Clough John Lesson 19
Limited vs. Unlimited Atonement – John 3:17-21
John 3 continues the great confrontation
between Jesus and the religious authorities in
This whole section is a meditation years and years and years later after it was first spoken. Jesus spoke it at that day, it was full of all of its meaning but it took years of reflection on Jesus Christ’s words to really realize what He had said. Last week we focused in on verse 16, John’s first analysis, “God so loved the world,” or He loved the world in this degree, “that He gave His only begotten Son,” and we said that that is the archetype of all love, that’s the model of all love. For Scripture, love is not receiving, it is giving; it is not just giving, it is giving sacrificially. And so God gives that which is most costly to Himself; as we always say in the communion service, this was a free salvation to us but it was of infinite cost to the Father, and that’s the point that John is making; God paid for our salvation.
Out of verse 16 we saw several themes that the apostle pursued. One, he picked up the theme that was only implicit in Numbers 21, the theme that all the people looking up at the bronze serpent because they had snake bites, because there was flowing in their veins a venom that would eventually kill them. They had lethal poisoning and John picks the lethal poisoning up from Numbers 21 and he says, therefore in verse 16, that “Whosoever believeth in Him should not perish,” and the word “perish” is not in verse 15 in the original, though they are in the King James Version, it’s a dittography, a copyist’s error. But here in verse 16 he does bring in the perishing. Yes, the world does have a venom and people are going to die very horrible deaths, and this is part and parcel of the love package.
You see God has a sovereign plan for history; and God started out history before the fall, God could demonstrate His love to a degree, in His provision for Adam and Eve in Eden, and He could show His love in a number of other ways but it took the fall and it took the destruction and poisoning of the human race to create an issue in which God could then demonstrate grace. Technically grace could not have been demonstrated before the fall because it was the fall that rendered all creatures incapable, morally speaking, of receiving God’s love. And so after the fall, because God so perfectly designed history and designed history doxologically to reveal His own character, as a result of the fall God now has the opportunity to show His character in a way which He couldn’t show before the fall. Now He can show His love in several ways.
First He shows the graciousness of His love, the fact that He loves the unlovely; He loves the rebel and that is the grace factor in God’s love. This is a factor that is often forgotten in Christian circles. Legalists are always great at forgetting the grace factor in God’s love. They always in some way, shape or form that even to a little teeny weenie degree they merit God’s love; to the degree that one keeps the taboos, to that degree I merit God’s love; negative! Because even to the degree that we keep God’s laws, leave alone the legalist’s taboos, even that degree is an imperfect degree and anything short of perfection does not morally qualify. And so therefore even a little bit does not merit at all. This is why in James it says whoso breaketh the Law at one point has broken the Law at every point.
So therefore the grace factor is important in God’s love and that is emphasized in many passages, but in this passage we have the sacrificial factor of God’s love and this could not be shown until after the fall, the tremendous cost of love, because after the fall you have the introduction of the loss of life, or death; no angel could give his life because technically in the Scripture no angel is living; the word nephesh means spirit in a body and angels are spirits but they are not spirits in a body and therefore angels technically do not have life and therefore they cannot give life, and therefore an angel cannot be the mode of the demonstration of love to the degree man can be. And therefore when Jesus Christ, or when God the Son picks the form of His own incarnation inside His own creation, He doesn’t pick an angel. The angel of Jehovah appears in the Old Testament but the angel of Jehovah is not the final, final form of God’s revelation. The final, final form of God’s revelation is a man because only in that way can God get inside His own creation and show the sacrificial factor to His own love because there He can give life and angels cannot give life. And so man becomes very important, he becomes a vehicle for the demonstration of God’s love. God, through Christ, demonstrates the sacrificial factor.
And then we have seen another theme that John introduces; the result of this is life eternal or the life of the age. The word is really not eternal, aionos, and it literally means age; “life of the age,” and “the age” is the coming age, “life of the coming age,” or that life that God has designed for man. When Adam and Eve were created they, theoretically, if they had obeyed, would have been translated or raptured and would have enjoyed the life of the resurrection. They were in their mortal bodies and if they had not sinned they would not have died, they could not go forever in mortal bodies because they would be constantly tested inside a mortal body; definition of mortality is that you are able to die. And so therefore after the trial of Adam and Eve, had it been completed successfully, most theologians would speculate that they could have been resurrected, they would go into “life of the age,” or immortality when your body can no longer die and the trial no longer goes on. The status quo of the person has been established forever and ever and ever. That is the “life of the age.”
Now there’s been a long interruption because Adam and Eve fell and because Adam and Eve fell there had to be a problem; not only could they have positive righteousness and acquire this resurrection life but they had to deal with the problem of sin and so Jesus Christ dies on the cross and His perfect righteousness is credited and then you have the resurrection. And so God modified His plan, not in the sense that He rearranged it because he was surprised but in response to this historic loss at the fall we have Jesus Christ having to die. So the whole point is that God so superintends history, even the bad moments of history, to work together for good, to demonstrate His character and here in verse 16 we have seen it.
