviously eternal life does not mean eternal existence, it means that but it means more than that for Satan has eternal existence. Every person who lives in the Lake of Fire has eternal existence. Eternal life is not to be equated with eternal existence. Eternal life means something else than just mere existence. What does life mean in the Bible? Where do you see it in Genesis? Do trees have life? No. Do rocks have life? What has life in Genesis? A material body in which there is an immaterial spirit, that’s the definition in the Bible of life; it’s not the organic reproducing cells. That’s not the first time up in complexity where you have life according to Scripture. What God’s talking about is not just reproducing cells. What God is talking about by life is when you have a central nervous system that’s established in an entity and you have functioning life there.

So, when we see the word “eternal life” that implies resurrection. It can’t be a Greek idea of some eternal existence in the n^th dimension where we all sit down at Plato’s feet. What it is, is life in a resurrected recreated material world, and a life that enjoys fellowship with God. So it is not eternal existence. So when Jesus says here, that “Whoever believes as an individual has the life of the age to come,” He means that something happened in regeneration that although our body… here’s our soul, here’s our spirit, here’s our body, the body is not yet resurrected at new birth, so that part of the salvation package is not available, the soul remains a conflict and the spirit to some degree, but there’s something that happens in here, in the area of the spirit and the area of the soul, something new and that something new will last on down to the point where the resurrected body joins it at the rapture of the Church for the saints in the Church Age; at the Second Advent for saints in other ages; at that point you have full orbed eternal life. But this announcement of John here, and this is the first time he really announces it, for the Synoptic Gospels do not announce it in this way. John announces that the life of the future, the life that is proper to only the resurrection is available today, kind of as an advanced payment, an advanced deal, and that’s what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus. The same life that you will have in your resurrection body is available to you today if you believe.

But something else must be said about John 3:14-15 because critics have jumped upon this one as a sure sign that the Gospel of John can’t be what it purports to be. No, say the critics, these two verses, they surely betray the second century origin of this Gospel; this surely is the evidence that John didn’t write John. Why? What’s the force of the argument? The force of the argument is very simple. In the other Gospels Jesus never so clearly announces His death and the plan of salvation so early in His ministry. He never does this. Only as the cross looms ahead of Him, months and weeks, does Jesus begin to clarify to His followers what it’s all about. Why, if in all the other Gospels nothing is mentioned of this plan of salvation, the death of the cross, nothing like that at all, why is John pulling this thing. And so the critics say you see what John’s doing or the pseudo John, the author? He’s taking the second century highly developed view of salvation and he’s reading it back into the words of Jesus. So what we have here aren’t really the words of Jesus, they are a second century version of the words of Jesus.

Now in context there’s an obvious answer to this problem. Why the uniqueness; why this unique disclosure. You know verses 14-15 are so familiar to most Christians you never stop and say hey, wait a minute, this does come at a very unusual place in the Gospel. Why does this come so early. This is a very unusual kind of passage for this early in the ministry of Jesus. But as we always say if you just slow down and put it in neutral and pause and study the context nine times out of ten the answer is sitting, staring you right in the face, and all we have to do is go up to verse 12. And in verse 12 what has Jesus told Nicodemus? “If I have told you things that happen on earth in front of your eyes and you do not believe, then how are you going to believe if I should tell you of heavenly things?” Things you do not yet know?

Nicodemus shows up only two other places in Scripture. One time is before Christ dies on the cross and he’s a double-minded man, he still hasn’t made up his mind about these claims. But the third time Nicodemus shows up is after the death of Christ, and what is Nicodemus doing? He and Joseph of Arimathaea are the only two guys that have their heads screwed on enough to go get the body of Jesus off the cross. Everybody else is standing there duh! They’ve been taught for three years and their reaction is a big duh! But Nicodemus catches on what has just transpired enough, now he’s not a magnificently strong believer, but he’s caught on enough to get that body off the cross and get it buried. He knows that something significant has happened and he risks his professional reputation, being a member of the Sanhedrin, to align himself openly and publicly with this condemned man; this condemned criminal. What would it be like if somebody stepped off the bench of the Supreme Court and went out and carefully buried a condemned criminal? Of course we don’t have capital punishment so that’s unlikely to happen, but if we ever had that… that would cause some raised eyebrows. Well, this caused raised eyebrows. Now put it all together and what kind of a picture do we have?

