John 1:35-3:36
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16
I’m guessing that this is the most well-known verse in the entire Bible, and rightly so. Here Jesus declares God’s love for the world, the giving of His Son, and the reason for that Gift: to rescue those who believe in Him from self-destruction and to bring them to eternal life. That’s Good News!
Less well-known is the next verse:
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.
John 3:17
That’s also Good News! But, as a Pharisee, Nicodemus is probably astonished at this, expecting plenty of condemnation from the Son for those who do not strictly adhere to the Law of Moses and assorted additional rules and regulations.
Jesus goes on with an even less familiar verse:
Whoever believes in Him [i.e., the Son] 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.
John 3:18
Here we see the utter centrality of believing in the Son. The same idea is there in John 3:16, too, with “whoever believes in Him”, but this verse leaves us no room for ambiguity regarding unbelief. Neither is there any ambiguity regarding the Object of that belief. One either believes in the Son of God and is not condemned, or one does not believe in the Son and is condemned. Why, then, would anyone choose not to believe in the Son of God?
And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.
John 3:19-20
And there’s the bad news. Some (or, rather, most) people prefer the darkness over the light. Fortunately, some come to the light (though “fortune” has nothing to do with it!):
But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.
John 3:21
We would all do well to think long and hard about what Jesus says here. Don’t stop at John 3:16, as tremendous as that verse is. Recognize that we all have some tendency to prefer darkness, to lurk in the shadows where we can hide, but recognize also that truth and life are found in the light — the Light of Jesus Christ.
See also: