The Rev. Pamela Dolan
“Believe: Reconsidering John 3:16”
March 10, 2024
It’s a bumper sticker. It’s a sign held aloft in a sports stadium. It’s a soundbite. It’s John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” This single passage has also, unfortunately, been used as a weapon to hurt and demean people who don’t follow a very specific way of being Christian. It’s that history of abuse, more than the words of the verse itself, that so often make this a difficult passage for people who are seeking a liberating, loving, life-giving relationship with God.
Context is critically important when you’re wrestling with a difficult passage, so let’s take some time to look at the context that surrounds John 3:16. In this case I’m not going to talk much about historical or cultural context, as important as those are, but primarily about narrative context—that is, what is happening in the Gospel of John just before today’s passage begins.
This chapter of John begins with the appearance of a character named Nicodemus, a Pharisee, who comes to talk with Jesus at night, in the cover of darkness. Nicodemus was a deeply faithful religious leader, and he comes to Jesus trying to understand how this teacher, who is the source of so much controversy and conflict in his community, could also be the one doing all these good and seemingly holy things, like healing the sick and casting out demons. It seems to Nicodemus that there’s a contradiction here, and he is looking to Jesus for an answer.
Jesus, in that way he has, does not answer Nicodemus directly but tells him that “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” This becomes an exchange that leads to Nicodemus, and most of us readers, only becoming more confused. Questions of birth and rebirth, allusions to baptism, and references to the freedom of the Holy Spirit to blow where it will, swirl through the first part of this chapter.
Then, just before the passage we have today, there’s a shift in tone and maybe in voice. The emphasis turns to a question about belief. Jesus, or maybe John, says:
“If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” And then the first verse from today’s passage immediately follows: “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
Some Biblical scholars argue that these verses are meant to be read as a narrative aside, more John speaking directly to his audience than Jesus speaking directly to Nicodemus. Whoever is speaking, there is a strange quality to these lines, which shift in and out of different perspectives, eventually referring to Jesus in the third person as “the Son of Man” and talking about events out of chronological order. Jesus, or John, speaks here about the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ as a kind of eternally present reality, not as historical events that haven’t yet happened. As Professor Lance Pape puts it, “On balance, it is probably best to take these verses as depicting the words of Jesus, yet the ‘meta’ character of this discourse is striking — here we see Jesus offering a Christological reflection on himself.”[i]
I promise I’m not giving you all this context just to avoid talking about what’s difficult about John 3:16. One point I want us to take away is that this whole passage is anything but a bumper sticker or a sound bite. It’s complicated! Reducing it to something not just simple but simplistic does a disservice to the text and to all of us who struggle with it. Don’t mistake the certainty that some people feel about this verse for incontrovertible truth.
You’ve probably heard me say before that believing in God and having faith in Jesus is not the same as giving intellectual assent to a theory or principle. When it comes to God, and especially to Jesus, belief is about trust, about placing your life in someone else’s hands, about being willing to be guided by a power and a love far greater than anything our intellect or even our imagination can apprehend.
Let me say it more clearly: Believing in Jesus so that we can have eternal life does not mean following certain religious rules so that you don’t go to hell. If that’s the interpretation of John 3:16 you’ve heard or assumed all your life, please sit with that for a minute.In fact, I hope you will take time throughout the rest of Lent to dwell on the necessary corrective of John 3:17, which says: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Jesus came to offer salvation, not condemnation, eternal life, not despair. The love of God for us is unconditional. Why do we even need to believe anything, then? Why didn’t Jesus just swoop in, fix everything, save everyone, and leave out all this talk about belief? To begin to answer this, let’s go back to that image of Jesus being “lifted up” so that we can look at him and live, just as the Israelites were advised to look at the serpent in the wilderness, lifted up by Moses so that everyone who looked at it would live.
There’s something about true salvation, truly eternal and abundant life, that requires us to face reality. I believe that’s what it means to look at Jesus “lifted up”—we need to look squarely at Jesus crucified, at the powers and principalities that demanded the death, the execution, of this young teacher and healer who spoke so persuasively about liberating captives and bringing good news to the poor that people started to believe that a different way was possible. Something in us, in our world, did that terrible thing—and continues to do unspeakably terrible things to this day.
And, we also need to look squarely at Jesus “lifted up” in the sense of Jesus being exalted, living forever at the right hand of God, going ahead to prepare a place for us. All in all, we are called to face reality, to live in truth and light, not to look away from things that are either too troubling or too beautiful for us to understand. We need to look in order to live.
Of course we are always free to choose shadows and darkness, to choose distraction or numbing, to choose a life half lived. But if we want the fullness of life, the abundant life that God desires for us, then looking away is not an option.
When you’re struggling with a passage in the Bible, think about whether the interpretation you’ve learned makes life feel more abundant, more vital, more compassionate. Use your reason and experience to ask questions like, “Does this image of God liberate me from prejudice and conflict? Does it move me into a more loving stance toward my friends, my family, and even those people I find oh so difficult? Does the life it guides me into look like the life of Jesus, who was good news for the poor, the oppressed, and the broken-hearted?” Do I believe that this passage, interpreted this way, fits with everything else I know about the God who created the world and called it good?
Which brings us back to that simple word “believe.” Writing about his own struggle with depression and despair, the wonderful novelist John Green has said, “Etymology dictionaries tell me that ‘believe’ comes from proto-Germanic roots meaning ‘to hold dear’ or ‘to care.’ I must choose to believe, to care, to hold dear. [And so] I keep going.”[ii] This captures for me the sense of what it means to believe in Jesus. We too can choose to believe—not in a simplistic formula, but in life and in the God who made it and sustains it, who loves us and loves our enemies, too. We can choose to look at the world in all its terrible beauty, choose to look because we want to love it, to care for it and for one another, to hold it all dear. And in making that choice we will have life, and have it abundantly. Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-in-lent-2/commentary-on-john-314-21-3
[ii] John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet(Dutton, 2021).
