“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17 “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. 18 “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. 20 “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21 “But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”
I’m going to state what should be obvious and I am certain it will be obvious to you, and I wonder if the thought will strike you the way it did me as I came to study this very popular and familiar portion of Scripture.
Let me approach it this way. John 3:16 is possibly the most widely recognized verse in the New Testament and possibly in the entire Bible. It is on greeting cards, it is on witnessing tracts, it is quoted over and over to prison inmates and hospital patients and homeless people in soup kitchens, and anywhere Christ followers are testifying of their Lord and the way to salvation.
In our home at Christmas time we even have a door hanger that looks like a narrow tapestry and we hang it on the outside of our front door for all visitors to see as they approach, and it bears the words of John 3:16.
Now listen once more to these words that are so familiar to us, we can chant them without even giving their meaning any thought.
“For God so loved the world, that He have His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
Now with those words fresh in your head, remember who said them.
It was Jesus. He was talking to Nicodemus. He was talking about Himself!
Could I paraphrase it for you? For My Father in Heaven loved the world He made so much, that He delivered Me up so that whoever believes in Me shall not be lost forever, but have eternal life.
This was said to Nicodemus on the heels of Jesus mentioning the bronze serpent that Moses raised up in the wilderness when the people were being poisoned by snakes. Very briefly, they had sinned grievously against God and God had sent serpents to bite them. Moses prayed for the people and God told him to make a bronze serpent, attach it to the top of a pole and raise it up so everyone could see. He said that whoever looked up at the bronze serpent would be healed, and of course, they were.
Jesus had just revealed the symbolism of that event to Nicodemus, saying that in the same way, the Son of Man must be lifted up so that whoever believes may in Him have eternal life.
That’s verse 15. So Nicodemus could hardly have missed the significance of what Jesus was saying of Himself in what we call John 3:16.
But here is what I want to illuminate for you, and this is only my introduction so we have to make the point and move on – in saying what Jesus said of Himself and of His Father in verse 16 and 17 of our text, He demonstrates that He has come to complete a plan that has been set before He came and outside and independent of the realm of worldly religion or the schemes of men.
He demonstrates a foreknowledge of things to come, and if Nicodemus pondered this through, he must have realized that this itinerate Rabbi had just foretold His own death and how He would die.
Look who’s talking. Listen to what He’s saying. God loved the world so much that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him.
This is at the very beginning of the earthly ministry of Jesus, and from the very outset, preceding all that He would go on over almost 4 years to teach and to do, He knew and declared that He had come to die so that men might have life.
Now let’s talk about why He had to come and to what He came and what His coming means for all who look up to the cross.
ALREADY JUDGED – The Bad News
The bad news is that the world is already judged.
Now by saying ‘the world’ we do not mean terra firma; we’re not talking about the globe spinning in space. We’re talking about people. All the people of the world, from Adam until now.
Jesus did not come into the world to condemn the world, but because the world was already condemned. That’s why He came.
This is a vitally important point to understand and no one begins the journey to understanding their need for Christ until they understand this.
If you grab a clip board so that you’ll look official, and a microphone, whether it is hooked to any sound equipment or not, and go to some public place like a shopping mall or a county fair or some other large gathering, and begin asking people if they think they will go to Heaven when they die and why, of those who say they believe in God and Heaven many, many of them will say they are going to go to Heaven because they… THEY… and then the blank will be filled in with all sorts of lists of good deeds and good behavior, and religious ceremony and ritual.
Now I’ll grant that you’ll get mixed responses, but I feel confident that the vast majority of responses would be of this nature. The only people you will hear giving God all the glory and credit for salvation through the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ, will be the Bible-believing, Bible-studying believers; and I’ll qualify that by saying that there are many in the church who cannot give an answer with intact doctrine. I know, because I’ve heard some of their answers also.
Jesus was talking to a man who, undoubtedly, until the day came that God awakened him to truth and saved him, lived under the conviction that his acceptability with God was based on his circumcision and his keeping of the Law of Moses.
The Jews believed and taught that it was the rite of circumcision on the eighth day that entered a man into covenant relationship with God, and that no uncircumcised man could ever enter Heaven. I don’t know where women fit into this, but to the ancients at least, we know women were marginalized at best.