Here we have Nicodemus, a double-minded man trying to think his way through the issue, confused. He’s in the religious establishment he knows something is wrong and Jesus comes up and He makes these claims to him. And Jesus loves Nicodemus and so Jesus is going to give Nicodemus a preview that He gives no other human being, not even the disciples get in on this conversation. The disciples know nothing of this revelation. John 3:16 is something the disciples did not know when it was given; only one man in the world besides Jesus knew it; a man in the religious establishment whom Jesus loved enough to give him enough data so that when this earthly came to pass in front of his face a light would go on and Nicodemus would say I know, wait a minute, He told me three years ago this was going to happen, and Nicodemus would believe.

So here’s why Jesus makes this revelation to Nicodemus, and to no other person, and why this is unusual; He loves the man and He knows this kind of man needs that kind of information in order to believe. Different people need different kinds of information to believe. You don’t treat all non-Christians the same way. Understand them and their need, and you have to approach one from this angle and one from that angle, they’re not just a mechanistic canned salesman approach, it doesn’t work; you get results but not necessarily of God. So Jesus, in verse 14-15 gives a one in a kind revelation, just tailor made for the soul of this man whom He loved and whom He wants to trust in Him.

Now John 3:16, the famous verse. Most people who have studied John 3 over the years, and it’s very difficult to decide the question, but obviously Jesus is speaking beginning at verse 10 and by the time you get down to verse 36 you know Jesus isn’t speaking. So somewhere along the line Jesus had to stop talking. Where was it? It’s very difficult to answer. The most common stopping place for Jesus words is at the end of verse 16 and here’s why. In verse 16 and following you have a vocabulary that is peculiar only to John. It’s talking about the world, the light, whoever believeth in Him, dot, dot, dot, that’s Johannine terminology. Another thing, in verse 16 the word “gave His only begotten Son,” is past tense, so verse 16 looks like it was written after the cross happened, and looking back at the cross. And so, and I follow this, the common interpretation here of John 3 is from verse 16 and on we have a meditation of the Apostle John on Jesus’ words of verses 14-15. John begins a meditation, an editorial meditation to bring out the force of what Jesus has just said. John takes verses 14-15 apart word by word; John is always interested, he always has these commentaries. Notice back at the end of chapter 2, what did he do? He reported the fact in verse 23 to Jesus was in Jerusalem and then in verse 24-25 John added his editorial remarks. “Jesus didn’t commit Himself unto them, because He knew all men. [25] And needed not that any should testify…” and that’s an explanation of what’s going on.

Now in John 3;16 John is going to start exegeting verses 14 and 15 for us. Verses 14 and 15 were so pregnant with meaning, so much meaning packed up in those few words, John can’t let this one go by, he’s got to say whoa, let’s hold it right here and look carefully at what Jesus has just said. “God,” he says, “so loved the world,” now this is the first time John starts working seriously with the word kosmos, or world. This is a theme that begins ever more prominence at this point. John now begins to forcibly teach something that would have agitated the Jew of his day. He forcibly teaches a universal claim of Jesus Christ, that Christ is not just Savior of the Jewish nation but that Christ has come to save the entire world. He says this is contained in what Jesus has just said. When I told you what verse 14, we discussed some of the terms, remember my point about the Son of man must be lifted up; John says yes; yes says John, I want you to see, Jesus that code word here for Himself, a code word that can only be cracked by people who had advanced doctrine; the normal person would have seen this and it would gone over his head and never even notice, but Jesus has employed a secret code word that should alert somebody with doctrine that knows Daniel 7 and knows all the doctrines of the progress of history, wait a minute, what did He just say? Not the Messiah of Israel should be lifted up but the Son of Adam should be lifted up; that makes His claim universal. And therefore the world, not Israel is the focus. So John says no, God didn’t just love Israel, God loved the world.

