If you asked a random non-Christian to cite a Bible verse, not quote, but just cite a chapter and verse, there’s a good chance they’d say John 3:16.  It’s as good a summary of the gospel as one verse can provide, and it’s one of the verses I’ve quoted the most on this blog.  In response to a reader suggestion, I’ve figured out what Bible verses I’ve used the most and am writing a series about those verses.  Today’s post is #3 of the series, covering the verse quoted the 3rd least out of the 10 most quoted:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Reading back over the posts where this verse has appeared, I see three ideas I tried to share: what God’s love means for us, what love has to do with “eternal life”, and what “world” God loves.

The first idea is that we would all be eternally lost if not for God’s love.  Since we all fall short of God’s standards, what we deserve is to be banished from God’s presence forever.  In His holiness, He can’t be near us, and in His justice, He must judge our sins.  However, Romans 5:8 tells us: “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  Without God’s love we would always be sinners, but because of His love, we have a way back to a right relationship with our God.  In one post here, I wrote “Christianity is not judgement, but the only way of escape from it.”

Second, what is this “eternal life” that we can have because God loves us?  I’ve written that “If man had not rejected love, Christianity wouldn’t be necessary; but also, if Christianity does not restore mankind to agape love, it’s pointless.”  When we are brought back into a right relationship with God, it puts us on an inevitable course toward a new world where we will all love perfectly, as Jesus loved perfectly.  Unless heaven is going to be full of loving people, it’s not going to be the perfect place that God is preparing for us.  So, “eternal life”, given to us because of God’s love, is our future, perfect selves living with God for eternity.  The possibility of this is so amazing that God decided it was worth dying for!

Last, I’ve also written that “when I’m struggling to face the world as I see it, I ask about [John] 3:16, ‘Exactly which world did Jesus love enough to die for?’  The answer is this one.  The world He died for is the one where sex, anger, bitter tribalism, and political partisanship sells.  The one with a lot of sarcastic, angry, and bitter people.  The one with a lot of people who are more like us than we’d usually like to admit.”  God didn’t love a world full of His people because without His love, He would have no people.  He loved a world full of sinners, as Romans 5:8 told us.  If God had decided that this world was hopelessly lost, He wouldn’t have bothered to send Jesus to give it hope.

This is the same world that God calls us to love, and to bring hope in the name of Jesus.  While we are in this world, God is already making us like Him, more loving, and in sharing that love with others we share a hope in a world where love is all there is.

So, remember, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”