And you will notice just from John’s meditation so far we have some very valuable lessons, emphases in Scripture that we ought to follow closely because these emphases are being lost in many evangelical circles. We have seen first of all that this entire thing is Christ-centered. This whole meditation, the whole issue of the Son, they look up, they seen the brazen serpent, the brazen serpent is a picture of Christ, it is a Christ-centered salvation package. It is not a Holy Spirit-centered salvation package. The Holy Spirit ought never to get credit to Himself; that is taught in John 14, 15 and 16. So any place where you see the Holy Spirit getting credit something is wrong; there has been a defamation of the doctrine of the Trinity in that particular group and you can’t get any more basic to the Christian faith than the doctrine of the Trinity. So where the Holy Spirit gets undue emphasis and His attraction to Himself, an imbalance is already occurring at that point with those people, with that teaching, with this particular group, whatever it is, where it is, whoever it is. He Holy Spirit’s job is always to point to Jesus Christ, never to Himself.
The other issue that we have seen is that
this is a heaven-centered salvation package.
They look up to the brazen serpent, they look outside of themselves,
they don’t look at their own veins and check whether the venom is flowing or
whether it has been stopped, they don’t look inwardly, they look up and outside
of themselves. And therefore it is a
heaven-centered package and not a heart-centered package. Again, wherever the human heart is pictured
positively in salvation something is wrong, an imbalance has occurred. The
human heart is an appendage to the salvation package, it is not the center of
the salvation package. And this is
mainly due because people walk into Revelation
And then another theme that you’ve seen here that is often missing is that the sin/death issue is prominent; the sin/death issue, not some higher experience. It’s not me getting some higher experience, it is simply solving the sin/death problem that I’ve got; that’s an urgent problem, it’s a matter of survival, that’s the urgent problem, not gaining a higher experience. So wherever you have the gospel preached, wherever you have a Christian group and everyone’s walking around with some spiritual experience and emphasizing and talking about their heart and the Holy Spirit and what a great experience I’ve had, I was slain in the Spirit and saw light and so on, when you hear all of this stuff you are hearing a very serious defamation of orthodox Christianity, one that leads into subjectivism, away from Scripture, away from the true “full gospel” to paraphrase a certain term. So those are the themes of verse 16.
Now John continues in John 3:17-21, “For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. [18] He that believeth on Him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. [19] And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. [20] For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. [21] But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they have been wrought in God.” So obviously the theme of verses 17-20 has something to do with judgment. Well what about this?
Why does the theme of judgment come
up? Because in traditional Judaism what
was the Messiah to do that every Jew would look forward to? He was to judge the world. Why was He anticipated? Because the coming Messiah would break the
political power that was crushing the Jew; they looked for deliverance and they
knew the doctrine of judgment/salvation that before you can be saved there must
be judgment of something. We learned that from Noah, before he could be saved,
Noah and his family, from the world, the world had to be destroyed. We know from the Exodus, before
But John wants to emphasize God’s love in this passage and therefore he starts out in verse 17, “For God sent not His Son into the world to judge the world,” God did not primarily send Jesus Christ to judge the world. That’s a very interesting theme, that though Christ is going to judge the world, John does not deny this for John is the one who authored Revelation in which Christ is pictured as coming into the world to judge the world. What, then, does John mean here, if he is the same author of Revelation 20 where Christ is the judge of the world, he says Christ is not come into the world. Well, he’s going to answer this dilemma, this apparent conflict between John 3:17 and Revelation 20, as we go into the next few verses. He’s going to show us how the judgment actually is rendered in history. This passage, I might add, is a very, very sobering passage. We say that the gospel is not heart-centered and that’s true but in verses 18-20 you’re going to get a picture of the human heart that is fantastic, and this is precisely why the Bible strays away and warns us, don’t get preoccupied with matters of the human heart, too messed up. And it’s precisely in that area where judgment begins.
God did not, therefore, send Messiah into the world to judge the world; He judges the world incidentally to His first and primary mission. His first and primary mission is to reveal God’s character to men; God does not rejoice in damning people. God gets no pleasure out of watching people fry in hell forever and ever and ever and ever. That is not some sort of a kick that God gets, and the Bible consistently denies that God has pleasure in judging people. God, rather, has other purposes. It says “but” rather, the main purpose was, “that the world thorough Christ might be saved.” Now notice right away that we’re not talking about Israel, we’re talking about kosmos or the world; this is an extension that John the Apostle makes in his Gospel more prominently than the other Gospel writers, that the message of Christ pertains to the entire world, it pertains to Corinth, Ephesus, beyond the geographical boundaries of Israel. And God works this out “in order that the world might be saved.” In other words, Jesus Christ rendered the world savable.
He rendered the world savable. That sounds like a nice word but immediately we’re plunged into a controversy that has split Christians for centuries and that controversy involves limited or unlimited atonement. Now this is not just a controversy for seminary students. This is a controversy which, however way you decide, and all of you have decided one way or the other, just the way you act, however you decide this issue is going to determine how you evangelize and how you see the process of salvation occur. What is the issue?
The limited atonement people are the classical Calvinists; even at Dallas Seminary and many fundamental schools outside of the classical Reformed group you have limited atonement professors and students. These people hold to a high view of Scripture, they hold to Jesus Christ’s deity, they are orthodox believers; but they are, what we will call, full classical Calvinists, though there’s some doubt about whether John himself held the view. But at least we’ll say the classical Calvinists hold this position, that Jesus Christ died, not for every man but Jesus Christ died only for the elect, that when Christ paid for the sins on the cross, in fact He was not paying for the sins of some men; He was paying only for the sins of those who would eventually believe. He was only dying for the elect, thus the limited atonement, His work on the cross was limited in its scope.
