New just this week: this is a fantastic video from SalvationByGrace.org, in which Jim McClarty asks about the common understandings of the most popular verse among modern Christians.

“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.”

That’s John 3:16. Have you heard it? Do you know it? Did you learn it in Sunday school? And what were you told it means?

I can’t tell you how many preachers I’ve heard say that John 3:16 is “the whole of the Gospel in a single verse.” And so they end up reading the rest of the Bible through the lens of John 3:16, and more importantly through the lens of what they assume John 3:16 must mean.

Well I received an email today, from a fellow asking if I’d be willing to make a short video about John 3:16. Because, he said, whenever he presented the doctrines of grace to a friend or a co-worker or a family member, when he got to the point of saying that God was sovereign in salvation, they would invariably run to John 3:16 and say:

“But John 3:16 says whosoever will, or whosoever believes! So doesn’t that mean that anybody that wants to can simply choose to believe? Isn’t that where free will comes into play? Can’t anyone choose Jesus, believe on Him and then receive everlasting life? Isn’t that what John 3:16 means? I mean, after all, if God so loved the whole world, everybody in the world, everybody that ever lived — if He loved them that much that He would give His only begotten Son, then doesn’t He make His son available to whoever wants to believe? I mean, that’s what John 3:16 says, right?”

No. Not actually. John 3:16 is not in conflict with Reformed theology. In fact, John 3:16 works very nicely in our understanding of God’s absolute sovereignty in salvation. But so, so often that verse is pulled from its context. There is no exegesis applied to the verse, and then people assume its meaning. and once you do that, tradition takes over, and people read John 3:16 through the lens of the tradition that says, Every man has an option, has a will, has a choice, and God loves absolutely everybody and He really wants everybody to be saved; so please, just choose Jesus!

Does God do all things solely for love? Is it wrong to confront a non-Christian with the Law?

Should Christians angrily say others aren’t saying enough about God’s love? Did Christ die for love-as-ultimate-virtue?

And are some who say such things guilty — as all Christians are, to some extent! — of salvaging Scripture in favor of a spiritual System?

That seems the main question , underlying all the others, and the subject of ongoing discussion after last week’s column on Speculative Faith, Refuting universalism slanders of C.S. Lewis, part one.

Hello again, Derek — I will try to give some rebuttals and thoughts below.

Yet first, I must also note [...] that for a guy who talks a lot about God’s love, I don’t see a whole lot of that directed toward Christians who also read and seek understanding from the verses that do, indeed, say that the Lord is holy and just and indeed does all things to glorify Himself. Shouldn’t those who are pushing more of God’s “love” show that as much as talk about it?

Secondly, I shan’t try much to defend Todd Friel. He can be annoying. But so can a lot of Christians in this wild thing we call the Church. In the past several months I’ve had in-depth discussions with professing Christians who

a) lied about C.S. Lewis and Narnia,
b) insisted that “turn the other cheek” means letting a battered wife suffer and only pray for God to make the abuser repent,
c) lied about them Calvinists, saying they believed doctrines of demons, blah blah blah (whether you like TULIP or not, that’s just more slander — and yes this was the same guy who promoted letter a).

And yet all of them just might be saved anyway, if they adhere to the essentials of the Gospel. No one should “joke” otherwise just because we happen to disagree with them personally, or even if they still have active addictions or sins (such as to reactionary, System-based conspiracy theories) that are ultimately the Spirit’s job to rout out.

So let’s move past My Guys versus Your Guys, or what-have-you, and might we also move past the argument-from-outrage? You used that a lot in your response, but it’s ineffective against anyone who hasn’t already been persuaded by better means to believe as you do. I could use argument-from-outrage to “prove” anything: man didn’t land on the Moon, God isn’t real at all, it’s “unloving” for God to send anyone to Hell for any duration with or without some “second chance,” etc.

Instead, therefore, I’ll just keep asking you: have you been reading the Bible in a way that respects its authors and Author? Or have you — most Christians do, and I know I have, so there’s no greater shame in it! — read it to salvage for parts for other stories, or else spiritual Systems?

