I have fond memories of sitting with my mom and grandma in front of an old tube TV watching the St. Louis Cardinals or the Cincinnati Reds play baseball. One question I remember asking when I was very young was what those signs meant that people in the stands were holding up. The signs were adorned with the verse “John 3:16” in various styles and colors. My mom explained to me what these signs were referring to…one of the most widely known verses in all of the Bible.

The passage is fairly simple and to the point, showing us the path to salvation. But here I am decades later writing on this same verse I came to know in my youth still digging into the words that seem simple enough on the surface yet contain all the wondrous knowledge of God Himself as I dive below the surface…a knowledge that I will perpetually be learning from, a knowledge that has no bounds. Buried in the simplicity of John 3:16 is a wealth of knowledge I feel that I will never finish mining.

John 3:1–10:

¹Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews;

²this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”

³Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

⁴Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?”

⁵Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

⁶“That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

⁷“Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’

⁸“The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

⁹Nicodemus said to Him, “How can these things be?”

¹⁰Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?

 

Much of John 3 is overshadowed by a single verse within its confines, that famous verse John 3:16. But there is so much more to that verse that we can glean from reading the whole story. John 3:16 is a verse of love and hope for us, but it is also a verse of incomprehensible suffering which created the sure foundation of the hope we now have. This chapter contains the mechanics of our salvation that we must see in order to understand our hopeless depravity in contrast to God’s hope in grace and sacrifice on our behalf.

God’s story of salvation begins with a man, Nicodemus, who was a prominent figure in the Jewish community…a Pharisee. Now we all know that the Pharisees were united against Jesus, opposing him as a collective. They saw Him as a threat to their leadership and position in Israel. However, we see Nicodemus torn between his religious party and Jesus in his pursuit for truth. As a result, he does not approach Jesus in the daytime but rather at nighttime….most likely due to the reproach that would have fallen on him from the Pharisees if he were known to be collaborating with the enemy. Little does Nicodemus know that his desire for truth is to know salvation and that Jesus is going to help him dig deeper to understand his desire.

Nicodemus asks Jesus a question, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” Nicodemus sees Jesus as one who is an honored teacher, comes from God to teach, and performs signs thus authenticating that God is with Him. However, he has not yet gone one step farther saying that Jesus and God are one. Unlike the Pharisees and the disciples that followed Jesus that we read about last week in John 2:13-25, Nicodemus is coming to see Jesus and behold Him in order to truly understand who He is. This is in contrast to many of Jesus’ “disciples” that followed for a time after the Passover feast but later fell away (many fell away permanently). These false disciples weren’t truly beholding Jesus; they were beholding His signs, possibly looking to see what materialistic gains they could get from Him.

Remember the verses earlier where we heard the phrase “come and see” from several people including Jesus and John the Baptist preaching, “behold, the Lamb of God”. Here we see that played out yet again. Nicodemus has a God given desire to behold Jesus and understand Him, so he goes to see Him. He is drawn to Jesus.

We have an idea of Nicodemus’ heart; he went to behold Jesus and understand Him better. But Jesus doesn’t answer Nicodemus’ original question of who He is. Rather, Jesus sees into his heart and answers the real question which is, “What must I do to be saved?” Herein lies the beginning of three “truly, truly” statements. Without going into the grammatical/cultural depths of “truly, truly”, suffice it to say that when Jesus says “truly, truly” we must read this as an emphatic statement from the One who holds all authority. These “truly, truly” statements are some of the most precious scripture in the bible.

The first “truly, truly” statement is, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” This statement would have immediately captured Nicodemus’ attention. You see, the Pharisees were anticipating the coming messianic kingdom and naturally (from a worldly perspective) assumed that they would be granted entrance to this kingdom since they were Pharisees, being of a particular lineage and keeping the law (well, keeping the law as best as any human could). Contrary to what Nicodemus believed, Jesus stated that neither he nor anyone else would enter the messianic kingdom of God unless there was a change within…that he would be born again (note that the raw translation of this is “born from above”). This surely would have caused Nicodemus to pause and deeply consider what Jesus was telling him as this was completely contrary to what he had been taught.

Nicodemus’ response to this was to question what Jesus meant by “born again”. I don’t believe that Nicodemus was being obnoxious or sarcastic when he asked how an old man can be born again. We know how he addressed Jesus in a very formal and respectful manner earlier in verse 2. Here, Nicodemus is trying to understand what Jesus meant.

Jesus answers with a second “truly, truly” statement, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” Here Jesus is explaining what He means. The birth of water here refers figuratively to a cleansing found throughout OT scripture, for example in Psalm 51:10:

¹⁰Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.

That is, a cleansing of a person’s heart and soul. This cleansing is performed by the Spirit at salvation, see Ephesians 5:26:

²⁶so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,

Of course, this was all beyond Nicodemus’ ability to understand. He questions, “How can these things be?” to which Jesus rebukes him here by saying, “Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?” The poignancy of this statement lies in the very small word “the” in “Are you the teacher of Israel…”. Jesus is saying that, even though Nicodemus is not only a teacher but the teacher of Israel (being a Pharisee), he still doesn’t understand even the basics such as how to enter into the kingdom of God. To such a prominent teacher of the law, this would have deeply hurt. But unlike his Pharisaical brethren, Nicodemus doesn’t go on the offensive against Jesus. On the contrary, he listens to Jesus. In fact, we don’t hear Nicodemus speak again in this particular story. That is the mark of a person who is truly seeking Jesus, one who is willing to listen to the hard stuff before getting to the grace and mercy of Jesus.

John 3:11–21:

¹¹“Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony.

¹²“If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

¹³“No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man.

¹⁴“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up;

¹⁵so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.

¹⁶“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

¹⁷“For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.

¹⁸“He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

¹⁹“This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.

²⁰“For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

²¹“But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”

We’re almost to the most recognized verse in the Bible (John 3:16), but there are still a few more things Jesus wants us to understand before we get there.

This section begins with the third and final “truly, truly” statement. Jesus is changing course by focusing more generally on the problem of and solution for unbelief and less on Nicodemus. We can see this in the form of the word “you” found in verse 11. Jesus begins by saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you (singular, referencing Nicodemus)…”. And then proceeds to transition to, “…and you (plural, referencing all of Israel) do not accept our testimony.” Here the plural “you” (i.e., you all) is connected back to verse 2 where Nicodemus says, “Rabbi, we know that you have come from God…”. The “we” here also refers to Israel. Remember in Nicodemus’ position he would have spoke as a representative of Israel as a whole.

Now in verses 11-13 Jesus is stating two things. First, no one has accepted the testimony of Jesus (the “our” in verse 11 refers not only to Jesus who is speaking but also of John the Baptist who was also giving testimony at that time). In fact, in verse 12 Jesus again points out Nicodemus’ unbelief as well as all of Israel’s unbelief due to their lack of understanding of the scriptures (the OT at this time). Essentially, Jesus says that He has communicated earthly things that can be understood through the OT scriptures; however, they cannot even understand these simple earthly ideas. If they cannot understand the simple earthly ideas how will they understand the new and deeper heavenly things? They need to understand the simple before they can proceed to understand the higher things of God.

This leads us to the second thing Jesus is stating, only Jesus can explain the “heavenly things”. Of course, at this time the Holy Spirit had not yet been poured out. Thankfully, we now have the Spirit to help and guide us in understanding the “heavenly things”. The “heavenly things”, especially relating to Jesus and His sacrifice in order to make a way to our reconciliation with God the Father, are about to be revealed in a most profound way to Nicodemus, Israel, and to all the world.

