Two-dozen words

From the rainbow-wigged guy in the endzone to Tim Tebow's eye black (now banned by the NCAA), football has given John 3:16 more hype than most churches north of the Mason-Dixon.  While most Americans have heard of John 3:16, most couldn't tell you what it says nor its significance.

If you want the Bible in a nutshell, if you want all of life in a nutshell, you can find it in John 3:16.

So what is "John 3:16?"  The statement is excerpted from a conversation that Jesus is having with Nicodemus, an esteemed Jewish teacher who, unlike his peers, became intrigued with Jesus' teaching and his ministry.  It's the conversation of a man wondering and a God revealing.

Here's what Jesus said to Nicodemus as reported by his friend, John:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Why is this "life in a nutshell?" Let's break it down.

GOD LOVES HIS CREATION 

Let's focus it tighter.  God loves mankind because only man did he imbue with his image.  The rest of his creation serves as the wondrous backdrop for God's relationship with man.  Earth.  The breath-taking home that he provided for the pinnacle of his palette.  God had no need to create man.  What a blessing to us that he did that we might know him.

So what purpose man?  To glorify God and enjoy him forever, says the Westminster Catechism.  The wonder of it all, to borrow from George Beverly Shea, is to think that God loves me.  God loves mankind.  Humanity should glorify and enjoy the God who so deeply loves it.  It's the power behind the point.

MAN IS A REBEL 

Hollywood glorifies the rebel.  In real life, the four-year old pitching a tantrum in Wal-Mart better exemplifies the rebel than James Dean.  Because of the Fall (Genesis 3), man broke his perfect relationship with God and now enters a broken world in a broken state himself.  He remains created in the image of God (hence the sanctity of human life), but the infection of sin within his soul impels him away from God and toward deeper rebellion against his Creator.

The rebellion has earned a sentence, a righteous sentence, a just sentence.  It is death.  That is what the verse means when it highlights why God sent Christ (that man should not perish).  Apart from God's intervention, man's natural state and man's natural conduct have earned him the wages of death, eternal separation, and eternal punishment.

GOD INTERVENED

God, without need, moves to show his glory in an extraordinary act of creation.  He creates a being with volition and dignity, he creates a being "in his image" upon which he might lavish his oceanic love.  In short order, man gums up the works, despite the warning from God, and receives due sentence for his rebellion.  "There is none righteous.  No, not one"  (Romans 3:10b).

It could have ended there, a horrifying cosmic tragedy.  No, it does not end there.  A Hero intervenes.  The One who has been slapped in the face decides to take upon himself the punishment for such an afront so that the justly condemned party might live.  God the Son condescended to become man, a real man, fully God and yet fully man, that he might suffer the righteous penalty of death so that mankind might live.

MAN HAS HOPE

With natural man being in rebellion against the God who created him, it is no wonder the world teems with such horrors.  And yet there is hope. 

Because Jesus Christ, God the Son, bore the full fury of God's wrath toward sin and rebellion, because he bore the just punishment due to all mankind, God will then transfer the righteousness of Christ, the perfect and sinless life he lived, upon all who believe upon his name.  Jesus took my sin and gave me his righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21).

That gift, a free gift to man but oh, so costly to Christ, guarantees man eternal life.  What is that really?  It is a restored relationship with Almighty God.  While we are still under the physical effects of the curse (pain, suffering, death), that broken relationship, that intimate relationship which Adam enjoyed with God in the Garden, is now healed.  We have fellowship with him once again through the finished work of Jesus Christ.  One day, either when Christ returns or when we die our physical death, we will see him face to face and abide with him forever, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and with those who have called upon his name.  Eternal life.

Though the bannerman no longer haunts NFL endzones and though collegiate athletes can no longer highlight it on their eyeblack, Jesus' plain statement to Nicodemus nearly 2000 years ago remains the single most important message for man today. 

John 3:16 is the message of the Bible.  It remains the reality of 21st century man .

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.