[...]

[W]hat you believe and or I believe and whether it Sounds Sensible is irrelevant here. The fact is that you haven’t attempted to prove your beliefs with Scripture and have wrongly accused me of elevating one Biblical truth over another or trying to find some Secret Knowledge. And yet your continual rejection of the idea that God to this day maintains righteous wrath against the unrighteous — offering a System supposedly supra Romans — is itself elevating one truth, in a System, above others.

A few other issues: yes, I’ve often heard the whole “you’re like the Pharisees” angle. Please do some checking into Scriptures such as Mark 7 and find the real reason Jesus couldn’t get through to the Pharisees. The bad ones didn’t give one crap about the real God’s honor, but hijacked God’s real Law and even made up their own in place of it. The Pharisees were all Law and no love, and that was their problem is the common view only because of repetition and propaganda, but doesn’t match Scripture.

I shan’t belabor that point here, though, only point you to God’s Law and Jesus’ Love at my nonfiction site if you sincerely wish to be challenged by an opposing view that actually shows that God’s real love is far greater than you’d say.

(Excerpt from a lengthy rebuttal comment on Feb. 8 on Speculative Faith. Read the rest of it.)

Yet another potential reason not to care about the Big Game this year: they banned a potential commercial by a Christian group called LookUp316.com. Of course, Fox officials also (again) refused to allow an adultery-endorsing website to air their ad, so I suppose if I had to choose, I’d prefer rejection of both rather than allowing each one.

Here’s the commercial, which now will only air on the internet and become popularized by curious/critical bloggers, such as myself. Actually, there’s nothing to criticize here. The ad is very straightforward. Meant to get you to think, and check out the website — nothing more.

And it doesn’t need to do anything more. If God can inspire entire books of the Bible, with the only goal of fitting into the greater story and pointing ahead to Christ, without mentioning Him or the Gospel explicitly, one can’t fault a 30-second spot for not giving the entire Roman Road.

So I naturally hoped that more information would be available at LookUp316.com, especially the simple explanation for what John 3:16 means.

And it’s mostly good. No heresy here; no false teaching. I wasn’t hoping to find any. For such an opportunity as this — with or without actual Super-Bowl-commercial airtime — I yearn for Christians to gather together enough resources, creativity and gumption and preach the Gospel in new venues. And what is there on this group’s page is enough Gospel to get one saved.

Still I wonder: we’re already telling people about sin that keeps us from God — so why not also say first that all sinners have offended, first and foremost, God Himself, and secondly others?

The root of our troubles is that each of us tends to do what we want to rather than what we ought to.  This is true for everyone, the best and the worst of us.  It is a kind of “law” rooted in human nature.  Every human being at some point “drops the ball” and causes trouble for others.

Sin absolutely is in our nature, and it causes trouble for others. Yet the far worse problem is that we have “together […] become worthless” and fallen “short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:12, 23). That’s a far more serious problem than simply dropping the ball ¹. And LookUp316.com does give that crucial Gospel truth later:

Worse still, we have all wronged God.

Amen! And that’s more than many Christians would say. I just wonder, perhaps, if that should have gone first — if a Gospel presentation must start with God’s majesty, holiness and love, and then contrast what we desire: to use God for other ends, hating Him, and also hurting others.

But regardless, someone could still get saved from the Gospel at LookUp316.com. Thank God they’re out there — even if not airing during the actual Super Bowl / Big Game.

I just hope that not all Christians will try to be the “good cop” and avoid the tougher parts of the Gospel, for at least three reasons:

• Reason 1: I’m sure gracious-but-firm street preacher types can grow tired of always playing bad cop. They could use some backup from the more-popular kinds of Christians, in the public eye. And speaking for myself: I could use this, too.
• Reason 2: It often doesn’t work anyway. Not even Joel Osteen, as hard as he tried on the Piers Morgan (Larry King 2.0) program, could avoid hatred when, despite all his smiles and backpedaling, he dared to say Scripture teaches against homosexuality.
• Reason 3: Jesus Himself was both good cop and bad cop. He talked about the Kingdom of Heaven and the glory of His Father. He also talked about tougher topics such as Hell and the fact that sin is primarily an offense against God’s holy standards.