The argument for the limited atonement position is simple. If Jesus Christ did not die in this way, the limited way, then argues the classical Calvinists, you’re trying to tell me that Jesus Christ’s work on the cross will be thwarted, that Christ died for men out here, we’ll say all these men… the men here are believers and there are the unbelievers. The limited atonement insists that Jesus Christ bore the sins only of the elect, not of the unelect, and they say that you must hold this position or else… or else you’re making Christ’s work of none effect. In other words, if you say Christ also died for the sins of those who would never accept His work, then God intended and tried His best to save those people but God Himself finally backed off and His work was declared null and void. And so they argue that you have two ways to go if you do not accept the limited atonement. This way, they say, is the Arminian way, and that is that if you do not hold to the limited atonement you are an Arminian, you are a person who argues that the final determinate in history is man’s volition and not God, that the final, final choice, if it is finite man’s volition you’ve said the same thing as making Chance ultimate, and so therefore they say you’re an Arminian. There’s an instability in your system that you have made Chance the final reference point, not God and what He does determines history but what man does determines history. And this is a denial of God’s sovereignty, if this claim is true.
Or they say if you’re not an Arminian and you’re more liberal you’ll be a Universalist, not a Universalist that you see in the yellow pages of the phone book, the denomination Universalist, but a Universalist in the sense that you believe Christ died for every man and therefore all men are saved. This is the liberal position, and all you have to do is not preach the gospel to men that they might be saved; you preach the gospel to men that they have already been saved and didn’t know it all this time. And that would be the Universalist’s gospel. You didn’t realize you were saved, well you are, so rejoice in it. So argues the limited person; you are either a limited atonement person or you are an Arminian or Universalist.
Now I don’t particularly appreciate this argument and many in the fundamentalist camp have rejected it for a long, long time. And the reason we’ve objected to this is primarily because the text of Scripture just doesn’t simply depict the atonement in such limited terms. For example, turn to 2 Corinthians 5:19, it’s always good to go to the text before you get too wrapped up in your theology. “To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself,” “reconciling the world unto Himself,” he doesn’t say the elect and he doesn’t say the world of the elect, it says “the world,” in 1 Corinthians 5:19. We could go on and discuss that verse, but there’s another one. 1 John 2:2, Jesus Christ is “the propitiation,” the word means satisfaction, Jesus Christ “is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” It doesn’t say sins of just the elect, it says “sins of the whole world.” 2 Peter 2:1, it says “there were false prophets among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who shall privily [secretly] bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them,” and in the context Peter is talking about unregenerate teachers teaching heresy, and this verse says that even those unregenerate teachers Christ has bought, which is a word referring to His atoning work.
So on the basis of passages like 2 Corinthians 5:19; 1 John 2:2; 2 Peter 2;1, plus other passages, people like myself, Dr. Chafer, founder of Dallas Seminary, and many, many other people in the independent fundamental camp have argued, yes, there are some things in Calvinism that are correct, but at this point the system does not fit the text of Scripture, and we are going to have to part with the system at this point, if that is necessary. We are going to have to insist that Christ did more than just die for the elect.
So now we come to the unlimited atonement position and because the limited atonement people have always characterized us as either Universalists or Arminian, we have to be careful about stating our beliefs so we’re understood. We have to set ourselves apart, we are not Arminians, we do not accept the fact that man is the ultimate reference the ultimate determinate of history, we’re not arguing that Chance is a final, final factor. We’re arguing the sovereign God is the final, final factor. And we’re not Universalists, we don’t go around announcing that all men, you’re saved, you didn’t know it but I’m here to tell you about it, wake up, you’re already saved. We’re not saying that either. So it’s false that the only other option besides being for limited atonement is an Arminian or a Universalist.
Dr. Chafer in his Systematic Theology, Vol. 3, page 185 said: “The modern Calvinist, which is the position I believe in, the position I’m teaching you tonight, is that the death of Christ is a sufficient ground for any and every man to be saved, should the Spirit of God choose to draw him. Moderate Calvinists contend that the death of Christ itself saved no man, but that it renders all men savable, that salvation is wrought of God alone and at the time the individual believes. In other words, we who accept the doctrine of the unlimited atonement distinguish between the work of atonement and the application of atonement. We say that Jesus Christ died for the whole world so His atonement is unlimited but the application of His work is limited.” And so we draw the line, not in the work of the atonement, we draw the line in the area of the application of the work of the atonement; that’s where the limited-ness comes in.
You can say this is nitpicky but let me demonstrate why it’s not nitpicky. In Numbers 21 you have a very simple illustration. Let’s think back through that simple illustration, you don’t have to get hairy with all the theological problems just think of the physical situation where you’ve got the bronze serpent; it’s up on a post, people are dying all over the place with snake bites, so you’ve got the situation. Now here’s the question: is it or is it not true that some people are going to look up at the bronze serpent and some people aren’t. Some people are going to die in that camp; yes. Some people looked up and some people didn’t look up, so it’s correct to say that some perish and some were saved. That’s a correct observation.