So this is an exegetical point that John wants us to understand, Jesus’ message here was universal, to all men, everywhere. And then he says something else, “God loved the world in such a way,” that’s the way it ought to be, “God loved the world in such a way,” now here we have the…THE illustration of love. There’s a lot of sick definitions of love today. Let’s go back and look at what the Bible talks about; this is the archetype behind all archetypes of love. It says “God loved the world in this way, that He gave His only begotten Son.” The word “only begotten Son” is replaced now, he doesn’t say God gave His Son, he doesn’t say God gave the Son of man, he doesn’t say God gave the Son of God, it employs a very special word, “only begotten.” What’s that doing in the middle of verse 16. Well what that’s doing in the middle of verse 16 is showing us Christ’s value to His Father. The word “only begotten” is the word used for the sacrifice of Isaac with Abraham. Abraham took his “only begotten” son up to Mount Moriah to sacrifice him. What that word means, it means a poignancy of a man like Abraham who waited 25 years for a son and the son just gets to adolescence when he can inherit property and begins to move as an adult young man and God says kill him. It was a test of Abraham’s faith, one of the most famous tests of history in Genesis 22. And the word used in Genesis 22, “only begotten.”

Now remember, John is writing to people who knew the Old Testament, they pick up these flag terms and Christians read through this and they never catch the point of these words. That’s why we have to stop and go so slowly through here. These are specialized words. So in verse 16, “God loved the world in this way, that He gave His most valuable possession; that’s how He loved the world. He gave His most valuable possession. Those of you who want to trace the thought further it’s available in 1 John 3 and 4 where in the epistle, later on in the Bible John brings this out further. But the emphasis and the picture of love in the Bible, some things about it. This is not any formal study, this is just some points about love that we can glean from this section of John. We’ll get to love in more detail when we get further into the Gospel.

The model of all love is God’s love, not man’s love, and all talk about love must presuppose the existence of God and His love first, or love has no proper yardstick. We do not presuppose some platonic category with a big capital “L” called love and God plugs into Plato’s switchboard. That’s not what we’re talking about. God expresses His love; God is love but in the sense that He expresses love, so God becomes the model of love, not man. So we can expand the first point by saying the Biblical concept is theocentric. Love is theocentric, it begins in God and cannot be understood apart from God’s character. Love is vacuous, the unbeliever and the non-Christian who have no sensitive perception of the character of God cannot understand love. He can understand part of it but his mind is blinded to what it’s really like, and that’s why we have all these aberrant contents dropping into the word “love.” Over here love is used for that; over here love is used for that, over there love is used for something else. Why do men insist on dropping all this foreign content into the word? Because they don’t start in a theocentric way, they don’t start with God.

A second thing about God’s love is that it was sovereign. When God chose to love He wasn’t compelled to love, and that’s something you always want to remember working with people; you cannot compel love in anyone. And yet how many people ruin human relationships because they’re always trying to buy off some one’s love, always trying to stimulate it or force it or compromise the person. You cannot force love and if it starts theocentrically with God, God’s love wasn’t forced. Nobody called God’s hand; you don’t read here that God had to love the world. It just said “God loved the world,” He chose to do so, He didn’t have to do so. Love cannot be forced; you can initiate and hope that someone on the human level responds but you can never force it. You cannot force love for God; God doesn’t force love for Himself in us; He initiates toward you and says respond to Me, but God doesn’t twist things in your heart to force you to love Him. God’s love is sovereign.

Another thing about God’s love and of central concern in this Gospel, and a central concern in the epistle of John, and that is it’s historical, it’s expressed in words and works, it’s not just a dream in God’s mind, that isn’t love, that’s a fantasy. We’re not talking about infatuation, we’re talking something that acts outward in history, through words and works. And here it was acted out by something God did.

