John 3:16 16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, in order that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
This is one of the best known verses in the Bible. Most churched children memorize it young in life. It is a summary of the good news of Jesus. It comes in a strategic spot in John’s Gospel. Most modern Bibles indicate that Jesus is still speaking to Nicodemus (see the red letter editions). The ancient Greek text did not contain punctuation, so it is difficult to determine if this is Jesus speaking or John, the narrator. From the perspective of the reader, it does not matter because the truths in the following passage are timeless yet also fit the dialogue with Nicodemus. Jesus summarizes how a person can be born again and the results of this decision. The verse is also what John has recorded up to this point in his book. Each phrase of the verse is significant.
The first phrase gives the cause or reason for what follows. God’s love is the source of eternal life. The Greek construction strongly emphasizes God’s loving (the use of hōste). The word loves (ēgapēsen) is significant in John’s writings and especially in his Gospel chapters 13-17. The love God shows through the Son is to be imitated by believers to one another. The object of God’s love is the world (kosmon). This word can have a negative connotation when it comes to morality and sin, but that is precisely why God sent his Son. God’s love is undeserved because of human rebellion but is given nevertheless. God’s love is not conditioned on whether a person is righteous or sinful. God is love (1 John 4:7), and his love comes whether a person believes or not. Everyone is part of this world and share in the same problems. No one is left out of receiving God’s love. There is no hope outside of God’s love. The invitation is for all to recognize God’s love in faith and receive it. The love of God is the greatest topic of theology and the highest thought we can ever have.
The second phrase gives the evidence of God’s love. God’s mission and purpose for humanity have been shown in the coming of the Son. The Son is the full representation of the Father. To look at the Son means also looking at the invisible Father. The Son was sent by the Father for a reason summed up with the word gave. This gift came through the Son’s incarnation (verse 17) and his death (verses 14–15).
The gift is the One who has been only begotten (monogenē). This word is highly significant in Christian theology. It is a compound word of two parts: mono, meaning only or alone; and genē, meaning born. Later heretics interpreted the word to mean that the Son did not exist before being born to Mary or that the Son came out of the Father at some unknown point in time. The word basically means totally unique and one of a kind. There has only ever been one born human of the kind of Jesus. The Son of Man was born human at one point in history but has always existed as the eternal Word. This balance and tension between human and divine is the necessary mystery of the Christian faith. The doctrine assumed in the word only begotten is necessary because only a human can resolve the problem of sin, which Jesus did as the Lamb of God. It is a mystery because it has to do with the various nature of God, which is beyond human comprehension.
The third phrase gives the condition. This phrase has a complex grammatical structure. It begins with an indicator of a purpose to follow (hina). The purpose indicator governs two verbs that express different possible outcomes. The subject of the verb is a substantival participle everyone who believes (pisteuōn), which is a form of the keyword “believing” or “having faith.” The two outcomes that follow are conditioned upon whether a person believes or not. The object of faith is him, referring back to the Son. What matters most in life is what a person does with Jesus. To believe or not believe, that is the critical question.
The two choices are given in the fourth and fifth phrases. The fourth phrase presents the problem of perishing because the earlier condition has not been met. Those who do not believe in the Son will perish (apolētai). This is an awful word to think about. It can have different nuances from ruin to utter destruction. The final phrase gives the goal and intended outcome of God’s love and the reason Jesus came. Jesus came to open the way to eternal life. To perish is the opposite of eternal life. There is no life apart from God. This passage does not go into detail about what this perishing will involve, so we have to look at other places in this Gospel and the Bible to understand the outcome of God’s judgment upon the wicked and unrepentant who do not believe in Jesus. The two choices about believing or not are further explained in the following verses (17-21).
For older posts, click here.