John 3:16

Broadway Christian Church (DoC)

David A. Shirey

“For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

People bear witness to their faith in many ways, some of them unusual.  Take the guy who used to show up at every major sporting event with rainbow-colored hair and a made-for-TV-sized placard that read JOHN 3:16. I used to wonder how he got the tickets he did because he always seemed to be close to the field.  At football games, he sat in the end zone behind the goal posts so that when the cameras covered the extra point attempt, his placard would appear in the lower right-hand corner of the screen like a footnote to the score: Chiefs 17 Broncos 14 John 3:16. But while it's one thing to display a verse of scripture on national television, it's another thing to understand what it means.  To do that, you need to put your placard down, pick your Bible up, and carefully study every word. Let’s do that this morning. Let’s focus on the meaning and relevance of the two dozen or so words that make up what Martin Luther called "the gospel in miniature": John 3:16.  

Beginning with God so loved.  The word is love. The New Testament was written in Greek. Many people who don’t know biblical Greek know the Greek word translated love: agape. Agape is a special kind of love – self-giving, sacrificial love. Jesus came to show us what God's love looks like. John opens his gospel by writing "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." Think of that Word as the word love. In Jesus, God’s love became flesh and dwelt among us. Iola Brubeck, wife of jazz legend Dave Brubeck, wrote a Christmas hymn that riffs in 5/4 time on the nature of God’s love in Jesus. She titled it God’s Love Made Visible!

God's love made visible!  Incomprehensible! 

Christ is invincible!  His love shall reign!

Jesus didn't merely mouth God's words. Jesus lived God's selfless agape love – made it visible – and died with his arms outstretched as if to embrace the whole world.

Which is what John 3:16 says: God so loved the world.  The Greek word translated world you also know: kosmos. John 3:16 says God wraps divine arms of love around the entire cosmos. That’s a big love! Do we realize how big the cosmos is and by inference how big God’s love is?  My wife Jennie was trying to communicate the size of the cosmos to her fourth graders one year. She told them that if the moon is the size of a marble, the earth would be the size of a tennis ball and would be 6 ½ feet away. The sun would be a ball 24 feet wide 8 football fields away. Neptune would be the size of a cantaloupe 15 miles away and the nearest star to the Earth, Proxima Centuri, would be 130,000 miles (4.2 light years) away. As Douglas Adams put it, who wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “Space is big … You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is.” John 3:16 gushes, You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big God’s love is. See if you can get your mind around this. Way back in the 13th century, an anonymous author wrote, “God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”[1] The problem is that people across the ages have tried to circumscribe – limit – the scope of God’s love to them and theirs. And that’s wrong! God doesn’t love just one planet or one nation or one make and model of human being of one race, creed, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. The gospel according to John 3:16 is that God loves the entire kosmos and everything and everybody in it.

And what did our God of so much love do? God so loved the world that God gave.  Love gives. Divine Love gives profusely. For the entirety of my ministry, I’ve been a student of giving. In church circles it’s called stewardship: the giving of our time, talent, and treasure to God through Christ’s Church to serve others and make a difference in this world. I’ve always been interested in what motivates people to give (or not). I’ve discovered that when we give out of love – unconditional love for God, others, and our church – we give most generously and graciously.  Conversely, when we give out of guilt (“If I have to.”  I guess I should.”) or “my fair share” mentality (“Let’s see. There are about 220 of us here.  I’ll give 1/220th) or conditional love (I don’t like fill-in-the-blank so I’m giving blank), our giving is diminished. God gives out of unconditional love and we ought as well. When I was a teenager, our youth group worshipped one Sunday with the youth at the predominantly black Disciples of Christ church in our town. To this day, I remember the energy and the music and I remember part of the preacher’s sermon. It was about giving. The preacher said, “There are three types of givers. One is a flint, another is a sponge, and the third is a honeycomb. To get anything out of the flint, it has to be hammered; even then, all that results are a few chips and sparks. To get anything out of the sponge, it has to be squeezed and put under pressure. But you don’t have to say or do anything to the honeycomb.  Generosity flows from the honeycomb freely. Then he pretended to dip his finger and taste some honey. Smiling broadly, he said, “Sweeeeeet!”  And he said, “Lord make us sweeeeet as the honeycomb!” And I remember all those people saying, “Yes, Lord!  and “Amen!”  And then they passed the offering plates … twice!  Sweeeeet!  John 3:16 says giving out of gratitude for God’s love in order to share that same love with others is the best motivator of all. Gratitude for God’s “Amazing Grace” prompts amazing giving.

Speaking of sweeeet, God so loved the world that God gave God’s only son. That word translated “only” is translated “only begotten” in the King James Version. In Greek, the word is monogenees. mono (one; monorail) + genees (genes, genus, kind) = one-of-a-kind. As sons and daughters of God ourselves, each of us created in the image of God and followers of God’s one-of-a-kind son Jesus, we ought to treat all other human beings as the precious creations of God they are. The hymn we’re going out on today sings “We’ll guard each one’s dignity and save each one’s pride.” And the way we live our lives as followers of God’s one-of-a-kind son ought to be distinctly different. Is the way we live our lives as Christians monogenees – special, one-of-a-kind, sweeeeet – or are they monotonous: bland, lukewarm, just as self-serving and ornery as the general public? Are the offerings that come from our mouths sweet or sour?  Is our demeanor toward others who are different from us or with whom we disagree sweet or sour? God’s one-of-a-kind gift of Jesus Christ and the way he lived calls for people and churches whose way of life is refreshingly different – salt of the earth, leaven in the loaf, light of the world,

God so loved the world that God gave his only son that everyone who believes in him...  My fourth grade Sunday school Class teacher Mrs. Tims taught me this verse in the King James Version. The King James says “whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life.” The word is “whosoever.” At the entrance to a Country Club is posted a sign that reads Members Only. But John 3:16 reads: Whosoever. At the entrance to a gated community there’s a keypad on which to enter a gate code, but John 3:16 lets in “whosoever.” Cross the border from one country to another and you’ll need to produce your passport, but John 3:16 welcomes “whosoever.” When Jesus was born he was visited by lowly Jewish shepherds, high-up Gentile kings, angels, and livestock:  whosoever.  John’s Gospel begins with four very different people visiting Jesus.  Nicodemus – a respected, highly religious Jewish man (John 3).  An outcast Samaritan woman.  A high-ranking Gentile military official (John 4).  And an unnamed beggar (John 5:3).  Jesus lived and died with his arms outstretched to embrace “whosoever” and when the thief who was crucified next to him said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom (Luke 23:42).” Jesus said, “Today you’ll be with me in paradise” (23:43).  I give you one of the crown jewels of Scripture, a precious word to be kept with you at all times, pulled out occasionally, and looked upon with awe and reverence.  When strident voices declare who’s in and who’s out or when you wonder if you and yours really are precious to God – take out the word, hold it up to the light, and see it sparkle. Hear Jesus say, whosoever. 

For God so loved the world that God gave his only Son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Do you believe that?  Not believe as in head knowledge as in assenting to a creed as in “You gotta believe this and this and this in order to go to heaven.” That’s not what John means by believe. “Believe” in the Bible isn’t head knowledge, it’s heart trust – trusting that God is not about condemnation but salvation, not about exclusion, but embrace, not about perishing, but eternal life. Please note that when John speaks of eternal life he's talking not just of a quantity of life to be had in the hereafter, but a quality of life to be savored in the here and now.

No one understood that better than the man who was the presiding elder in the first church I served nearly forty years ago in Carthage, TN. I mentioned Mr. Bill last week. I was 22. He was 82. It was the custom in that little church to have a potluck dinner after church on Easter Sunday.  I'll never forget my last Easter with that congregation, sitting down next to that dear man, each of us with styrofoam plates groaning under the weight of fried chicken, home-made dumplings, green beans, fresh-baked biscuits and a slice of Miss Billie Ruth's homemade chocolate cake (and that was just the first time through the line). As I was about to dig in, Mr. Bill reached out and put his hand over mine. Then, with his other hand, he panned the entire sanctuary in a long, sweeping motion:  the pulpit, the communion table, the baptistery, the piano, the little fellowship room where we did Bible Study, joined hands in prayer, and drank countless cups of coffee. With his hand, he did a panoramic embrace of the men, women and kids I'd come to love so dearly in my years there. Then he looked over at me and said, "David Shirey, it don't get any better than this!" That’s the testimony of a man who had tasted eternal life.

Broadway, there have been so many times this year when I looked out at you while we were worshipping, studying, serving, or fellowshipping together and I heard echoes of Mr. Bill’s voice:  “It don’t get any better than this!” 

We need to hear the message contained in John 3:16 over and over, hear it until we know it by heart, trust what it says about God and accept no substitutes. 

"God so loved the cosmos that God gave God’s one-of-a-kind Son that whosoever believes and trusts in him shall not perish but have eternal it don't get any better than this! life.” 

That’s the gospel in miniature.

Let whosoever say AMEN

[1] Attributed to several people, including Voltaire and St. Augustine, but the earliest documented appearance is from the 13th c. Latin booklet Liber XXIV philosophorum which consists of 24 commented definitions of what God is.