John 3:17

Everyone knows John 3:16, and even non-Christians have a more-than-passing familiarity with it. I can't state with any definitiveness WHY this verse is so popular (Wikipedia refers to it as the "Gospel in a nutshell" in a quote attributed to Max Lucado), but it's not important--I want to write about John 3:17, which states:

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

This is not an unfamiliar verse, but I can safely state that this verse doesn't share the worldwide familiarity that John 3:16 does, but I can argue that it's even MORE important. When we read the verse, some things should jump right out at us:

1. Why DIDN'T God send his Son into the world to condemn us? He certainly had every right to, given the deplorable behavior of the people of Israel in Old Testament times and the rise of the Pharisees and Sadducees, two sects intent upon maintaining their power through the observance of the Law, as well as using the Law as a tool of punishment and behavior modification.

2. Save the world THROUGH him? Save the world from WHAT? 

For a people whose lives centered upon the Law, this is the complete 180-degree antithesis to everything they've lived their lives for. They were told to obey the law, and now told that their obedience is irrelevant. They're told their salvation is in the hands of someone else, when all along they've considered themselves to be the masters of their own fates. This is confusing stuff, particularly when they've been looking for a Messiah in order to re-establish the Earthly glory that Israel had under David and Solomon.

We can be just as guilty today when we look at other people who aren't Christian and smugly say to ourselves, "Their day is coming." The fact that it is makes it incumbent upon us to reach out to those people, because if we just idly sit by and say "Well, I'M saved," we're not even remotely fulfilling the Great Commission. A decent paraphrase of this verse for us would be to substitute the word "me" for the words "his Son" and see what that would mean for us. The answer is simple--the implementation of that answer is all that God asks of us in this world.

Scott