But now, second question: is the reason that the people perished is because the bronze serpent wasn’t sufficient for them, or is the reason that the people perished is they never looked up? Is the bronze serpent so limited that if everybody in the camp looked at it somehow it would melt up on top of the post? No, the bronze serpent on top of that post was sufficient had all men in the camp… had all men in the came looked at it. The bronze serpent on the post was sufficient. In other words, you might say the bronze serpent was unlimited in its healing possibility. What limited men was their failure to appropriate the work of the bronze serpent; that is where the limitedness is. It is not a limited work of the serpent, it’s a limited work of man.
Now let’s go back to John 3:17, “God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” So Jesus Christ was sent to die on the cross and on that cross He bore the sins of all men. In other words, theoretically if the entire human race looked up and believed on Jesus Christ, they would find that His work on the cross would be sufficient; Christ’s work on the cross wouldn’t run out with the 1,598,082nd person believed, and after that point there would be just not enough merit there any more. Christ’s atonement is not limited in that sense. And here’s the point, God didn’t want to condemn the world but He rendered the world savable; He had the cross big enough, sufficient enough, that all men could go to heaven if they but look up… if they would but look up. The means of salvation is available to every member of the human race, and this is the only interpretation you can come to in verse 17.
Now John 3:18, “He that believes on Him is not judged, but he that believes not is judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” Now here’s where this passage gets very, very serious, and very, very sobering. I think some have a flippant attitude toward the Bible; familiarity breeds contempt and often times we have kind of a subtle contempt for those with whom we associate most, and it’s that danger that we face as evangelical fundamental Christians, that we are so familiar with the gospel that it becomes something of almost contempt to us in a very subtle way, and we have to be careful, and this passage is one of those sobering passages that should cleanse our souls of all this crud of subtle contempt that can build up over the years or the months that we’ve had Christian fellowship together.
“He that believes on Him,” that is one who is now a believer. Now oftentimes in verse 18, because that is a present participle people will say “He that continuously believes” and they will argue with you and say that if you don’t continually believe you aren’t continually saved, and you can believe, believe, believe, believe, believe, believe, believe, believe and stop and you’re saved, and saved and saved and saved and saved and saved and saved and saved and you stop and you lose your salvation. That is a naïve view of Greek grammar; a very naïve view of Greek grammar. The present participle doesn’t necessarily indicate present action but can indicate enduring character, marked by one or two events. For example, Christ refers to Himself as the bread which comes from heaven. Now is Christ constantly coming from heaven? In the context of that passage, we’ll see it in John 6, Christ isn’t constantly coming from heaven, in fact later on he clears it up, I have come from heaven and I will return there. So obviously it’s a once and for all thing. But nevertheless He says by a present participle I am the one who continually comes from heaven… is that what it means? No, I am the one whose continuing character is marked by that one event of coming from heaven. I am the one who came from heaven and therefore my character endures as the one who comes from heaven. You might say so and so murdered JFK, it only happened once but that marked Oswald’s life, if Oswald was the person, it would mark his life forever and ever and ever; he is the one, present participle, who murders JFK. It doesn’t mean he keeps on doing it but it means that his character has been branded by a once and for all event and the brand never wears off, it’s always there on his character.
So here, “he that believeth on Him” is he who has the brand of belief on his soul. “He who believes on Him is not judged,” so John says forget about judgment to those who look up, because remember, this all comes from Numbers 21 and the snake and the pole, he who looks up at the pole, the venom will be counteracted, “but he that does not believe,” again enduring character, “he that does not believe has been condemned already,” it’s perfect tense, something happened in the past with results which continue. “He who did not believe has been already judged.” Now this is a hard doctrine to see but when you work at it and don’t let something distract you from focusing in on what the content of the Scripture is teaching here you’ll see something that is very sobering about this whole problem of evangelism, and opening your mouth about Christ. He that rejects has been condemned, that’s what John is saying; he who turns away from Jesus Christ has already, at that point, been judged. Harsh words.
Now he’s going to explain why in a moment but he goes on to say why has he been judged; “because he has not trusted in the name” or the character “of the only begotten Son of God.” This is the ultimate sin, the unpardonable sin; if the person dies in rejection of Christ there is no hope left, and the reason is the ultimate insult to God has been committed. When God makes the revelation as crystal clear as He does in the person of Christ and you turn from it, there’s no further words need be said; no further court of appeal, you’ve reached the Supreme Court at the point of gospel hearing. That’s the point, there is no higher court of appeal, there is no second chance after death, “because he has not believed” in the essence or character “of the only begotten Son of God.” Notice he uses the word “only begotten Son of God,” reflecting back to verse 16. What did he say back in verse 16? Why did he use “only begotten Son” and not just “Son.” Because he was showing the sacrificial character of God’s love; God sacrificially gave to the degree that He gave His only Son, and so if you as a creature turn your back on that sacrificial love, forget it, there’s nothing else left for you. That’s what John is saying, so watch your terms as you go through here because he’s pulling out these words to be used very carefully.
Now John 3:19, “And this is the judgment,”
now obviously we all want to find out what the judgment because what does he
mean in verse 18, when someone does not believe he is judged already, and
remember John is writing, looking back in time.
This will help some of you understand what he’s doing here. See, John is talking about the period of the
incarnation, and he’s off here in, say
“And this is the condemnation,” now in the Greek, those of you with your Greek text will notice in the Greek the word for judgment is krisis, not krima; a little hint for Greek students; the ending of a Greek noun is often the key to its meaning, and if you see “ma” on the end of a Greek noun that noun refers to the result of an action. If you see “sis” on the end of a Greek word, that noun refers to the process or act but not the result of the act. So when John uses the word krisis in verse 19 and not krima, he is not talking about the result of the action, he now says let me describe the process of judgment. So verse 19 is an exposition of how judgment actually occurs in history. This is the process of condemnation, and here’s how it works, John says.
The first thing, “light has come into the world,” that’s the incarnation, we know this from the way John uses his words, “light has come into the world,” perfect tense, “and men loved,” aorist, “darkness rather than light,” that is, during the period of the incarnation those who rejected Christ turned away from Him. So you have, part one, you have light coming into darkness; that is the incarnation. Point two is that men loved the uninterrupted darkness; they did not appreciate the light intruding into their darkness, this threatened them. “Men loved darkness rather than light” says John, and they loved to stay within the world system “because their deeds were” imperfect, “were constantly characterized as evil.” So because they were evil, in rebellion, and the third point he’s making is the reason for this is that men were in operation cover-up. Men did not want the light because, as John goes on to say, this would disturb their operational cover-up, “their deeds were evil.”
John 3:20, “For everyone that does evil,” present tense, as a principle, “everyone that does evil, constantly hates the light, neither comes to the light,” and here is the real crux of the whole thing, “lest his deeds should be convicted.” It’s a legal term, brought under conviction. Now there’s irony; remember, we’ve seen this with John over and over and over and over again, he’s so effective with the use of words and here’s one of those things, and here it comes and it’s coming so subtle you hardly can see it come until all of a sudden he’s hit you and you’re wondering what you’ve been hit with.
What John has just done is say because men wanted to avoid judgment, they judged themselves. See the irony of it all, the men hide in the darkness because they want to stay away from the judgment and the very turning away from judgment is their judgment; that’s what he’s saying. Men try to hide and postpone that inevitable judgment that their conscience says is coming and John says the very act of postponing it and turning away from that bronze serpent or Christ on the cross, the very act of turning away from Him to avoid the judgment is the judgment. And that’s how the judgment comes about. It’s amazing how God does this; this is kind of the super efficiency in the way He works in history. Christ comes to save people and judge them, but He judges them in the process of trying to save them. God is so efficient that when Christ goes to love men, His love causes them to judge themselves. That’s what John’s saying.
Now before we go any further, in order that we’re really meshed and really watch what’s happened here so far, before we hit verse 21, before we get to verse 21 let’s make sure we’ve really got John’s thought down and we’ll do this two ways. In order that as Christians we can empathize with what he has on his mind, let’s re-read verse 18, 19, and 20 and this time, since those of us who are believers are believers and we’ve already gone through the gospel issue, let’s re-read and plug in, in place of the gospel, the Word of God and increase light in the Christian life.
Let’s go back to John 3:17, “God did not send the Word of God to you to condemn you, but that you might be delivered,” or, “you might move on in the process of sanctification.” The Word of God has been provided as a means of future salvation, sanctification. Verse 18, “He that believes the Word that is given is not judged, but he that doesn’t believe the Word that is given, has condemned himself already, because he has not trusted in God’s Word. [19] And this is how you have judged yourself, because light has come into your soul, and because you like darkness rather than that light, because your deeds are evil. [20] And everyone that does evil hates the light and will not come to the light, lest his deeds should be convicted.” And there is the biography of the Christian in spiritual trouble, a Christian out of fellowship, wrapped up in compound carnality, who cannot stand the glare of more teaching of the Word of God. He turns from the Word of God as a non-Christian turns from Christ. Both do it for the same reason, that they are secretly committed to a way of life that must be changed. Verse 20 concludes that “his deeds should be convicted.” That means that the person will get into the position of having to move from point A to point B; there is a demand that the Word of God makes on you for change and there is a good word for it in Scripture, and it’s repentance. That’s what real repentance is, a deep soul change because light has penetrated into your soul from the Word of God and you now realize that your deeds are not lining up with Scripture and so therefore you make changes. So this is what John’s talking about except in the context he’s not talking about Christians, he’s talking about non-Christian and the gospel issue, but the principle works the same way.
Now let’s read it from the non-Christian point of view. [17] “God did not send His Son into history to condemn history, but that all men through Him might be saved.” God sends Christ into the world and inside that world there are men who are experts in the academic world, people who are experts in politics, there are married couples, there are those active in church life, whatever your sphere may be, and here are the people, the unbelievers who may be in any one of those spheres including church life, and there they are and now Christ comes, the message of Christ comes and in this type of situation, in verse 19, “men loved darkness rather than light,” it would mean different things depending on what area you were in. So before we go any further I just want to exhaust the possibilities, at least the major ones, of verse 19.
Don’t think of the word “darkness” in verse 19 as oh, the street light is out and some guy is picking a lock; in other words, the word John uses here “darkness” and “light” are so powerful that they tend to make our minds just think of the obviously gross things and that’s again a trick, if you allow your soul to go that way it’s kind of a trick because then you avoid the conviction of the Word of the minor things. So when you see the word “darkness” in verse 19 it could be someone involved in academics who simply refuses to bring his discipline under the control of the Word of God. Put more concretely, a person in the area of the biological sciences that does not start with the Word of God deeds are evil. And if he isn’t going to be corrected by Scripture “he loves his evil and will not come that his deeds may be shown for what they are,” autonomous man starting out from himself and don’t bother me God. And that’s evil and that is darkness, that’s just like the person that’s out in the street with the street lights off and he’s picking the lock, except it’s all done under the guise of great intellectual light. From God’s point of view it’s the same thing.
You can take a person in politics, he hears about the gospel issue and he doesn’t want to respond to Christ for the same reason, he’s go too many deals that he’s involved in; his life is locked down to a lifestyle built on human autonomy, I have risen this far in my career and I’m not going to release control of my career, and I don’t want any interfering Christ in my life. If Christ would come into my life and be under my control, fine, I’ll have Him along with a few other things. But I will not accept the kind of Christ that is going to interfere; I will not tolerate that kind of Christ. I’ll tolerate the psychological aspirin, you talk to me that Christ will give me peace while I’m in my deals, great, I’ll accept that kind of a Christ. You talk to me about a Christ that gives me peace of mind while I’m stealing right and left, I like that kind of Christ because He doesn’t get in my way, He greases my path and makes things easier. I respond to that kind of a Christ, but the Christ that no man in that situation wants is the Christ that doesn’t grease the path but He’s the Christ that makes him do a 180 on the path, that kind of Christ.
Or you can take a situation in a marriage situation, here are two unbelievers involved in some sort of a very unhealthy marriage relationship and the gospel issue comes in and they don’t want to accept Christ because for either one to accept Christ means that they will have to again permit Christ to dictate the terms of settlement, and they don’t want Christ to interfere and dictate the terms of settlement, I want to dictate the terms of settlement. So you have to people pairing off, one wants to dictate terms of settlement against the other’s person right to dictate the terms of settlement, and neither one wants the interfering third party to come in and say you will both follow My terms of settlement; that’s an interfering Christ. And because the married couple prefers darkness and because their deeds are evil they will reject that kind of a Christ being preached tot them.
So when you read verse 19 and you see the word “darkness” it’s not just the guy picking a lock; it can mean a very respectable man in a very dignified profession but John says his deeds are evil. As long as that man has as his ultimate starting point himself and his own economy it’s evil; darkness, that’s darkness to John, not just gross immorality.
Now we come to John 3:21, “But he that does truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be manifest, that they are wrought in God.” Notice he doesn’t say he that talks truth in verse 21; “he that does truth,” it means that person’s soul is already in the starting point, he’s starting out from the divine viewpoint submission, submission to God’s authority. He’s like Adam and Eve were before Satan came, that God’s Word is the final reference point. He may not know much about it but in his God-consciousness he’s responded. So here’s the unbeliever in God-consciousness; he’s responding to his God-consciousness, he knows God’s out there somewhere and he knows pretty much what that God is like, and he knows, moreover, from Romans 2:14-15, his conscience tells him what that God’s demands are in his life. He knows all of that before the gospel is ever preached to him; all that information is already available to every member of the human race. Don’t say that people are ignorant until they hear the gospel; huh-un, people know lots before they ever hear the gospel; lots.
And here’s the person who does truth, picture Cornelius in Acts 10 for example, a person that does truth, he’s responding to the God-consciousness and he comes to the light, he receives Christ, because his soul is already in motion, he’s already taken as his ultimate starting point something outside of himself, he knows God’s there, and so it makes perfect sense for him to say hey, look up at this stake, I’ve got a bronze serpent up here, you’ve got snake bite, look at the great healer, this is the provision. And he would understand that he’s not looking at a serpent god on a stick but he’s looking at the God in heaven who ordained the stick with a bronze statue on it. He knows that because he does truth. See, that person comes to the light. Why, says John, “that his deeds may be clearly shown,” that’s what the word manifest means, “that his deeds may be clearly shown.”
Now what does John mean by that. We primed you a while ago that there’s a difference between facts and interpretation of facts. Now this person who is responding to what God-consciousness he has, has certain facts in his life, certain values, things that he likes, thing that he doesn’t like, things that have happened to him, problems with his own conscience, things he’s done wrong and knows, things that he’s done right and he believes he honestly has followed his conscience in these areas; these are all the facts. Now when the gospel comes to him part of the reason that he responds is for salvation, of course. But there’s another deep reason why this person responds. He wants to have the true interpretation of all these facts and why they all fit together, for it says “that his deeds might be clear,” that means that they might be clearly interpreted, that he might get the true picture of his own position and he wants that, he wants truth for himself. This is the exact… the exact, it sounds almost like this is autonomy but it isn’t, it’s just the exact opposite. The autonomous sinner starts out from himself not wanting truth, because he’s already rebelled against his God-conscious, he’s declared from the very start, I don’t want truth, I want what I want, regardless of the truth question. But this is a man who wants truth, and he wants it so bad he’s willing to change his life, whatever it takes, to see himself properly in the eyes of God. In other words, correctly interpreted facts are God-interpreted facts. He wants God’s interpretation of his life, he wants God’s interpretation of every event in his life and he’s willing to stand condemned if God condemns and he’s willing to rejoice if God blesses, but he wants God’s interpretation of every fact. And he’s not going to be a satisfied man until he gets God’s interpretation of every fact.