In verse 13 Jesus proclaims His authority as to what He is about to say. Essentially, no one has ascended to heaven to learn of these “heavenly things” and then descended to tell others. However, there is One (Jesus Himself) who has descended from heaven to not only tell of these “heavenly things”, but to act out these “heavenly things” to provide a way of salvation to all. Notice Jesus never says that He ascended first to Heaven, only that He descended. This again points back to the opening verses of John where Jesus is described as the un-created One who has always existed with God before time. To get a better impression of this statement we can look to Proverbs 30:4:

⁴Who has ascended into heaven and descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has wrapped the waters in His garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name or His son’s name? Surely you know!

Surely, Nicodemus would have known this verse and it would have been brought to mind as Jesus spoke.

As I read these verses (11-13) I immediately think of Romans 3:23:

²³for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Before we knew Christ we were utter wretches, sinners who could not attain equality with God on our terms. Do you know where I’m going with this? Read on…

Verse 14 Is a harsh lesson as to the truly horrible effects of our Sin. Nothing we could do would absolve us of our sins as we all fall short of the absolute holiness of God. So what was God to do? To truly absolve us of our crimes He had only one choice, to sacrifice something of His…something that was perfect, unblemished, something that was worthy, something that was worthy of an unworthy and unjust death…in a word, something holy. No human could have ever fulfilled this position. No animal sacrifice could ever cover all sins equally and forever. There was only one answer…Jesus. God had to hang the Son of Man on a pole just like the despised serpent in Moses’ time.

The first part of verse 14 “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness…” speaks of Numbers 21:4–9 where it says:

⁴Then they set out from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the people became impatient because of the journey.

⁵The people spoke against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food.”

⁶The Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.

⁷So the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and you; intercede with the Lord, that He may remove the serpents from us.” And Moses interceded for the people.

⁸Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live.”

⁹And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.

Notice the themes in these verses: Sin entered when the people became impatient and spoke against God, Sin gave birth to death through sin’s venom, An intercessor intervened for the people who were perishing, and Salvation was offered to all. But wait, a “fiery serpent” was their salvation? Yes, the people had to look up at the serpent on the pole. All they had to do was behold the serpent and they were saved. Look at the similarities between Numbers 21:4-9 and John 3:1-21 here:

The venom <==> Sin

The serpent <==> Jesus

The pole <==> The cross

Look at the serpent and live (salvation) <==> Behold Jesus and have eternal life (salvation)

In order to absolve a people of their sin and reconcile them back to God, a blood sacrifice was necessary. The sins were placed on the animal being sacrificed (in the OT). This was imperfect but the perfect was at last here. And we will see the sins placed on Jesus, the perfect sacrifice who then had to die.

As a new believer, I remember getting a full grasp of this message. It was difficult. How could we (I) treat God so badly that His only course of action was to give up His Son to be treated so badly? This is the harsh reality that we must grasp. Sin requires a penalty. This is the beginning of wisdom and of a love for God that knows no bounds.

Let’s dive deeper into the language and ideas used in these verses. The first word in verse 14 “As” is a comparative conjunction (Kathos) in Greek. This word is sometimes translated “Just as” (such as in the NIV), which I think gives a more definite idea of what we are comparing. That is, the “Just as…” phrase is being compared with the “even so…” phrase where it says, “even so must the Son of Man be lifted up”. Just like the fiery serpent was raised up on a pole, Jesus must also be raised up on a cross. For whoever looks upon (beholds) Jesus, who took on the weight of our sin and became like the fiery serpent, will be saved from the poisonous venom of sin.

2 Corinthians 5:21:

²¹He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Be very clear about this, the Bible never says that Jesus was sinful nor became a sinner. Jesus was, is, and always will be perfectly and completely holy. Rather, He took on the sin of the world (maybe think of this as Jesus clothed Himself in sin, not that He was sin) so that God’s wrath would be exhausted on Him and Him alone. God treated Christ, His only Son, as if He were guilty of the world’s sin.

Jesus stood in for us, a substitutionary sacrifice for all of our sins…sins that deserve a penalty we can never repay. For we are imperfect and our righteousness is imperfect. It cannot satisfy God’s requirements. But Jesus, the perfect Lamb of God, the perfect sacrifice was what was required.

