HOPE! - The Message

In John 3, Jesus tells Nicodemus that God has sent his only son into the world, not to condemn the world, but to save it. He says, "This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life."

Paul reiterated this theme in the book of Romans, saying that "God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him."

And again in Ephesians, where Paul says that “It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus.”

When Paul wrote this to the Ephesians, this message was not an unfamiliar one to them, for John himself became the Apostle to the Ephesians, and served as their pastor. They knew what Jesus had said, because John wrote about it in his Gospel, the Gospel he wrote specifically for them and their neighbors in Asia Minor. They even got to hear the message before he finished writing the Gospel.

And it’s not just in John chapter 3 either that John himself writes of this idea. He continues to proclaim this message of Jesus throughout his book. In chapter 6, Jesus says that “This is what my Father wants: that anyone who sees the Son and trusts who he is and what he does and then aligns with him will enter real life, eternal life. My part is to put them on their feet alive and whole at the completion of time.”

And when Jesus speaks to Martha after her brother Lazarus has died in chapter 11, Jesus says to her that her brother “will rise again.”

Martha replies, “I know that he will be raised up in the resurrection at the end of time.”

But Jesus tells her, “You don’t have to wait for the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all. Do you believe this?”

And she says, “Yes, Master. All along I have believed that you are the Messiah, the Son of God who comes into the world.”

Jesus then tells Lazarus to come out of his grave… and he does, alive again!

Also, when John was an old man, he wrote several letters to the churches, and even in his old age, John was still proclaiming this central message of Jesus. In one of his letters he says that “This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.”

In John 3, Jesus says to Nicodemus that the Light has come into the world, but that people have loved darkness more than light because the darkness obscures their evil deeds. But those who live by the truth will step into the light.

John reiterates this theme again in chapter 17, when he records the Prayer of Jesus:

They know now, beyond the shadow of a doubt,
That everything you gave me is firsthand from you,
For the message you gave me, I gave them;
And they took it, and were convinced
That I came from you.
They believed that you sent me.

Here, Jesus prays that he will be glorified as the Son so that the Father may also be glorified.

He says that the Father gave the Son the authority to give people eternal life.

But what is eternal life?

Jesus says it is to know the only true God and to know Jesus Christ whom he sent.

And John says that Jesus prays, “Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began!”

And finally, Paul again writes to the Ephesians on the theme of stepping into the light, building upon John’s Gospel that he had written for this church and its neighbors in Asia Minor.

He says, “Don’t waste your time on useless work, mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness. Expose these things for the sham they are. It’s a scandal when people waste their lives on things they must do in the darkness where no one will see. Rip the cover off those frauds and see how attractive they look in the light of Christ.”

And he sings a great song of the Early Church:

Wake up from your sleep,
Climb out of your coffins;
Christ will show you the light!