The 3:16 Gift

People say the gospel is encapsulated in that best-known of all biblical phrases, John 3:16. But it contains much more, as Malcom Ford points out.

Does God love? Well, not as much as we thought, according to Jack Miles. The question is lifted from a chapter heading in the author’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, God. A Biography.*

The book is a provocative analysis of God as a super-classic “literary” character. The chapter points out, for example, that between Genesis and 2 Kings (approaching halfway through the Old Testament) there are very few allusions to God expressing love as a personal emotional quality. This should not be confused with the “steadfast” liege–vassal relationship between God and the Israelites in the Mosaic covenant.

Miles’ scholarly research appears to reveal God as a remote arbiter in the patterns of human destiny, with an indiscriminate relationship even with those who devoutly worship Him. So his findings might pose a predicament to the traditional view of the emphasis on God’s love in the Old Testament.

Yet the apostle John records in the well recited twenty-five word declaration of salvation, Jesus’ famous words to Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world . . . ” (John 3:16). There must be an apparent difference in perspective between God’s motive and action in the Old Testament and the way He is presented in the New. Who, better then to more accurately define God’s true character than Jesus himself, God’s Son.

Nicodemus was a high official in the Jewish council and when Jesus was in Jerusalem, possibly when he wrecked the money-changers’ tables in the temple courts, Nicodemus became captivated with a growing fascination of him. Who was this man who taught such basic yet profound teachings? And from whom did He get the authority to back up His words with such dramatic physical actions? He came to Jesus at night with some hard questions.

The familiar John 3:16 appears toward the end of the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus. This dialogue, the second longest recorded in the Gospels, encompasses Jesus’ explanation of how humans are reconciled to God. This clashed with the traditional teachings of the Pharisees. Nicodemus was a Pharisee and represented the intellectual clique who guarded a respectable religion. They were highly critical of nonconformists and radicals.

The basic answer to Nicodemus’ concerns was that the human institutions of impersonal, formal, ritualistic religion was out! Jesus proclaimed a more intimate, Spirit-inspired relationship.

When modern humankind thinks of the world, an image of the inhabited planet earth flashes on the mind. This is the memorised image of our planet photographed from a space craft. Could this same image have presented itself to the mind of Jesus the Creator as He spoke those famous words about God’s love for the world?

Did He see the beautiful blue of ocean, interspersed with multi-coloured land masses under swirling, spiralling cloud forms, like some spinning, radiant jewel set in the black velvet of space?

I don’t know, but if he did, He knew that beneath the external visual beauty was also a planet in rebellion against God. And this rebellion, most pervasive and deadly in the experience of the sentient inhabitants, also infected nature itself, for the physical planet and all its life forms are a holistic creation. But in viewing the beautiful physical world Jesus saw a world of individuals infected by the sin plague and estranged from God.

An analysis of His ministry style reveals that His approach was mainly to individuals—one-to-one encounters. Nicodemus’ visit was such an occasion. And, summing up His exposition, He proclaims, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3: 16.)

So whatever may be inferred from the Old Testament about God’s public expression of love, there’s no doubt that the New Testament is infused with this principle. A love that would allow His Son to be born into the human family, grow to maturity, engage in a ministry of teaching and healing for three years and then take our defilement to the third degree and suffer the indignity of a Roman crucifixion. “Crucifixion caricatures humanity, twists the body, wrecks the psycho-spiritual balance, does its best not only to blemish but to degrade” says Marilyn Adams in her book Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (page 98).
“For God so loved the world . . .”

Jesus experienced these atrocities at our hands to win our belief in His person and His mission of salvation, revealing God’s ultimate expression of His love. He allowed Jesus to become the universal focus of a plan to save humanity in which believers “shall not perish but have eternal life.” This is the mysterious love of God—incomprehensible.

* Jack Miles, Vintage Books, New York, 1995, pg 237.

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