Think about this deeply. Jesus knew that He was to endure the wrath of His Father as He took on our sin. The Father’s wrath was to be directed towards Him. All Jesus knew was oneness with God. Now the wedge of sin was to be temporarily driven between Him and the Father. Although, I believe that for Jesus even a temporary abandonment of His Father’s presence would be of a pain that we will never comprehend. It is no wonder Jesus was so distraught in the garden of Gethsemane that He sweat blood, Luke 22:44:

⁴⁴And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground

His closeness with the Father was to be broken (again, only temporarily). But Jesus did this all for us. He gave up more than we can ever know for us. And all He requires of us is to repent, believe, and obey. How small of a requirement is that for us when He gave more than we can fathom.

This reminds me of Romans 6:23:

²³For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

See where I’m going with this yet?

Finally we get to the most famous verse in all the Bible, John 3:16, a verse that we all have memorized (or should have). This verse begins with the word “For”, which is a conjunction that is used in an explanatory manner. That is, verse 16 explains verses 14-15 that precede it. We cannot forget or overlook that it was necessary for the Son of God to be lifted up on the pole as was the fiery serpent. These verses are inextricably tied together with one simple word, “For”.

The next thing we need to look for is the main verb of the sentence. In verse 16 there are several verbs: loved, gave, believes, perish, have (eternal life). I always thought that the main verb, the main action of this verse was “believes”. It does seem like this is the central verb of this verse, but it is not. The verb “believes” is a participle, which cannot be the main verb of a sentence. The main verb is the first verb we encounter, “loved” (specifically, the agape love).

It should also be mentioned that the “so” in “God so loved…” is an adverb that modifies “loved”; however, it does not translate from the Greek as “God loved so much…”. Rather, the Greek word (houtos) translated in many Bibles as “so” is speaking as to the manner in which God loved: “God loved in this manner…”, “God loved thusly…”, “God so loved…”. In fact, some translations use a more direct translation here as with the CSB translation for John 3:16:

For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

In what manner did God love us? He gave His only Son as a sacrifice for us. Now this reading has much more force than simply saying that God loved us so much. God loved us to the point of giving everything for us. And yet we were still sinning against Him. Nevertheless, He still gave His Son.

What result came about from this perfect love that God had for us? God gave. God loved us in such a way that He gave His only Son. The purpose of this giving love was to ransom us from sin. Whoever believes in Jesus, as the verse continues, will not perish. On the contrary, a believer in Christ has the hope of eternal life!

But this word “believes” needs to be handled carefully. This is a present participle, which denotes an imperfect aspect in the Greek (remember studying the imperfect verb tense in chapter 1). Additionally, this word “believes” is tied back to the word “whoever” (both words being of the same gender, number, and case in the Greek). Thus we get the sense that a believer’s belief must be ongoing. In fact, this agrees with scripture from John 8:31:

³¹So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine;

As well as with these verses later on in this section, John 3:20–21:

²⁰“For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

²¹“But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”

Think of this participle “believes” as a state of being of a person. And what is the reward of truly being in a state of believing in Jesus? It is eternal life, of course.

verses 14-16 remind me of Romans 5:8–10:

⁸But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

⁹Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.

¹⁰For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

And how shall we respond to these verses? Romans 10:8-11 provides clear instruction:

⁸But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”—that is, the word of faith which we are preaching,

⁹that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;

¹⁰for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.

¹¹For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.”

See where I’m going with this yet?

In verse 21 we read, “But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” We should all be practitioners of the truth. That is how we say we love (in the agape manner) our Lord. This love is why we obey our sovereign God. This love fuels how we obey our Lord and Savior. And as a result, this is how we have peace with God.

This reminds me of Romans 5:1:

¹Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

Do you see that this section of scripture follows the Romans Road that is used as a tool in presenting the gospel to the unsaved? Or perhaps I should say that the Romans Road verses follow the message in the gospel of John in chapter 3.

There is so very much more to learn from this well worn and well loved scripture, but I will leave that for you to discover.