Too Familiar

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  ESV

In him – We are so familiar with this verse that we probably never imagined it could be read any other way.  But my friend John raised an issue about the pronoun.  If you were in John’s reading audience in the first century, you just might assign this pronoun to “God” rather than the “Son.”  God gave His Son because He loves His creation (the cosmos) and wants to redeem it.  Whoever believes that this is God’s way of defeating death and bringing the defilement of the creation to an end will not perish.  In other words, as a result of the gift we are to believe in the actions of the giver.  The emphasis is on the generosity of the Father.    This would be perfectly appropriate for John’s Jewish audience. 

Why would we even consider this alternative reading after all the Christological emphasis of the Church?  First we have to look at the general context of John’s gospel.  What is the purpose of John’s gospel?  He tells us.  He writes in order that we will believe that Yeshua is the divine Son of God, the Jewish Messiah.  How does John demonstrate that this is true?  He offers a series of signs accompanied by various Messianic claims.  Does John suggest that Yeshua came so that we would worship Him?  Except for Thomas’ declaration, we always find Yeshua pointing us to the Father.  Yeshua never claims credit for Himself.  He follows the path of the suffering servant, not the victorious king.  All that he does can be summarized in tetelestai (“It is accomplished”).  For most of our lives, we thought Yeshua was saying that He finished the work of salvation or that He completed the Law.  Now we know better.  But since this is the end of the story, what is the beginning?  John models Genesis in his prologue.  It is all about the creative actions of God and the Son.  But is the focus exclusively on the Son as the object of worship?   No Jew, even Yeshua, would have made such a claim.  The only good One is YHWH.  The only One to serve is YHWH.  Everything comes from Him and returns to Him.  John positions Yeshua in relation to the Father, not the other way around.  “If you have seen Me” presupposes an understanding of the work and love of God.  What if this too-familiar text actually says, “God as the Giver is the One we must believe”? The pronoun could refer to either.  In order to decide which one we must look deeper.

Now we need to look at the Greek text.  It is slightly ambiguous.  The relevant text is hina pas ho pisteuon eis auton.  Hina (that, so that, in order that) introduces a subjunctive clause.  Does the pronoun of the subjunctive clause refer to the subject of the sentence  (God) or to the direct object of the sentence (the Son)?  Some comments about hina may be valuable.  “The NT is particularly fond of clauses with [hina].  But the decisive reason for this preference is not to be found in a linguistic softening of the conjunction . . . The reason is to be sought in the teleological understanding of the ways of God and the destiny of man as this is promoted in the NT.  This is proved on the one hand by the prior history of [hina] and its Semitic equivalents in the OT and later Judaism, and on the other hand by the fact that in the NT itself [hina] and its synonyms are most common where there is the stronger teleological thinking, i.e., in the Pauline and Johannine writings.”[1]  Stauffer points out that the use of hina in the LXX is normally associated with the purposes of God’s actions.  “The revelation of His divine nature, power and glory is the constant aim of His actions, and this belief is basic for an understanding of God right on into NT days.”[2]  If this is John’s perspective, then we would expect his use of hina to point us toward YHWH.  That means the referent of the pronoun in the subjunctive clause would most likely be “God.”  That means that John’s classic commentary on the conversation with Nicodemus (it is quite unlikely that these are the words of Yeshua) fits the Jewish idea of the Messiah, one who is given in order to call the children back to the Father, to open the way for all to come to YHWH. 

Of course, we still have to deal with John’s use of pisteuo (to believe) in combination with eis (to believe into), but perhaps we have been too quick to adopt the Christological interpretation of this verse.  Perhaps we have ignored John’s Jewish perspective.  Perhaps.  It’s worth considering, isn’t it?  Imagine the change this makes.

Topical Index:  hina, so that, him, pronoun, John 3:16