When John 3:16 Finally Made Sense: A Journey from Head Knowledge to Heart Transformation

I went to church often growing up, and John 3:16 was everywhere. My Sunday school teachers had me memorize it. It was quoted more times than I cared to count in church services, plastered on walls, woven into sermons. You would think I would've understood the verse, but I just simply didn't.

And I think as you stick around, it'll start to make sense to you why I didn't.

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The Verse Everyone Knows

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

You see, I was one that could say I believed that Jesus was a real historical person for the first 23 years of my life—that he really came, he really lived, he really died on a Roman cross, and I would say he really resurrected. But that didn't bring about a new birth in my life. It was just an affirmation of something that was true.

I was missing two key elements that are actually taught in this verse, but rarely emphasized. Because often you hear it presented like God loves you so much that he's just okay with the way you live your life—okay with your rebellion, okay with your sin. He just wants you to come to him, and he's not complete without you. You probably hear this over and over again in ten thousand variations, but I want to talk about this through a biblical lens, not from a worldly perspective.

The Context: A Conversation About New Birth

First and foremost, let's look at the context. Jesus is talking to Nicodemus about eternal life and being born again—something that has to happen not by the will of man, not by the will of the flesh, but by the will of God.

This goes back to John 1:12: "But as many as did receive him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."

Those who receive him take him at his word. They take hold of, grab and grasp Christ—the revelation of who he is, an accepting of the testimony of who he is. Throughout John, there are five witnesses to Christ's identity: the witness of John the Baptist, the witness of the works themselves that the Spirit does through Christ, the witness of the Father, the witness of scripture, and the witness of John the Apostle who wrote this book so that we would believe that Jesus is the Christ, that he's the Son of God, and that by believing we would have life in his name.

Receiving Christ: More Than Mental Agreement

As many as received him, as many as took hold—I think it was Charles Spurgeon who said he would swing out into eternity on the scarlet thread of Christ, grasping him and holding tight to him, not letting go. This is the language of someone who is receiving Christ. To those who receive him, who take hold of him like a bull by the horns and will not let go—I think of Jacob wrestling with God and saying, "I will not let you go until you bless me."

That's what I think about all of this, because when I was growing up, none of this clicked, none of this made sense. Everything was just a story and something we did on Sunday and Sunday evenings. But it wasn't until I sought the Lord and found him in the scriptures, until I was convinced of these truths specifically testified of in John, that it became real.

The one who receives him is the one who is given the right to become children of God. And those who receive him are given life—not in our own will and not in our own works. It's not like we cooked this up in a laboratory and said, "Hey, I got such a great idea and we're going to work out this salvation in this way." No, this was something that God had done, that God had planned from before time even was. Christ was always plan A.

The Beauty of This God

It is so beautiful and wonderful for us to have the opportunity to enter into a living relationship with God himself—the most majestically awesome and beautiful being of all the earth and beyond. There's nothing to be compared to him. You cannot add up all of the fine things, the gold and the silver and the precious stones. You can't take all of the beauty of the mountains (which I live in the mountains of West Virginia, and it's beautiful and I look at it every day and I love it), but you can't take all of that and all of the beauty of the sea and the diamonds and the pearls and all that is good and lovely and beautiful and store that all up into one place and say that this is equal to God because it's not.

And it is this God that created humanity. And humanity rebelled against him, shaking their fist at God and saying, "We will not obey you."

The Bronze Serpent: Understanding the Cross

Jesus himself explains this when he says to Nicodemus: "Are you the teacher of Israel and do not know these things? Most assuredly I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not receive our witness. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven, but he has come down from heaven, that is the Son of Man who is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so the Son of Man must be lifted up that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life."

The context Jesus is referring to is the bronze snake found in Numbers 21. The people of Israel grew impatient with the long journey and began to speak against God and Moses. "Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness?" they complained. "There is nothing to eat here, nothing to drink, and we hate this horrible manna."

That's rebellion. God, we don't like your plan. We don't like what you are giving us. We're going to put our foot down like a little toddler and refuse to follow you.

So the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and many were bitten and died. Then the people came to Moses and cried out, "We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take away the snakes." So Moses prayed for the people.

Then the Lord told him to make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole. All who were bitten would live if they simply looked at it. So Moses made a snake out of bronze and attached it to a pole. Then anyone who was bitten by a snake could look at the bronze snake and be healed.

Profoundly simple. Look at the snake on the pole and you'll be healed. But guess what? Not everybody did it.

And this is the exact context. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up—in the middle of the camp, lifted high upon a pole—so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Clinging to the Source of Salvation

Those who behold the Son, who receive him, who grab hold of the Son and say, "I will not go until you see me through to eternal life"—that is not a work, my friends. That is simply clinging to the source of our salvation. That is us saying, "I have absolutely nothing. I'm a poor beggar in the hands of the King, and I simply have Christ. He's all I have. I will follow that Lamb wherever he goes. I will cling to him and I will not let him go. I will swing out on that scarlet thread into eternal life because it is a thread of sturdiness, a thread that will not break, a thread that will get me to where I need to go—where I can't go myself."

The Reality of Eternal Death

But then you have the other aspect: eternal death. Let's look at the end of John chapter three: "He who believes in the Son has everlasting life. He who does not believe in the Son, or many translations say, obey the Son, shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."

