For God so loves the world.

John 3.14-17.

One of the first memory verses Christians are encourage to put into their brain is John 3.16, which many of us have memorized in the King James Version:

John 3.16 KJV

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

I’ve heard a number of sermons and sermon series about this verse. I’ve read entire books written about this verse. I’ve watched a crappy video series about this verse, which featured some really bad actors in a really long one-act play about how important this verse is. And many an Evangelical Christian has told me this is the gospel, all summed up in one verse. This is the good news. This is Christianity.

Yeah, it’s not. The gospel is what Jesus says it is, and he articulated it in Mark 1.15.

Mark 1.15 KJV

And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.

The kingdom of God is at hand. Not that John 3.16 is an unimportant or irrelevant verse at all! It tells us something vitally important about how the kingdom works—namely that we gotta believe in Jesus. And it reminds us a significant component of the kingdom is the age to come. But John 3.16 doesn’t mention the kingdom, and if you don’t know God has a kingdom and Jesus is its king, you don’t have the gospel. You have something about the gospel, but you’re missing a bunch of vital details.

In context, this verse comes in the middle of Jesus instructing Nicodemus, right after he objected to people who think they know it all, and therefore won’t listen to him. He knows what heaven is like, for that’s where he came from. He knows his Father, and if you know him you’ll know his Father too. He is the only one who can make clear sense of God. So you kinda have to pay attention to him. And lift him up so others can see him, listen to him, and trust him too.

John 3.14-17 KWL

14 “Same as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness,

it’s likewise necessary to lift up the Son of Man,

15 so everyone who trusts in the Son of Man

{might not be destroyed,

but} might have life in the age to come.

16 For this is how God loves the world.

Therefore he gives his only-begotten Son,

so that everyone who trusts in him

might not be destroyed,

but might have life in the age to come.

17 For God doesn’t send his Son into the world

to judge the world,

but so that, through him, he might save the world.”

We gotta look at Jesus. He defines Christianity. Not a bible verse; not even a particularly good bible verse. Not a church, not a movement, certainly not popular Christian culture. Jesus alone; Jesus’s teachings and actions and life and power. That’s why God sent his Son into the world—to give us someone to follow and mimic.

Unfortunately too many people have bent this verse a whole bunch, and got us to focus not on Jesus’s life, but entirely on Jesus’s death.

The snake on the pole, and the Lord on the crucifix.

The most common Christian logo is the cross. We also have Christian fish, Jesus’s name, alphas and omegas, and so forth, but we’re so big on crosses. It’s a little weird, considering it’s a torture device which the Romans used to terrorize criminals and their enemies—and our Lord was killed on one. But he also defeated sin and death on that cross, so now it’s a sign of his victory instead of terror. (Or it’s meant to be, anyway. Certain Christians are kinda terrifying.)

As a reminder of Jesus’s suffering, some of us have crucifixes—images of Jesus dying on a cross. Pagans don’t always know the difference between crucifixes and empty crosses, and sometimes mix ’em up. Some Evangelicals think crucifixes are a Roman Catholic thing, and don’t like ’em; some complain we should only focus on the empty cross, not Jesus’s suffering. Since Jesus told us to regularly remember his suffering with holy communion, they’re wrong. We’re meant to remember his death. And that he’s alive. Don’t overdo it on one memory or another. Crucifixes are fine; just don’t insist all your crosses have to be crucifixes.

But to many Christians—including the very same Evangelicals who bellyache about crucifixes!—when Jesus talks to Nicodemus about “lifting up the Son of Man,” that’s the image they have in mind. It’s not about exalting Jesus and pointing him out to everyone. It’s about Jesus getting crucified. It’s about him literally getting lifted up… after the Romans put nails into his wrists and ankles, and displayed him butt naked by the road to Jerusalem, under a sign reading, “This is the King of the Judeans.”

Why? Because the snake on the pole kinda reminds ’em of Good Friday crucifixes.

Every Israeli, Nicodemus included, would know the snake-in-the-wilderness story. Goes like yea.

Numbers 21.4-9 NET

4 Then they traveled from Mount Hor by the road to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom, but the people became impatient along the way. 5 And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in the wilderness, for there is no bread or water, and we detest this worthless food.”

6 So the LORD sent venomous snakes among the people, and they bit the people; many people of Israel died. 7 Then the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you. Pray to the LORD that he would take away the snakes from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.

8 The LORD said to Moses, “Make a poisonous snake and set it on a pole. When anyone who is bitten looks at it, he will live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze snake and put it on a pole, so that if a snake had bitten someone, when he looked at the bronze snake he lived.

