Anyone who has been to Sunday School is familiar with the famous words found in the Bible in John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 NIV). Little kids who quote the verse from memory are given a star on their chart and proud cheers from their parents.
Many sayings and quotes from childhood are handed down from the older generations. Over the course of a lifetime, the words become so familiar that they are not heard or internalized anymore. These words and sayings can become like an antique farm hand-tool passed down from four generations ago. We love the connection to past tradition but don’t have a clue what the tool was used for or how to use it in our modern life. We put it on a shelf and dust it off to show to visitors. When people ask, we tell them what our dad said his dad told him about what his grandfather used it for.
In the same way, we hand down to the next generation our thoughts and beliefs about God. We tell the next generation of believers what our spiritual fathers had been told by their spiritual fathers and grandfathers. The stories become ritual and the wisdom becomes a matter of historical record. Truth is reduced to arguments of right and wrong. We often believe about God what we are told is true about God. And, if we are not careful, we will pass on to the younger generation an antique faith that sits on the shelf because no one knows what it is for or how to use it.
I’ve experienced this phenomenon personally. I left the church for a while because I no longer trusted the church to tell me the truth about God. So, I enrolled in university to learn how to find the truth about God for myself. This experience has brought me joy. But it has also been deeply challenging and humbling, not to mention a lot of work.
A couple of weeks ago, my class was studying how to find the true meaning of a word in the Bible. Because the Bible was not written in English, it’s important to discover the words originally used in the text. Ancient Greek had a more descriptive and rich vocabulary. Translators must make decisions in how to present in English the original thought in the Greek text.
As an example, the professor mentioned John 3:16. I have been told many times by well-meaning people over several decades of Christian living that I should read the verse with my name in it. “God so loved Traci that He sent His only Son…” I am told that if I had been the only person on earth, Jesus would still have died for me. That’s not a lie. It’s not wrong. It’s also not everything the verse is trying to say. It’s not the whole and complete truth.
The Apostle John mentions “the world” almost 50 times in the 21 chapters of the Gospel of John. This word “world” is transliterated from the Greek to mean the inhabitants of earth or humankind. John portrays “the world” as being in the darkness without God. Jesus came to be the light of the world (Jn 9:5) so that the world would know that Jesus loves them (Jn 14:31), so that the world would believe that Jesus is the Savior (Jn 1:19), so that in Jesus the world might be saved (Jn 3:17).
In the days of the Apostle John, substituting names for the world in John 3:16 would have sounded like this:
“God so loved” Ephram, the ordinary shepherd and Marcus, the barbaric Roman that He sent Jesus. God so loved the Canaanites who worshipped imaginary gods and Anna who worshipped in the Temple that He sent Jesus. God so loved Caiaphas, the religious leader who prosecuted Jesus, and Mary, the woman who washed His feet with her hair that He sent Jesus. God so loved the cheating tax collectors, the thieves, the traveling salesmen and the children playing in the streets of Jerusalem that He sent Jesus.
In today’s world, John 3:16 would sound something like this:
God so loves Joe Biden and Donald Trump that He sent Jesus. God so loves the homosexual, the drug addict, the rich person, and the poor person that He sent Jesus. God so loves the elderly veteran and the single mom raising three kids that He sent Jesus. God so loves the rioters and looters, the “Karens”, and the social influencers that He sent Jesus. God so loves the farmer, the truck driver, the fast-food worker, the doctor, and the lawyer that He sent Jesus. God so loves the religious hypocrite, the atheist, the Buddhist, the Hindu, and the agnostic that He sent Jesus.
“For God expressed His love for the world in this way; He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him will not face everlasting destruction, but will have everlasting life” (John 3:16 The Voice).
“God so loved Traci…” now seems to me a rather shallow understanding of what Jesus has done and what the Bible says. If what you have heard about God makes Christianity seem like an antique tradition that is useless and makes no sense, my challenge to you is to dust off that old Bible and clear the cobwebs off of your faith and look again. Is what you’ve been told about God the whole and accurate truth? Why do you think God sent Jesus to the world?
As Scully and Mulder would say, “The truth is out there”. Keep searching, my friends!
Copyright 2021 TA Boland
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