For God So Loved the World
16 “For God so loved the world,[i] that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”
I am currently praying for and talking to a young man who is somewhere between an agnostic and an atheist. He thinks there probably isn’t a “God,” but if there is, “God” doesn’t care very much about this world. This young man points to all the violence in the world, climate change, and human atrocities such as the holocaust as evidence for a God that does not care.
Yet, Jesus gives us a strong argument for just the opposite. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only son.” God gave us an answer and a lens with which we should see the world. As famous as John 3:16 is, John 3:17 points to the condemnation that we all deserve when we do not believe in Jesus. John 3:18 tells us that “people loved darkness rather than the light because their works evil.”
With a biblical world view, we can interpret the problems of this world very differently. People loved the darkness and are evil. They have rejected the light and only through the truth of Jesus Christ will people be redeemed with this world upon Jesus’ return.
My young friend’s view of suffering is real. Every Christian has likely wrestled with the problem of suffering in the world. But as we struggle through the judgement of the darkness of the world, we should remind ourselves, one another, and those in our midst, that even in the midst of suffering, God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.