And so he comes “that his deeds may be clear, that they have been wrought in God.” This whole path, this whole response, it all fits together, his search for God, and he sees in retrospect, after he comes to Christ, he looks back and he says why sure, I see how God led me, I didn’t see before but now I can look back and I can see that this whole thing was wrought in God.
Now how can we tie this together and get something useful out of it as far as our own approach is concerned in evangelism. I think there are two areas where we can pull useful lessons out of this passage. One area is evangelism and the other is all of us taking the Word of God into our soul. So we have one application in the area of the unbeliever; one application in the area of the believer.
What about the area of the unbeliever, what about evangelism? According to this Christ’s atonement is full, it’s fully sufficient for every man who would look up, so we’ll draw a circle around it indicating sufficiency, the complete total sufficiency of the work of Christ. We have the person down here and the question is, is he going to look up or is he going to look down; that’s the question, and that’s the question you face with every unbeliever. Now what’s the role that we as ambassadors for Christ have versus the role the Holy Spirit has, and we can’t mix the two. It says in verses 19-20 that light has come into the world; light has come into the world! No Hebrew in that camp in Numbers 21 could have possibly looked up if someone hadn’t held the bronze serpent up so they could see it. Somebody had to make the bronze serpent and somebody had to put it up and display it or it would be false that they could look up; they couldn’t look up if they couldn’t see it, and so no man can believe unless the light has come into the world, in particular, unless the light has come to him.
The light, says John, he doesn’t use the word “truth,” he says “light,” light has come into the world. So what is our role in evangelism? To make sure that this person has a clear understanding of Jesus Christ’s work for him. You can never be satisfied in witnessing until you are sure that that person has received a clear picture of Christ’s finished work. And don’t ever consider your task of evangelism finished until that has happened. It may take you months to do it, you may walk away many times like I have, after a one-shot thing and you know that they didn’t understand and you just have to trust the Lord that somewhere else along the path of their life somebody else will be brought or they’ll read it or something will happen that they’ll have a true picture. But your goal is to present the clearest picture of Christ’s work that you can do. Hold the bronze serpent up to them so they can see it, and how do you do this? The way John does it and this is where apologetics comes in. What does John say? Turn to 1 John because in 1 John 1:1-2 he’s trying to hold the light up and look what he says; John gave us this meditation, common sense tells us go to John and find out how John does it. So how does John do it? Here’s how John does it. He says, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with out eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, the word of life, [2] (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and” we do what? “…we show it unto you,” how does the Apostle John show it? He has just said verse 1, he makes claims for Christ, he says “we have heard it, we have seen it, we have looked upon it, and our hands have handled.”
What is that claim? He is saying I present to you a historically valid Christianity. That’s what I present to you, that the light has come into the world; your world, not the world of make believe, not an Anderson’s fairy story, not in some transcendental meditation some place, but it has come into history and I make certain historic claims and I present the historic facts and I give you the historic interpretation of those facts. I give you the whole package says John, you can’t escape it, Christ came into the world, we touched Him and there’s a historic objectivity to the whole thing. We show it unto you. The Gospel of John is 21 chapters of John showing it unto us, so let’s learn from John our role in evangelism and that is to show the non-Christian that we’ve got an historically objective Christian faith; it doesn’t hinge on your faith, my faith, somebody else’s opinion. It’s not grounded even on your personal experience of Christ. Don’t witness with that in the forefront; that’s not the bronze serpent on the post.
To go back to Numbers 21 the way some Christians witness what should have happened is that after they had the post with the bronze serpent they should have had the fever charts displayed, look at this, we’ve got 21 fever charts, those are 21 people, now look at those fever charts; it shows definitely and conclusively that something happened, a big change happened in their life because their temperature went down after they looked up. But don’t you look at the bronze serpent too much, look at the fever charts, look at the red lines, look at the wriggles and that’ll really turn you on so you too can have a change in your life. And here you have hundreds of people in the camp, I want to change me life, I want to change my life, I want a change in my life, I want my temperature to go down, and the emphasis is on the temperature. Now what’s happened? You’ve completely shot the whole issue. It was the bronze serpent and nothing else on the post and that’s the way our evangelism should be, Christ and His work and the historical validity of it plus nothing else. If you want to bring your personal experience on a side, side, side issue, all right but make sure it’s a side, side issue. Don’t get the fever chart confused with the serpent up on the post. Experience, even valid interpreted experience is not the key; the key is Christ’s work and the objectivity. That’s why the Gospel of John, we’re going to be thinking about that as we go through. That’s our role.
