Anchor My Faith

God Loves and God Gives

Scripture: John 3:16

After six lessons we finally finished covering John 3:12 – 15. With this lesson we will begin an even longer series, covering John 3:16 – 18. In this study we encounter one of the most famous verses in the Bible; “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 ESV).

John 3:16 is a verse I have thought about for years. I have considered what it says and how it is being used. On the surface it appears so simple; God loves, God gave, we believe, we receive. It is commonly used as an invitation by saying, “God loves you so much that he gave you his Son and if you believe that then you will receive eternal life. If you believe that then raise your hand or stand up or come forward (or any combination of that) and you will be saved.” There are many that do that and are counted for salvation but they are not born again. They are simply a statistic used to measure the success of a program.

When I was much younger, I learned several techniques of sharing the plan of salvation and could give some convincing arguments and get people to pray to receive Jesus and supposedly be born again. I used this technique at first when I served in China, but after several years I learned that some, I supposed were born again, confessed to me that they prayed just to stop further conversation on the topic. This deeply affected me and caused me to think deeply about my witness and my part in leading one to salvation. Further study of the Scriptures convinced me that my approach was wrong. When a woman is pregnant you cannot with words convince her to give birth. When her time comes she will give birth.

There is a verse just before John 3:16, that I believe relates to this: “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8 ESV). The Spirit moves about and touches a life here and another live there. As we have conversation with people, we are to determine where the Spirit is moving and active and become involved in helping the person understand spiritual things. At a specific time, determined by God and not by us and our arguments, when that person is spiritually ready, that person will be born spiritually, just as the fetus, when physically ready, will result in the woman giving birth. In both cases we simply witness the birth, we don’t cause it. It is our Father who causes spiritual birth (1 Peter 1:3 ESV): “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

I made necessary adjustments in how I shared the gospel, during my last several years in China, and received comments from my Chinese friends that I was different than others who came from America. They wanted to argue us into accepting Jesus, they said, but you through enjoyable conservation, answered our many questions and prompted many more.

Having said this, we need to study John 3:16, in its context, and try to determine what it means. To do that we will look at eight words found in verse 16. Those words are God, loved, world, gave, Son, whoever, believes, and life.

Prayer

Father, to so many, John 3:16 seems so simple, but careful study reveals just the opposite. Father, I find a tension between John 3:8 and 3:16. John 3:8 implies that only the ones the Spirit touches are born again, but John 3:16 seems to imply that whoever believes can be born again. Father, I pray that the Spirit will teach and reveal the truth about these two verses and how they relate and thus release this tension. Lord, because of the importance of this series of studies I pray that readers will take time to consider what is said.