Who Condemns Us?: March 10, 2024

 Year B, Lent 4                                                     John 3:13-21                                                              

            John 3:16 is probably one of the most well known verses in the Bible.  It’s definitely one of the only ones that you will see repeatedly held up in the stands at a professional sports event. That’s not because it’s specific to any professional sport. Over the years it became a defining verse for some Christians.  There is nothing wrong with wanting to share Bible verses with the world. Yet I worry that anytime we remove a verse entirely from its context, we risk misusing it.  This verse has been used as a weapon at times to differentiate between those who are saved and those who are not.  Some Christians use it to make themselves feel better about their own place in this world (and the next).  It gives them permission to judge those who aren’t Christian---or sometimes just not their kind of Christian.

Today you heard part of the context, but not all of it.  For instance, if you just heard what we read this morning, you don’t know who Jesus is talking to. He’s talking to a pharisee named Nicodemus who came to him at night to ask him a question.  Often times in the gospels, when pharisees asked a question, they were trying to trap Jesus, make him provide an answer that would get him in trouble.  This was not the case with Nicodemus. He was genuinely curious (as were many pharisees) about Jesus.  He was more than curious because later in the gospel he became a follower of Jesus, even making the arrangements to bury Jesus.  At this point in the gospel story he was really just trying to figure things out and the questions that he asked, ended up eliciting some powerful statements on Jesus’ part. It shows that asking God questions is a helpful and fruitful thing to do.

It’s out of this conversation with Nicodemus that comes this iconic verse: “For God so love the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”  It’s a lovely verse and very effective in conveying the crux of our faith.  However, it has become a weapon because people have emphasized “not perish but have eternal life.”  In other words, the emphasis has been on, how do we not perish and get to this end goal of eternal life.

When I started reading the Bible, it was often coming from a defensive place for me.  I was around a fair number of Evangelicals in college and I felt like there was way too much emphasis on how to save other people. I would look up the texts they quoted at me and read what came before and after. Sometimes, that helped my cause, sometimes not. When I looked up John 3:16 , I was so excited to read the very next line. It was going to become my new weapon.  Right after this line that turned into a litmus test for salvation Jesus said, “Indeed God didn’t send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” 

I was so excited when I read this, I highlighted and underlined.  Then I read the next line, “Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already; because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” There it went, my verse to counter all the judgement was contradicted in the very next verse. 

Or was it? Notice it doesn’t say who does the condemning or what the condemnation is.  Jesus clearly said in my perfect verse that he didn’t come into this world to condemn the world.  If not Jesus, who is doing the condemning?  Maybe we do the condemning ourselves.  What if we condemn ourselves by not believing that there is a God who loves this crazy world so much that he would risk living and dying as a human just to know us and help us know God?  What if we condemn ourselves by depriving ourselves of the grace that God freely give us?  God doesn’t condemn us.  We do that ourselves. 

            If we are the ones condemning ourselves, there has to be a way to stop.  Because we all condemn ourselves in our own unique ways and for different reasons, then there are different things that we can all do to move away from that which condemns us.  Since we are in church, I am going to tell you one way that applies to all of us—that’s deepening our relationship with God. The self help industry has some great stuff going on, but we have to be careful when we start focusing too much on the self.  Sometimes that makes things harder. Often it’s when we focus outside the self when we can truly free ourselves from condemnation—that means focusing on other people and other parts of the world that might need God’s love.

 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”  In the past when I have read this verse, I have always interpreted “eternal life” as life after death.  That is the reward for believing in God.  That is what we are being saved for.  In chapter 17 of this same gospel, Jesus said, “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”  Jesus defined eternal life as knowing God. 

When we hear the word eternal, we often equate it with immortality.  I am not sure that was what Jesus meant.  Perhaps Jesus wasn’t talking about the quantity of years as much as he was talking about the quality of life.  What if we define eternal life not by a time or even a place, but a relationship?  Eternal life is our relationship with God now and forever.  Eternal life starts now.  It’s not a reward for good behavior.  It’s a relationship. It’s a relationship that makes our life better in the future, but also right now. 

That also means we can’t just ignore the challenges of this world and say, “Well God will fix it all in the next world.” We have to work for change now because this world matters.  It’s the very same one God created. These people on this world matter. They are children of God. Eternal life starts now.  Condemnation can end now. 

We know this because God came to this world not to condemn, but to save. What we as Christians can do is make sure people know that they are not condemned by a God that they cannot see or touch---that God lived and died so that we could know what it is to be loved and to be whole.  Eternal life starts now.  Condemnation ends now.  Salvation is here and it’s been here all along.