A Love That Lasts
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16 NASB
So loved – Thanks principally to evangelical Protestants, this is probably the most recognized verse from the Bible. Billboards and placards at football games proclaim God’s love. The exegetical issue, however, is never clearly in view. The verse actually doesn’t say that God loves us. It says that God loves the kósmos, that is, His creation, the order, the assemble of all the parts, the correspondence between His character and His handiwork. The verse literally begins with the enhanced verb, houtos égapēsen (from agapáō), that is, “in this manner,” or “exactly like this” loved God. Yes, houtos can be emphatic which is typically how it is understood in evangelical circles (as if the verse read “God loved the world so much that . . .”) but it seems more likely that John is explaining why God sent the Messiah rather than underlining the fact that He did. In fact, the next Greek term, hōstĕ, is an explanatory connector, like “therefore” or “thus.” So we have: “In this way God loved . . . therefore,” or more properly in English, “This is the way in which God loved the cosmos.”
With some of the technical issues resolved, we encounter the real problem: kosmos. The verse actually recounts God’s love for the kosmos expressed in His decision to send the Messiah. That doesn’t sound very evangelical, does it? Why? Because it’s not about me! It’s about God’s intimate connection to and enjoyment of His created order. Yes, I am part of that order, but my tiny little bit of existence in the entire cosmos is infinitesimally small. It doesn’t give me that spiritual boost I really want. What I really want is to know that God loves me, not that I am just swept up in His love for everything. That’s why I prefer “God so loved the world” read as “God so loved humanity.” That connects. Knowing that God loves the gravitational attraction between the planets or the recesses of black holes or the possibility of singularity doesn’t really mean too much to me. I want a love that lasts—a love for me that accepts me with all my faults and finds me acceptable in all my struggles to overcome them. I want a love that lasts; a love at last. I’m so scared of traveling the small bit of cosmic journey assigned to me only to disappear in the vast expanse of time and space, signifying nothing. I am desperate for divine embrace, for holy communion, for the assurance that I’m not just a speck of cosmic dust. So, I choose the psychologically comforting reading of John’s famous verse rather than the technically correct one.
Or so it seems. Fortunately, John doesn’t leave me as a mote in God’s eye. The verse continues.
“Everyone who believes” invites me to read this verse as personal. At least I’m in the group! The Greek is pás, with the article, so it means “all,” or “whoever,” or “each one of a whole.” That’s me! I believe! I’m in! Finally!
Then comes the verb. Pisteúō, translated “believes,” but, of course, it doesn’t mean “rationally agrees with.” For John, this verb is about trusting obedience. It’s about doing rather than saying. According to the Tanakh, this means “truthfulness, perceptiveness, retentiveness of memory, understanding, and the ability to portray.”[1] It means meeting God’s demand. And now that terrifying feeling of inadequacy returns because I know for sure that I’m not doing all I should, all I could, to live up to God’s demand. It was so much easier to think that “believe” meant acknowledging some list of religious propositions, but if it means doing all that God wants, then maybe I’m not in the group after all. What’s even more confusing is John’s claim that those who are doing what God demands will have eternal life. Why is that confusing? Because I don’t quite know where that idea came from. It sounds like Greek philosophy rather than Hebraic Scripture. Now I don’t even know who John has in mind, especially since he puts these words in the mouth of a Jewish Messiah.
What started out as the most recognizable verse in the Bible has become a tortuous exercise in personal application. I guess I’ll have to keep digging. Right?
Topical Index: so loved, houtos égapēsen, world, kosmos, believe, pisteúō, John 3:16
[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (p. 850). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
👍🏻 Right! (As each of us must.)
Terms like “infinity” and “eternity” do not define the being of God; it is rather the being of God in God’s relation to the kosmos in Christ that defines them.
To consider the being of God out of a center in God’s lived relation to the world in Christ is to forsake each and every abstract tendency to treat God’s irreducible otherness in relation to the created kosmos in time. Our abstract tendency is to treat, for example the relation of eternity and time, as strictly oppositional.
But to think concretely and realistically (i.e. truthfully and actually) of God’s irreducible otherness and immutable being not as oppositional to time or outside of time—rather in God’s relation to time—is to think of time not as alien to the innermost being of God, but as taken up in Jesus Christ into God’s inexhaustible life (without detriment to God) so that time itself is transformed into the new time of a coming world in which death is no more and the experience of time—and indeed, of “change”—is no longer controlled by the inevitability of dying. It is to think of eternity not as negation of time, but as both its ground and goal, as its origin and as its redemptive completion, in union with Jesus Christ. [1]
[1] This is a personal summary notation I’ve kept that was originally presented by Bruce Lindley McCormack in a theological work he authored… [?The Humility of the Eternal Son(?)] (I didn’t make note of the original source.)