This week, we consider our need for Jesus. But we rethink what Jesus means we he suggests we must believe in the Son of Man. Our reading contains one of the most shared verses of the gospels. What happens when we consider that verse in conjunction with the verse that immediately follows it (see John 3:14-21). And we look at how Jesus makes it clear that belief is as much about doing as it is about thinking or feeling.
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Our reading today contains one of the most well-known verses in all the gospels. It also contains one of my favorite verses in the gospels. Even so, our reading starts with a verse that is perhaps not as well known. “Just as Moses lifted the snake in the wilderness, so must the Human One be lifted up” (John 3:14, CEB). Other translations use serpent rather than snake and Son of Man rather than Human One.
Of course, we know that Son of Man is a reference to the Christ, the Messiah, the expected savior of the Israelites. But the reference to a snake or a serpent may call to mind the story of Eden, of Adam and Eve, and of the expulsion from the Garden. How is one like the other?
Well, the first thing we have to do is realize that Jesus is actually referring to a different serpent altogether. Jesus explicitly refers to Moses lifting up a serpent in the wilderness. We find this story in Numbers chapter 21. In Number 21:4-9, we find one of many examples of the Israelites grumbling about where they find themselves. Why did we follow Moses out here into the wilderness? There is no real food (they probably mean game or meat), no water, only the horrid mana to eat. Tired of their grumbling, God sends poisonous snakes among them.
Afterwards, God relents, sort of. God doesn’t take the snakes away. However, Moses is instructed to make an image of a serpent and to lift it up on a pole where all can see. Anyone who is bitten and looks upon the serpent will be healed.
While Hebrew is not one of the languages I have done any in-depth study of, I suppose it is possible there is some symbolic connection between the two. The Hebrew words used for the serpent in the Garden and the serpent that Moses lifts on the pole are the same Hebrew word, but this is really not that surprising as it is the standard Hebrew word for snake. Perhaps a reversal could be suggested such that where a serpent led to expulsion from the Garden at the beginning, now a serpent is used for the return into right relation with God. For that is in a sense what the serpent represents in this story. By looking at the serpent, the people are consciously making a choice to turn back to God rather than to continue to suffer the results of their previous choices. They looked at the image of the serpent because they believed that through it God would heal them. But we must also remember that this is just the standard Hebrew word for serpent, so there isn't necessarily a correlation.
Jumping back to our reading today, this first line begins to make more sense. Just as the Hebrews in the wilderness were able to receive healing through the image of the serpent, so may we receive healing by looking to Christ.
Then we come to the most well-known verse in our reading today, perhaps the most widely shared of all gospel verses. How many of you have been to a sporting event or watched one on TV and seen someone holding up a sign that says John 3:16? I imagine many of us have had that experience on multiple occasions. It is one of those verses that many of us can recite from memory, and one that many think is important to share. While our contemporary translation differs slightly from the King James version many of us likely know by heart, the import is still obvious.
“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won’t perish but will have eternal life” (John 3:16, CEB).
Why do you suppose people like to share this particular verse? What is it about these words that people think it is so important for those who are not already believers to read them or hear them?
Perhaps in this, Christians find a simple encapsulation of the gospel message. Kind of like the book, Everything I Need to Know About Life I Learned in Kindergarten, I think we sometimes have a tendency to think that everything we need to know about the good news of Jesus we learned in John 3:16. God loves us so much that, rather than let us die, God gives us a path to eternal life. Like the Israelites in the wilderness looking on the serpent and believing, all we have to do is look on Jesus and we will be saved.
There is a lot packed into this comparison that Jesus makes in the first few verses of our reading today. The Israelites in the wilderness were grumbling about being brought into the middle of nowhere to die. The subtext is a longing to return to slavery in Egypt. At least in Egypt, there was food and water. Would it not have been better to stay and die there? For their lack of gratitude, God condemns them to death by poisonous snakes. Grace takes the form of the bronze serpent raised above them.
Our reading from John today suggests that in the same way, God has judged our sinful ways and condemned us to death. Grace comes in the form of the Son of Man lifted high on the cross.
And yet…
How many of us continue reading past John 3:16? How many of those signs we see at sporting events suggest there is more to the gospel than that we need to believe in Jesus in order to avoid God’s wrath?
If I had to pull a single verse out of our reading today, I would actually want to share verse 17 instead. For me, verse 17 better represents the hope of the gospel than verse 16. And when read in the context of the rest of our reading, it (perhaps) gives slightly different meaning to a text that more easily sounds like judgement for nonbelievers. For when we take John 3:16 out of context, it can certainly lead us to condemn those who hear and choose not to believe for whatever reason. If those who believe are given eternal life, if those who believe are saved, if those who believe are part of the body of Christ, it becomes okay to treat the others however we want. God’s judgement is upon them, so why should we do anything more than continue to throw a verse at them that proves how excluded they really are?
This is why I prefer John 3:17, and why it is an important part of what is being said here. “God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17, CEB).
We Christians get a bad rap, in many cases deservedly so, for being judgmental. On the whole, Christians tend to be known for the ways in which we judge the rest of the world. The world is full of sin, and we’re here to point it all out. I sometimes have to laugh, not because I think sin doesn’t exist, but rather because so many Christians have the audacity to believe that we are above such things. We have it all figured out, and the rest of you sinners are gonna burn. And we point to John 3:16 as our proof. We believe and therefore we’re saved as if nothing else matters. But what do we do with John 3:17?
If all that is necessary is for us to look upon the cross as the Israelites in the wilderness looked upon the serpent and believe, why does John 3:17 exist?
In much of our theology, the cross exists exactly because God judges us. In some circles we talk about Jesus judging us at the end of days. What happens when we drop a verse into the midst of this that says, Jesus didn’t come to judge us but to save us?
Our reading doesn’t stop there either. The remaining verses suggest that the judgement is in fact one we place on ourselves. We choose to turn away. We choose to ignore all that Jesus taught us. We choose to let our relationship with God flounder. We choose not to follow the way of life.
Jesus comes into the world not to judge, but to offer us a different option. Unlike the sign given for the Hebrews in the wilderness, it is not quite as simple as looking at Jesus and saying I want to be healed. It is not as simple as holding up signs at sporting events for all to see that suggest all we have to do is believe.
Jesus came not to judge but that we might be saved. Through his life, Jesus showed us what salvation looks like. If judgement comes through the actions we choose, then so, too, does salvation. Jesus is the one that shows us what those actions that lead to salvation look like.
Now we perhaps get a different sense of what it means to be a believer. A believer is one who believes that Jesus’ acts of compassion are part of the gospel story. A believer is one who believes that the healing that Jesus offered to so many is part of the gospel story. A believer is one who believes that the food that Jesus gave freely is part of the gospel story. A believer is one who shares this gospel by following the example of the actions that Jesus took in his own life.
How would it shift our way of life if we lived in such a way that others might find healing and hope rather than judgement and death?
How might the world be made better if our acts were based solely on compassion for those in need?
How might the world see believers differently if we modeled the life of Christ instead of simply repeating the need to believe?
We need Jesus. We need Jesus in order that we might be saved.
We need to believe.
But because we believe, we need to love the rest of the world into salvation alongside us.