Happy, Smiley, Heresy. – spanish
Happy, Smiley, Heresy. – Arabic
Transcript: What is it about John 3:16 that Evangelical Christians love so much? Why is it their favorite Bible verse that they want to tell everybody about? Well, I’d like to think it’s the first six words that say, “For God so loved the world.” Wouldn’t that be awesome if that was the message they wanted everybody to hear and everybody to know, that God loves you so much? But sadly, I believe it’s the latter part of the verse that they want to emphasize and make clear, that Jesus is the only way that leads to salvation. The misunderstanding over John 3:16 has led many Christians in America today to believe that one must accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior or they will be condemned to hell. That is not what John 3:16 means. That is not what Jesus is saying in today’s Gospel.
So what does it mean? What is he saying? Well, let’s look at it together. He promises he’s going to look at John 3:16 together like you would expect a Bible study here, like actually read the verses and look at them in context. That’s never going to happen in his message; it’s never going to happen. But it’s going to happen for us, so let’s just look briefly at John 3:16 because this will protect you against most false teaching, is that you just read the verses yourself and see the connections in context. So briefly, let me just remind us, John 3: This is a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. He’s a rabbi who considers himself a pious Jew, right? And he acknowledges Jesus is from God. He goes, “We know you’re a teacher from God,” to Jesus. He says this, “For no one can do the signs you do unless God is with him.” Then Jesus says to him this really radical statement: “Unless you’re born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus, even though you’re a Pharisee, even though you’re acknowledging, right, that there’s something special about my teaching, like you need something, some quality, and this quality is not just something you do or even just something you think or believe, right? You have to actually become born again. You need a new life if you’re going to be in the kingdom of God. If you’re going to be living eternally, this is the idea. Okay, so there’s a requirement Jesus lays out for Nicodemus in order to live eternally. You have to have an experience of being born again. Now they go in for a discussion that talks about being born of the flesh and born of the spirit and all these other things, right?
Then when we get to John 3:16, let me start at verse 14. We’re going to get Jesus laying out sort of how you get that born-again experience, how does it happen, what is required of you. So verse 14, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Again, he’s talking about eternal life here and the requirement is that you believe in the Son of Man and he has to be lifted up. Verse 16, “For God so loved the world.” This is the verse he wants you to injure thinking on, the sixth word of verse 16. “For God so loved the world.” Here’s why that doesn’t work. The word “so” makes this an incomplete sentence because even in the Greek, like when you say, “God so loved the world,” what you’re saying is not “I love you so much.” It’s not in that sense of “so,” but rather in this way: “God loved the world in this way.” He loved the world this much. It’s not just “so much”; it’s like “this much,” so that the rest of the sentence can’t be separated from the first part of the sentence. God loved the world how? How much? What was his love like? Well, he loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. This is why Christians love this verse because it’s, in a nutshell, it’s the beautiful message of God’s love for you, that you can experience being born again, entering into eternal life through just trusting in Christ because he was sent for you, he died for you. Christians love this verse not because it almost sounds the way salvatory, you know, couches it, that Christians love this verse because it condemns people to hell. Like, that’s what you would get from the last part of the sentence of his little clip there. But instead, Christians love it because it opens the doors to Heaven. Okay, this is the condemnation is already present. This is about the freedom, the forgiveness, and that’s exactly what the context is here. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world. People love this verse, but they don’t read the rest. But in order that the world might be saved through him, whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. So this becomes the one pivot point: your faith in Jesus is the difference between having eternal life or remaining in condemnation you’ve already been under, as and you stay in that condemnation because you don’t believe in Christ, and you’re condemned specifically because of the various sins that we all have committed. It’s okay to a progressive Christian. This is that old school annoying gospel stuff, right? This drives this is like nails on a chalkboard to a progressive, quote-unquote, progressive Christian. But it is the beauty of the gospel of Christ to those who actually trust in Jesus and believe what his word says, and that’s what John 3:16 is about. Very simple.
See original video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JNbdt2mZ5E
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