John 3:16 Doesn’t Mean What We Think It Means?
Lonnie Hendrix
The latest installment of the Church of God International’s Armor of God program, featuring Adrian Davis, was very disturbing to this correspondent. According to Pastor Davis, the majority of Christians do NOT understand their favorite passage of Scripture! He said that this passage has been mistranslated and taken out of context for centuries, and that Christians better be doing a whole lot more than just believing in Jesus! Davis believes that Christians are much too focused on Jesus and the New Testament. According to him, “Israel is the means by which God will save the world.”
I know, you’re probably thinking that Jesus Christ is the means by which God will save the world – me too! I bet you and I could probably think of a great many other passages to support what is revealed in John 3:16 about salvation through Jesus (e.g., Matthew 1:21, John 3:36, 14:6, Acts 4:12, Romans 10:9, Ephesians 2:8-9, etc.). By the way, I’d like to take the Pastor up on a closer look at the famous verse and its context.
In the third chapter of the Gospel of John, we find Christ having a private conversation with one of the leading Jewish religious leaders of that day – a man named Nicodemus (verses 1-2). Jesus begins by telling Nicodemus that “unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.” (Verse 3) This statement, however, greatly puzzled the Pharisee (verse 4). Jesus elaborated: “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’” (Verses 5-7) Nicodemus was still puzzled, and Jesus was incredulous that Nicodemus didn’t understand what the Scriptures revealed about these things (verses 9-10).
Jesus then proceeded to get to the root of the problem that Nicodemus and the other Jewish religious leaders had in understanding what he was saying. He said: “I assure you, we tell you what we know and have seen, and yet you won’t believe our testimony. But if you don’t believe me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ever gone to heaven and returned. But the Son of Man has come down from heaven. And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.” (Verses 11-15) In short, they didn’t believe in Jesus or his testimony.
For Pastor Davis, however, the chief take away from this passage is the comparison to what Moses did with the bronze snake in the wilderness. Davis pointed out that God used the symbol to save the Israelites from the snakes which he had sent among them to punish them. However, it apparently never dawned on the pastor that Christ was saying that he would have to be lifted up on a pole to save all of humankind! For Mr. Davis, God intended for Israel to be the light to the Gentiles. Again, he apparently doesn’t comprehend that they failed at that mission, and that God made his Son into a light for the Gentiles (John 8:12, 9:5). Unfortunately, like many in the various Armstrong Churches of God, Mr. Davis does not seem to comprehend that “a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.” (Galatians 2:16)
In this context, the remainder of that passage in the third chapter of the Gospel of John is made plain to most Christians. We read there: “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him. There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.” (Verses 16-21) In other words, by refusing to believe in Christ and his message, the Jewish religious leaders had committed a grave sin.
In the first epistle of John, this commandment is made even more explicit. John wrote: “And this is his commandment: We must believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as he commanded us. Those who obey God’s commandments remain in fellowship with him, and he with them. And we know he lives in us because the Spirit he gave us lives in us.” (I John 3:23-24) Isn’t that interesting? John echoed the same thing that Christ had told to Nicodemus! According to John, God expects us to believe in Jesus and his instructions. Hmmmm, I’m thinking that it’s Mr. Davis who doesn’t understand John 3:16 – I think most Christians understand it perfectly!