Turn back to John 3, we have to make sure the light, and that light means that we have to be trained, we have to teach clear doctrine, we have to know our historical facts. If some of you are weak in the area of historical facts I suggest to you Josh McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict; I suggest the Framework pamphlets, not like McDowell, McDowell gives you the specific facts, in my pamphlets I give you more of the argument and the framework for those facts. Put the two together and you’ve got some very powerful tools. And there are a lot of others, Know Why You Believe by Paul Little, Frances Schaeffer’s work, The God Who is There. These are works that can be used, they’re written for all types of backgrounds. You’ve got tools and those tools don’t come naturally. And you can’t walk by that door 25 times every Sunday and hope it’s going to leap into your soul by osmosis. It’s only going to be part of you as you think through and use it. If you’re weak in the area of science we have a creation science seminary on Saturday night. We have everything we can do around here to get information to your soul. I can’t learn it for you, you have to learn it. It would be very easy if you’d just stick me in that room back there and let me study 18 hours a day for everybody, that’d be fine, but it doesn’t work that way. You have to learn the stuff yourself. John just didn’t flip a coin and write the Gospel; he thought this through, this came at the end of the man’s life; he was an old man when he wrote this. He spent many years thinking this thing through. So he presented the light.
But now, says John, some are going to turn away because their deeds are evil and there are going to be those that do truth and they want to come to the light that their deeds, their past, might be shown to be wrought by God. And that point, the matter of starting point, the matter of whether I start with creature dependence upon my God or whether I work out from myself as an autonomous rebellious creature, that work is the work of the Holy Spirit. We are not asked to do that work in evangelism; that work can only be done by the Holy Spirit. Those are the two parts of evangelism. What’s our role? To show that the light is there, hold up the post, and it’s not just holding up the post and going rah-rah, it’s making it clear so people can see, and then trusting the Holy Spirit to cause the change in their heart. We cannot change human hearts, and this is what is wrong with invitation evangelism. When you invite people to do something before a group of people you have created a false issue because immediately some person who may have an inferiority complex so big they can’t even walk through the door is sitting there in the group and all of a sudden you say to become a Christian all we want you to do is raise your hand, I know some people who’d drop dead before they’d raise their hand; sign a card, nod your head or do something, anything like this, it is socially embarrassing. You say well, if they were really Christians they’d come out of the woodwork; later, yes, but don’t expect babies to act like mature advanced martyrs of the faith. And for some people that’s an act of heroics, to get up in front of a group of people. And you are adding to the gospel when you expect somebody to pray with you in front of somebody else; when you expect them to go through some handstand or something else. All that’s nonsense and you have harmed the gospel by doing it because you are trying to intrude in the Holy Spirit’s area. Your area is to show the light and leave it there. If you’ll just concentrate on that you’ll have more than you can possibly accomplish anyway, because you’ll be talking to them and you ought say do you understand, do you understand that point, say it back to me, what did I just say, to make sure you understand. What have I just told you? Get some feedback; if you concentrate on that you’ll more than do your work, you won’t have to ask them to do something in front of somebody else.
So much for evangelism; we come to the final application of believers; the same two principles apply… the same two principles apply that we’ve just got through doing in the area of evangelism. What’s the role of the pastor-teacher? To provide the light, as clearly as he can. If you’re teaching someone or you teaching yourself you ought not to be satisfied until you have said I see the bronze serpent on the post, I see the issue, what I have to do about this venom. And the believer has the venom in the sense that he has a sin nature that he’s trying to conquer in sanctification, and I’ve got this problem that’s in me, now what do I do about it. I’ve got to see the light. Where do I look, I know it’s out there some place because I’m at least starting out from the correct divine viewpoint starting point, I know the answer is outside of myself, I know it’s with God, now where, where is the specific. And there should be that drive to uncover what part of all God’s revelation, what part concerns you and your problem. There should be a drive and a hunger and a thirst to uncover wherever it is; some place God’s revelation has the answer, a principle, an illustration, an example, some place there has got to be an answer for every problem in your soul.
And then as far as changing the soul sometimes you’ll be in a situation where you know what you’re doing is wrong, you’ll know what the Word of God says and you find yourself incapable of changing. And at this point you have to understand that even you can’t change your own soul, and at that point you have to confess your utter dependency upon God, even to change your soul, just like you would if you had to talk to someone about Christ and you presented the gospel completely and the person knows it completely and the person turns away from it; what do you do? You trust that God changed their soul. And here it’s the same concept. You have to sometimes, the struggle of sanctification becomes so intense that you get where you get locked down and you literally know what to do but you can’t do it, the Romans 7 and 8 struggle, and the answer is the same concept, the same principle.
God, once again, let’s look at the text in conclusion. Verse 17, God does not send His Son to the unbeliever and He doesn’t send the Word of God to the believer to condemn us. The Word of God was never designed to do that, but that the unbeliever might be saved through Christ and that the believer might be sanctified through the Word. That is why God has sent this. And he that responds to Christ is not condemned and the believer that responds to the Word of God and Bible doctrine is not judged, but he that rejects the Son is condemned, and the believer that rejects the authority of the Word is also condemned because he has rejected the essence of God and God’s trustworthiness. And what is the process by which we, the believer, and the unbeliever, judge ourselves? Because light has come into our world, it has come into the world of the unbeliever, it has come into the world of the believer, and both of us, believe and unbeliever, naturally love the works of darkness rather than the works of light and we don’t like the intrusion; we don’t like the interference, and we don’t like an authoritative Christ that dictates the terms of our existence. We can tolerate other forms of God but not that form. But those in verse 21, the unbeliever coming to Christ and the believer going on with this step of sanctification, they “that do truth come to the light gladly, that their deeds might be clearly interpreted.” Yes God, no matter what, I want the truth and I want to see myself as You see me, and I want to see You as you really are.