And yet two facts relating to all this: some Christians repent mainly for their sins against others and are perfectly saved and in the faith — and only later grow to learn the magnitude of their rebellion against God, and thus rejoice even more and thank Him for their salvation.

And yet other professing Christians, once they find out the God-is-holy part, want nothing to do with Him. That’s not my God, they say, wanting only a God Who saves from hurt from Out There and not evil from inside their hearts. And off they go, seeking that elusive God Who is somehow just but doesn’t care as much about their heart-generated sin, and aren’t in the faith.

So is it wrong to leave out the tougher parts of the Gospel? Or for those Christian evangelists who know the tough parts and understand them, and can articulate them winsomely to nonbelievers — are they required to tell the tougher truths of the Gospel the first time around?

Last week I reviewed the mystical, actual-Bible-quenching (despite good motives, that’s the sobering result) devotional Jesus Calling, a top-ten Christian bestseller of last year.

This week I found myself agreeing with rightful criticism of C.S. Lewis for not taking the Biblical reason for Christ’s atonement seriously enough. But then came wrongful criticisms of Lewis with charges of “heretic” and lies claiming he was a universalist, that Narnia is not only allegory but anti-Biblical allegory, and all kinds of other myths and even intentional-ignorant deceits — all of which apply horrible hermeneutics both to what Lewis wrote, and even to what God wrote.

And this morning I’d flipped again, writing on NarniaWeb about how we don’t need to insist Lewis — or much less, the mostly horrible Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie scriptwriters — was actually inspired in the same way as Scripture to enjoy their works.

Why treat His actual revealed Word so casually? How do you think Jesus feels about that? Your Word isn’t sufficient, Lord — I think I’ll go find more from a devotional, or a poorly written movie script … And if you doubt that the script was not only poorly written but horribly flawed in its “theology,” not only compared with the Bible but with the Dawn Treader story itself, I can explain that here, or point to other threads.

Naturally, the perfect supplement to this common argument in favor of the actual Word of God’s power and sufficiency for our every need is a perfect song by artist Sara Groves.

Her lyrics here are not inspired like the Bible. They don’t need to be, to point us back to truth. Her words also don’t need to be absolutely, 100-percent-written-like-a-creed-or-confessional perfect, to move us back to the actual revealed Word of God. Yet thank God for her wisdom.

I’ve done every devotional,
Been every place emotional,
Trying to hear a new word from God;
And I think it’s very odd
That while I attempt to help myself,
My Bible sits upon the shelf
With every promise I could ever need.

And the Word was,
And the Word is,
And the Word will be.

And the Word was,
And the Word is,
And the Word will be.

People are getting fit for truth
Like they’re buying a new tailored suit:
“Does it fit across the shoulders?
Will it fade when it get older?”
We throw ideas that aren’t in style
In the Salvation Army pile,
And search for something more to meet our needs.

And the Word was,
And the Word is,
And the Word will be.

And the Word was,
And the Word is,
And the Word will be …

(The old Word is the new Word is the old Word is the new Word …)

I think it’s time I rediscover
All the ground that I have covered
Like “Seek ye first” — what a verse!
“We are pressed but not crushed,
Perplexed but don’t despair,”
“We are persecuted but not abandoned”
“We are no longer slaves; we are daughters and sons”
“And when we are weak we are very strong”
And “neither death nor life nor present nor future nor depth nor height can keep us from the love of Christ”!

And the Word I need
Is the Word that was,
Who put on flesh to dwell with us
In the beginning!

And the Word was!
And the Word is!
And the Word will be

And the Word was!
And the Word is!
And the Word will be …