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From the gospel today comes the most quoted and even memorized verse: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (3:16).
The verb “agapaō” ( άγαπάω ), occurred more than a hundred times in the NT and is consistently translated “to love” in a variety of contexts and is predicated on human beings, God, and Christ. When God and Christ are said to love, agapaò conveys the idea of a deep, limitless compassion that is given through the supreme self-sacrificial actions of Christ on the cross in association with the mercy and kindness of God (3:14-18). This is how Jesus commands everyone to “love each other as I have loved you” (15:12-13).
In the conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus, on the cross, is revealed as the divine “I AM” (cf 8:28); acceptance of his claim means salvation. In John’s gospel, the various moments of the salvific act or the two sides of salvation are joined together. Christ on the cross is already revealed as Lord and is the source of life, the one moment of salvation which is that of God (vv16f). The other, that of humans, salvation means to believe in Him and remain in the light (vv18f; cf s1S#22 Light 3/14/21). To accept the light is to embrace the truth; it is to appropriate the crucified and risen Christ with the commitment that faith entails. Eternal life has begun. Otherwise, salvation would not be claimed by those who love darkness instead of light (v 19).
It was love alone that launched this divine initiative. The measure of that love is gleaned from the form it took. He gave his only son (v16). The “handing over” and the “only son” echo Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac. God is willing to offer his Son to bring the world to salvation. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (2:4-10, second reading) is a forceful reminder that salavtion is due entirely to God’s love. Men are favored and did nothing to merit it.
Eschatology for John is realized. Belief and eternal life are contemporaneous (v15) as are non-acceptance and condemnation (v18). May we all NOW share in the gift of salvation by believing in the Son and loving as the Father did. Amen!
s1S#22 Light 3/14/21
“…In the NT, the term phōs ( φῶς ), continues the motif of the coming messiah as salvation offered to the Israelites and the nations, (Mt 4:16; Lk 2:32; Acts 13:47), but now comes to a supreme focus in the person of Christ. It is now through the person of the Son of God, as “the light of the world” (John 8:12; cf 1:4-5;9;) that people would be drawn into the kingdom of God. The evangelist John, aware of the language and thought of his contemporaries in Palestine of the early 1st century, (to which the Qumran’s Dead Sea Scrolls has affinity, too), portrays Jesus as light, an antithesis to darkness. In this context, it signifies that in Jesus one finds light, not darkness, righteousness not evil, salvation, not damnation and life, not death.
Light in the Bible then has a powerful underlying redemptive significance. It is the very person of Jesus, the emissary of God, who is light (1 John 1:5) who calls us “out of darkness” into his marvelous light (1 Pt 2:9), so that we may become truly “children of light”, (Eph 5:8)…”