Sounds disproportionately harsh of God to sic snakes on people for their grumbling and ingratitude, but I’m pretty sure it was a proportionate response. Numbers takes place after Israel refused to go into Canaan, so the LORD told them to stay in the wilderness till their generation died off. And that triggered an awful lot of uprisings against the LORD and Moses. Moses’s siblings and fellow leaders Aaron and Miriam had just died, and morale was low, so here was another uprising. In order to remind them who’s God in this relationship, the LORD sent what the NET calls “venomous snakes” and “poisonous snakes. The Hebrew words are הַנְּחָשִׁ֣ים הַשְּׂרָפִ֔ים/ha-nakhšim ha-šerafim, “burning snakes,” and you might recognize the word šerafim by its alternate spelling, “seraphim.” Plenty of scholars speculate these aren’t just snakes, but the burning winged serpents we see in Isaiah which stand over the LORD’s throne. Is 6.2 But nope; it’s more like “angelfish” and “Tasmanian devils”: These aren’t literally seraphs. They’re snakes, and their venom burns. Like a seraph.

God’s solution for snakebite wasn’t to suck out the poison—nor use an antivenin, anti-poision, activated charcoal, poultice, or other typical treatments. Instead, it was faith. Inexplicable, kinda ridiculous, faith. If the Hebrews wanted to be cured, they only had to look at the snake. That’s all. No other treatment. They only had to trust God this would work. It was the only treatment he offered.

When they wouldn’t look—’cause good Lord, my foot feels like it’s on fire, and don’t you tell me all I gotta do is look at this chunk of brass; give me medicine!—they wouldn’t get healed. When they wouldn’t trust the LORD over their own efforts, over the advice of experts, over what seemed to them the wisest course of action, they died. Their lack of faith weeded them out of Israel.

So here’s the analogy: The Hebrews lost patience and sinned, rejecting God and his prophet Moses. Sin, as usual, causes death—in this case, God let snakes take a whack at ’em. But if the Hebrews wanted to be rescued from snakebite and death, all they had to do was look at Moses’s bronze snake, trust in the LORD who commissioned it, and God would graciously cure them. The Son of Man, like this snake, has been lifted up for the whole world to look at and believe in. Anybody who sees him and believes in him, gets to live in the age to come. Everyone who doesn’t… well, their unfaith weeds them out.

Sound too simple? For some Christians, it kinda is. So we describe salvation all sorts of other ways. But for Jesus, it was just as simple as looking at a bronze snake on a pole.

Notice the LORD didn’t tell Moses if the Hebrews looked at the snake they’d be cured; only that they’d live. Maybe they still had to suffer from snakebite for a bit… but in the end it wouldn’t kill them. Kinda like those of us who live in this cold cruel world, and still have to suffer from it… but in the end we get life in the age to come.

And in the meanwhile, look at Jesus.

But not just Jesus’s death! Yeah, he died. Yeah, it’s important that he died; it’s how he freed us from sin and death, and that’s great. But it’s probably more important what he teaches. How he modeled life for us. How he wants us to live. What he wants us to do.

And notice those people who fixate only on Jesus’s death, only on the crucifixes instead of the Sermon on the Mount, only on the fact he saves us from sin and death and not on why he saves us from sin and death. How well do they represent Jesus? How well do they act like Jesus? How are they doing at bearing good fruit? Do they even have any good fruit?—or do they think it’s not necessary, ’cause they’ve been saved from sin and death regardless?

It’s important that we lift up the Son of Man. But not just the suffering and dying Son of Man. Remember that too, because it is a vital part of the saving work of Jesus; but if that’s the only thing we’re focused on—our salvation and not our duties as Christ-followers—we’re gonna suck at the Christ-following. As plenty of us do.

This is how God loves the world.

Usually Christians take the first clause of John 3.16 and interpret it, “For God loved the world so much….” But that’s not what οὕτως/útos, “thus” (KJV “so”), means. Jesus is explaining how God loves the world—making a connection with the previous idea, where the Son of Man has to be lifted up. The way God loves the world is by granting us Jesus, so we can look to him and receive life.

Usually people translate ζωὴν αἰώνιον/zoín eónion, “life in the age [to come],” as “eternal life.” It’s because the age to come is an eternal age; therefore it’s eternal life. Plus it’s shorter and easier to say. But I think it’s important to emphasize the age to come. Plenty of preachers like to claim, “Your eternal life starts now,” and of course our eternal life does. But our inferior life in this age, is not the same as our abundant life in the coming age. It has yet to come; Jesus brings it with him. And we need to get ready for it!

In Numbers, the snake was for God’s chosen people to look upon. (After all, Hebrews were the only ones there.) But in John, the Son of Man is for all the world to look upon. Not just the elect, like the Calvinist belief in limited atonement. They claim Jesus only came to save πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων/pas o pistévon, “all the believers,” by which they think Jesus means Christians, and Christians alone. But Jesus also says—a lot more often!—κόσμον/kósmon, “world.” God wants to save the world. Not just the Christian world; not just the elect, nor just Calvinists. The whole world.

Calvinists may insist—based on nothing but wishful thinking—that by “world” Jesus really meant “all the elect in the world.” That’s certainly how John Calvin’s commentaries treat it. But it’s not biblical. Jesus saved everyone. Whether we accept his salvation, so he can grant us life in the age to come, is a whole other thing.