But even as recently as the 20th century, writings have confirmed the precedence of circumcision in Jewish thought. Highly esteemed Rabbi Menachem wrote, “Our rabbis have said that no circumcised man will ever see hell.” One Jewish book made this claim, “Abraham sits before the gate of Hell, and does not allow that any circumcised Israelite should enter there”.
Some Jews taught that if a man committed idolatry, God would have to supernaturally reverse his circumcision in order for that man to go to Hell.
So you can get a sense of the kind of thinking Jesus was up against as He went about teaching the truth, and why the Jews so viciously resisted Him.
Now in case you’re wondering what all of this information has to do with us, today, and our society, there are people within the church who believe just as strongly about infant baptism and other ceremonial rituals they think seal them for Heaven.
In His entire discourse with Nicodemus, Jesus has superceded every ordinance, every ritual, every religious exercise, and gone straight to the truth that applies to all, Jew or Gentile.
For God so loved the world! This is the message to the world. This transcends race, religion, philosophy or creed – ‘he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God’.
How should Nicodemus file that? How should we? What has Jesus said here? Who is judged? Who is condemned? Anyone who has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God; that’s who!
So what does that tell us about what needs to be said to those folks at the mall or the fair or the soup kitchen or wherever we might go on this whole planet?
No, their good works cannot help, because they didn’t start with a clean slate. No one starts from scratch and either makes good or makes a hash of it all.
There is no cosmic scale weighing their devotion to God and to their religion against their blunders and their gaffs. We all started…condemned!
Listen to Romans 4:5 and 5:6
“But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness,” 4:5
“For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” 5:6
Who does God justify through faith? The ungodly! Who did Christ die for? The ungodly! That means those without God. Ungodly. Why does God justify the ungodly? Why did Christ die for the ungodly? Because that’s the only kind of person there was.
How can any human effort, however noble however good however religious, have any hope of succeeding in making us acceptable to God, when we are already judged; already condemned? It’s no use! We’re lost! Before we’ve even begun, we are on death row!
And it gets worse before it gets better, folks…
THE LIGHT CAME
Not only is all of mankind already under condemnation from the get-go… but when God sent His Light into the world they rejected that light.
Do you see it? Not only did we have the sentence of death, we rejected the offer of life.
Why does light have to be brought in to any place? Isn’t it because the place was dark? You don’t turn on a flashlight in order to walk down the street at noon, do you?
Jesus said the verdict against men is that the Light is come into the world – and why bring light unless the world is a dark place? The Light is come into the dark world and men loved the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil.
I can only think of two reactions to light suddenly coming into a dark place.
Now mind you; we’re talking about total darkness here. The world didn’t have some light. It wasn’t just sort of like a dim room that you might walk into and say, ‘Hmmm… I think I’ll turn on a lamp to read by’. The darkness of this world is a spiritual darkness and it is manifested by men in a total blindness to all spiritual truth.
Jesus said “…unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” You can’t comprehend what you are dead to. You must be born from above.
TWO REACTIONS
Now imagine yourself in a place so dark you cannot see your hand before your face. Either you want it that way because you want to sleep, or because you’re doing something you don’t want anyone else to see, in which case the sudden coming of light would be an irritation to you, or you wish you could see because you keep running into things and bumping your shins or your head, and light suddenly coming in would be a welcome relief.
Those are the only two reactions I can think of, to the sudden coming of light to dispel darkness. Irritation, or relief. Those are the two reactions Jesus gets.
Here is a suggestion for a personal Bible study that I think you’d find helpful. In your private time, read through the Gospel of John and chart the number of times Jesus is referred to as Light either by the writer or Jesus Himself. Stop and absorb each one, meditating on what is being said there.
In chapter one John wrote:
“There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” Jn 1:9-13
Do you hear the same message here that Jesus gave to Nicodemus in our text? He is the Light. His coming into the world brought the light to ‘every man’. Does that mean that every man saw? No, it means that the life and the truth He brought was evident for any who would look upon it and believe. But they did not all look and believe. They did not receive Him. But to those who did receive His light, He gave the right to become children of God – born of God.
I wonder, when John was writing his Gospel, and he was penning these opening words, if he was remembering Jesus saying to Nicodemus.
“For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21 “But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”
Let’s pause to look at that last line in verse 21.
What does he mean in saying ‘so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God’?
For the answer I think we’ll be helped by something Paul said to the Ephesians.
“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” Eph 2:10
In a general way, God created all things. He created us in that He spoke all things into existence and apart from Him nothing was made that has been made.
But this message of Paul’s in Ephesians 2 is much more specific than that. Here, he is repeating the message of II Corinthians 5:17.
That, “...if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature, the old things passed away behold, new things have come.”
He makes a new creation. Through Christ Jesus, He creates. He creates through the Creator.
John 1 tells us that Christ is the Word, and that in the beginning the Word was with God and the Word was God, and that all things were made by Him.
So in perfect, divine consistency with His attributes and His character, God the Father, through the Word, the second Person of the Godhead, the one who spoke light out of darkness, created us.
“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus...” “And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good”.
Now if God created us then it must have been for a purpose. God is not arbitrary, He has a purpose and He created us for it. Ultimately, it is to bring Him glory.
He says so Himself in Isaiah 43:7
“Everyone who is called by My name, And whom I have created for My glory, Whom I have formed, even whom I have made.”
One of the ways in which we glorify God is through our good deeds; not that we have determined, but that He planned for us and created us for.
In short, Christians, Jesus is telling Nicodemus that the evidence of a true believer who is born from above is that he turns from sin to serve the living and true God and through him God performs works that are born of and according to the light of His truth.
When someone has not come to the Light but indeed hates the Light, you will see evidences of that in their deeds. Nicodemus was to get a first-hand look in the not so distant future from this discourse.
The Jews knew who Jesus was. They saw the works, they knew their Scriptures. They crucified Him because they needed to extinguish the Light and hide their evil deeds!
It wasn’t because, as some have assumed, they were pious, God-fearing clean-cut pillars of the Temple, and they just didn’t understand. They understood just fine. The Light irritated them!
There are people like this even in the church today. Jesus said you would know them by their fruit. Are their works according to darkness, or according to light? Is God glorified in and through their life, or do they pursue glory and recognition for themselves? We’re supposed to be discerning about that.
ALREADY JUDGED – The Good News
Well, there is a sense in which we as believers are already judged and it is good news.
In John 5:24 Jesus said
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”
Some time back at a funeral I referenced that verse in the sermon. Afterwards, as people were milling about and preparing to drive to the cemetary, an elderly woman approached me and asked for that Scripture reference again. I told her, John 5:24, and she nodded thoughtfully as though committing that to memory. Then with a hopeful tone in her voice she asked, “And it really says that for the believer there will be no judgment?” I said, that’s right. Jesus paid it all on the cross. And she said, “I’ve been in the church all my life and I’ve never heard that before”.
I suggested to her that when she got home that day she look it up and read it for herself. And I couldn’t take an oath on this, but it seemed as she left that there was just a bit of a bounce in her step.
In 1 Peter 2:24 we are told,
“…and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.”
And in one of my favorite passages in all the Bible, Romans 8:3 Paul wrote;
‘For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,”
True Christ-follower, if you are born from above and have come to the Light of the world through faith by God’s amazing grace, you will never come into judgment. Your condemnation has been taken away forever and nailed to the cross of Christ.
Your sin is already judged in the very flesh of the only begotten Son of God who was raised up for you.
And as the bronze serpent raised up by Moses typified the people’s sin, Christ became sin for you on Calvary’s cross so that you might become the righteousness of God in Him.
“He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. 20 “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21 “But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”
Friend, if you do not know Jesus Christ to be your Savior today, please lay down any misconceptions about somehow pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and pleasing God by your good deeds and behaviors. You are already condemned in your sin and your only hope for salvation is in the finished and perfect work of Christ on the cross to appease God’s wrath against sin. Jesus paid it all. Will you come to the Light?
Believers in Christ, you were created in Christ Jesus and works were prepared beforehand for you to walk in so that His Light might be manifested in and through your life. Your sins are already judged – for you there is no condemnation. Walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, and have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Christ cleanses you from all sins. 1 Jn 1:7
AMEN