This is already a present tense case for those who do not abide in the Son, do not cling to Christ, do not believe, do not look upon him and behold him. The wrath of God abides on them. It's resting on them, ready to consume them as they draw their last breath, and there is no more opportunity for repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. There is no more opportunity to behold the Son, for they have squandered every moment of time that God has given them. They have squandered every single testimony that God has sent them. They have spurned his name and consistently rebelled against him for whatever excuse they might give.

Whoever believes—anyone who was bitten, regardless of what they did before—whoever was bitten would be healed if they looked upon the bronze serpent. Whoever believes in Christ should not perish under the eternal wrath of the Almighty Father, but have eternal life, which is secured how?

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

What Love Really Is

If you ever wonder what love is, love is this: the wholehearted giving of oneself to another, regardless of how you feel about it, for their benefit and not yours.

And that's how God loved the world. That's how he loved his creation. As Romans 5:8 tells us, "But God demonstrates his own love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

The love that is demonstrated by Christ for us is that Christ endured the cross, despising the shame. Even way before that, he entered into humanity, never being dependent before as eternally God, now stepping into the form of flesh, the likeness of sinful flesh. Although he himself knew no sin, he was subject to all of the ails of the sinful flesh—sickness and hunger and exhaustion, disease, all of those things.

But it's even deeper than all of that. Because it's not just sinners that we were classified as. We were also classified as helpless—weak or limited in capacity due to illness or some other limitation. Ungodly—impious, wicked, pertaining to living without regard for religious belief or practice. Enemies—hostile, signifying one who is hostile towards another.

"For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son..."

God is our enemy. It's not that we have made God our enemy; it's that he has made us his enemy. And that's also seen in Nahum 1:2-3: "The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. In whirlwind and storm is his way, and the clouds are the dust beneath his feet."

Just think of that for a moment. The immensity of who God is. Just go outside if you can and kick up a dust cloud and see how high it gets. And yet the clouds are said to be the dust of God's feet. Think of the power and the magnitude of who this God is that we, with little toothpicks, are just pointing up at God, trying to thwart his power or to fight against him in some sort of way. And he's an enemy against you. His wrath abides on you.

But listen—he's giving you an opportunity to behold the Son, clinging to him as if your life depended on it, because it surely does.

A Good God in the Midst of Judgment

Nahum goes on: "Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the burning of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken up by him. The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and he knows those who take refuge in him."

Those who cover and hide themselves in Christ, those who receive Christ—they're given the right to become children of God and to have life in his name.

For God so loved the world—God cannot allow the guilty to go unpunished. He cannot let the wicked go unpunished. So his solution from before the world was that Christ would be crucified. The Messiah would come and be raised up upon a tree.

Galatians 3 tells us, "For as many as are under the works of law are under a curse, for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who does not abide in all the things written in the book of the law to perform them.' Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.'"

Jesus came at that moment in time, was sent by the Father because the Father loved the world to the point of giving his only begotten Son. The Son loved the world to the point of giving his own life, so that whoever looks upon the Son should not perish, but have everlasting life.

The Two Things I Finally Understood

I said in the beginning that there were two things I didn't understand about Jesus that are taught here in John 3:16, and that led to my receiving of Christ. See, I did understand growing up that he was a historical person—that he really came and was born, that he really lived, that he really died, that he really rose from the dead. I don't know if I really understood that he was God or anything like that, but there were two things that really hit me out of a deep state of brokenness.

You see, for the first 23 years of my life, I worshiped me and my physical ability. And God had broken me of it over and over and over again—having 15 surgeries by the age of 30, having five spinal fusions in five years, breaking me down so that all I could do in my weakness was look up and behold Christ. And praise God that I had all of that time in church beforehand, because when my worldview was shattered, I went to the Bible and I said, "Well, let's figure out a new worldview, because mine's obviously wrong. So what's the right one?"

I started with Christianity. I started with the scriptures. I was reading the scriptures and it just hit me like a light bulb.

The two things that are spoken of here in John 3:16 that we talked about are:

One, that I am a great sinner.

Two, that I'm in need of a great Savior.

I was one that would shake my fist at heaven, at God, and say, "I will not bow down to you. I'm my God. How dare you tell me what to do." Despising him enough to not behold his Son, to make up whatever excuse I needed to just get by.

But I recognized that I was mortally ill with a bite of death that would lead to eternal destruction if I did not have a greater Savior. And that Savior's name is Jesus Christ—eternally God taking on flesh to live a life that I cannot live, to die beneath the wrath of his Father because he was made sin and punished as a sinner, so that all who receive him would have a propitiation (which is a fancy word that means a satisfaction of divine justice).

More Than Escape from Hell

We have a satisfaction of divine justice in Christ. And he does so much more than just taking us out of eternal death and placing us into eternal life. We are given freedom from the slavery and the bondage that we had from sin. We will eventually be delivered from the presence of sin.

The gospel goes so deep, but it's so simple and profound. And I hope you see that in John 3:16.

This verse isn't just a nice sentiment about God's affection. It's the entire gospel wrapped up in one sentence—the desperate condition of humanity, the holy wrath of God against sin, the costly love that sent his Son, and the simple yet profound call to look upon Christ and live.

That's what finally made sense to me. And it changed everything.