And the other thing that absorbed John centrally is that love is sacrificial; it gives something dear to itself. If that hasn’t happened, John says you really haven’t seen love operate. Mere giving is not love; sacrificial giving is love and that’s the theocentric model. That’s what many couples don’t understand who trip down to the altar and the first time they have a problem and one or the other person is in a situation where sacrificial love is needed, they don’t want to give it, then they think it’s time for divorce. I didn’t buy this field…tough! So God, then is our model and God is saying God loved the world in this way, He gave His most valuable, that’s how He loved the world, He gave that which was most valuable. The emphasis is obvious on the sacrificial-ness of it.

Then the result, “That whosoever believeth in Him,” and here you do have [can’t understand words] whoever does believe in Him, in the Son, “should not perish, but have everlasting life,” same word that we discussed earlier. But now John inserts something. He inserts the phrase, “should not perish.” Why did he see that in verses 14-15; again, remember verse 16 is a reflection upon verses 14-15. What did he see in verses 14-15 that spoke about perishing; eliminate the verb “perish” in verse 15 and you don’t see it anywhere else, do you, in verses 14-15? Yes you do, what did we see in Numbers 21; what was happening to the people by the snakes? They were perishing, and then the brass serpent was raised on the pole and then those who were bitten were saved. Which came first? The brass serpent on the pole or the bite? The bite came first, then the means of avoiding the bite came. And so John says when Jesus intended to make a parallel between Numbers 21 He was saying something else to Nicodemus that maybe Nicodemus never thought of, maybe for years later. But when He used that illustration in Numbers 21 He was saying, by implication, when He said, “So must the Son of man be lifted up,” He was saying look, over here in Numbers 21 you have this pole and you have the brass serpent on the top of that pole and here you have all these people with snake bites. Those people were the ones that were concerned with the brass serpent, it was because of their lives that that thing was raised up.

All right He says, analogy. In John 3 you have Jesus Christ on the cross lifted up. Now Jesus never said this directly but the implication is there, that everyone needs the cross, just like everyone in the Hebrew camp needed that because everyone in the world is bitten. So the implication is that all are in a state of perishing. So he says that “Whoever believeth in Him might have everlasting life,” and it’s not just handing out lollipops, it’s giving something to people who are dying. And so he says yes, yeah, God gave His only begotten Son, He raised Him up because all men have the snake bite. They all have venom in themselves that will cause them to die and to perish and unless they get the life from the cross they’re going to perish, just like those people would perish as the venom and the heart pumped its way and the bloodstream carried it all through the body. So the implication John says is not just a sweet message on love; it’s a salvation message he says, God love the world and was concerned for the world, not because the world was so lovable but because the world was perishing, that’s why God loved an why God… this particular expression, He gave His only begotten Son that people shouldn’t perish, and the implication is very clear, very clear that if God hadn’t given His Son we’d all perish.

Now what does the “perish” mean? We just got through talking about what the life is, and we’ve argued that the word “life” here is not equal to existence; that’s not the point. Rather, instead of just plain existence it means existence in a real history before God; Revelation 21 and 22. Now conversely what does “perish” mean? The heresy called soul sleep, when you die you just vaporize? Huh-un, the word “perish” here doesn’t mean you go out of existence, it means that you never, never will partake of this ever in time, and now we have the undercurrent of the Gospel of John building up to a hideous theme of darkness and blackness that he hinted at earlier and now it comes up to the surface, the black terror of death and perishing. John is a Gospel of love but it is a Gospel of a terrifying death that all men will face apart from Christ’s finished work. So there’s an urgency to this, it’s not just sweet religious imitation. John teaches hell here; he’s not going to use the word Sheol as the other Synoptic Gospels teach but this is the proper place for, in its proper perspective, hellfire and brimstone, not to hold it over, to compel people to believe, that’s not the way John’s using it, but he’s not denying it either, he’s simply saying it’s there like the snake bite was and the venom is already circulating, Satan has already stung us all, and so we sit here as dying people; all of us with a terminal illness. There’s only one option we’ve got, look up, grace oriented to Christ’s work or it’s all over. There is no other option. And he’s going to go on, later on we’ll see in verse 17 and following to develop this even further.

Father, we thank You for the Gospel of John…