There are so many parts of the Bible where we so often stop at one verse and read it in isolation, like John 3:16. What we miss when we do this is that the verse is part of a greater context. In fact, our understanding of the verse is made so much richer by reading the verses around it. In this case, John 3:16-17 are together a fuller thought:
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. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
Even John 3:16 begins “for” — begging us to dig for more context before it.
Belief in God is utterly important. Paul tells us in Hebrews that “without faith it is impossible to please Him.” (again, read more around Hebrews 11:6)
Faith is more than mere belief, it is a commitment that requires action. James explains this (James 2:14-26).
John 3:16-17 are very nearly at the close of a much larger, and a powerful, conversation between Jesus and a truly inquisitive Pharisee named Nicodemus. Jesus is putting the final touches on a point that begins in verse 3, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” “Born of water and the Spirit,” Jesus expounds in John 3:5.
Even a seed is not all that it will become until it first dies and is reborn. Jesus teaches this in John 12:24, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.”
To be reborn, we must first die. This is sometimes referred to as the seed principle. God’s magnificent plan through Jesus was not fulfilled until Jesus died on the cross and took up His life again.
John 3:16 is indeed part of a much greater context. Our more perfect understanding of God’s word is in recognizing that it is a great tapestry with threads, tightly intertwined, traveling throughout — connecting its many parts.
When we tug on the thread of our initial text and follow it along, we come to many passages that are connected (Galatians 2:20; Galatians 5:24; Colossians 2:11-14 — a few of many). I would like to take special notice of Romans 6:1-11:
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul, in his wonderful way, makes the case that we must die to our sins and be reborn to “walk in newness of life.” We crucify the old man with Christ and are born again, freed from our sins. Born of water and the Spirit.
It is this very idea that we see all the way back in Genesis which Peter comments on in 1 Peter 3:18-22. In the midst of this discourse, he writes, “when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. There is also an antitype which now saves us — baptism.”
With the Flood of antiquity, God washed away the sins of the world and mankind was reborn. Man wasted that opportunity and God always knew it would be necessary for His Son to die on the cross of Calvary to take away the sins of those who will come to Him in the obedience of faith — to be born again of water and the Spirit.
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. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. John 3:16-17
This article follows on from a theme started in a recent article: Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth