UNPACKING JOHN 3:16

To watch the Facebook video of this teaching, go here (presented at Eternal Living Word Church FEB of 2018).

We all know JOHN 3:16 – we could all probably recite it by heart, but what we are going to do today is exegete this verse word by word. What does “exegete” mean?

“Exegesis is the exposition or explanation of a text based on a careful, objective analysis of ontological and quantifiable truth. 

The word exegesis literally means “to lead out of.” That means that the interpreter is led to their conclusions by following the text of Holy Scripture.”

Eisegesis however, is readings something into the text that is not there and this can lead to all sorts of misconceptions, misunderstandings, false doctrines, even heresies.

In proper Bible study there are three primary steps: three things that you must do for proper Bible study:

1) Find out what the Bible actually says: observation.

2) As a result of proper and accurate observation, find out what the Bible actually means: interpretation.

3) As a result of understanding what the Bible means, find out how to actually apply what the Bible says and means to our lives: application.

~ When you come home after a vacation, and start to unpack your suitcase, you open it up and reveal the clothes inside, and then begin removing them one by one, identifying the article of clothing and then put them in their proper place (a dresser drawer or the closet, the laundry basket, etc).

~ Think of a car mechanic who is rebuilding an engine; he begins to take the engine apart, examines each piece and the condition that it’s in, and determines what needs replacing and what doesn’t.

~ There’s something that’s known as reverse engineering; to understand how a device works, you pull it apart and see how each piece works together with the whole.

In all of these cases, you are taking things out – of the suitcase or the engine – and analyzing them. In biblical exegesis, you will take a verse or a text of Scripture (a verse, a paragraph or an entire chapter) and begin to examine the sentences and words to discover what the Scripture’s words state, what they mean, and how they work together. In exegesis we want to know what the Scripture actually says, not what we think it says.

Let me give you an example: turn to ACTS 20:28 and read this verse with me:

ACTS 20:28
²⁸ Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

Question: Who is it that purchased us with His own blood?

We all know that it’s Jesus, but that isn’t what the text actually says: it speaks of “the church of GOD, which He has purchased with His (God’s) own blood. Which makes this a great proof-text that Jesus is God by the way, because we were purchased truly by God the Son’s blood!

Let me read to you ISAIAH 64:6 and you tell me if I read it right (This might be a bit tricky though, depending on what translation you’re reading from).

But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness[es] are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

Let's turn to LUKE 5:1-5: the LORD in vs. 4 tells Peter to launch out with his nets for a catch of fish; in verse 5, did Peter do what the LORD told him to?

And so, we will begin our examination, what Scripture has to say about these twenty five words and their meanings, as found in JOHN 3:16!
¹⁶ For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

~ JOHN 3:16
“For…”
- affecting, something in regard to, or in respect of someone or something. Something that is intended to be given to another. Having the purpose of something; because of. As an example:

ACTS 21:13
Then Paul answered, What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.

If I say, “For the cause of righteousness, we will take a stand in pro-life rallies.” That means that its because life is sacred and should be protected, we will make ourselves heard for this righteous cause. The object of righteousness is standing up for the pre-born human beings that are alive and given life by GOD.

Let’s consider God in regard to His love and the object of His love.

~ JOHN 3:16
“For God…” 

The world religions and philosophies of various kinds have all sorts of ideas about God; people are wanting to know what God is like – at times, even atheists want to know!

Contained in this book is the revelation of God, granted by God Himself. The Bible, in a sense is an auto-biography, which carries a lot more weight than a biography – if a person writes about himself, they obviously know themselves and are far more qualified to write about themselves than another who would simply study that person and write a biography.

So in God’s auto-biography, which He Himself wrote, using the biblical prophets and apostles as His living pens, He reveals Himself as God Who is the Creator – GEN 1:1 and He is LORD – GEN 2:4; He is the Lawgiver – EXOD 20; God is also the Judge over all creation – PSALM 82:8 “Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations.”

God is the Redeemer of mankind, saving us from our sin by purchasing us by His blood (ACTS 20:28).

For a Four Part series on the Four Primary Offices of The LORD GOD YHWH, check out this TTUF series.

We know that the WORD Who was made flesh, Jesus, is also God: JOHN 1-3,14. That in fact, God is a Triune Being: three Persons united singly as “one” God (DEUT 6:4, the Hebrew word for “one” here is echad, a unified one; essentially a “team”). On “team GOD, there are Three Players that are exactly alike with no variation at all. The only difference is in the three different roles that they play.

JOHN 1:1-3,14
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² The same was in the beginning with God. ³ All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.
¹⁴ And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

1 JOHN 5:7
For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

We know the two primary attributes of God: He is holy and He is love:

1 PETER 1:16-17
¹⁶ Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy. ¹⁷ And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear:

1 JOHN 4:7-8
⁷ Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. ⁸ He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

 This is “agapeo” love; in the Greek there are four different kinds of love: eros (physical love), phileo (friendship love) sterge (love of family or nation) and agape (sacrificial, devoted love to the one loved and in that sense unconditional).

~ JOHN 3:16
“For God so loved…”

Those two words “so loved” are prepositional – that is, they are related to the words that follow and are going to reveal something to us.
When we hear someone say, “that movie was so bad. . .” we are expecting that they are going to elaborate on how bad that movie was, and they continue on to say, “. . . that we walked out of the theater.”

So, when we see that God so loved – we are expecting to find out who or what He loved, and how much He loved. As we have seen already, there are different kinds of love in the Bible, and God’s love is agape – wholly and purely sacrificial, desiring the best interest of the one loved, regardless of the cost to the One who is loving on them.

~ JOHN 3:16
“For God so loved the world…”

Here we see who it is that is loved. The Greek word for “world” is kosmos and it means “ordered system” that is, all of creation; the many worlds that can be found within it – from the living souls that God created in the world of the human race (“all souls are mine” EZEK 18:4), to the heavenly realm including the angelic realm and the angels; the planets, the stars and galaxies, to the planet Earth itself, the animal and plant kingdoms.

In this instance, this speaks primarily of humanity and the realm of humanity which is the Earth. The LORD purchased us with His own blood, redeeming us as well as this world, which is presently, temporarily under the rule of Satan (JOHN 12:31; 2 COR 4:4). The LORD Jesus didn’t dispute with Satan when he said in:

LUKE 4:6
6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.

So now we know what it is that God loved, but we don’t know yet how much He loved.

~ JOHN 3:16
“For God so loved the world that He gave…”

The expression of love is best demonstrated in the act of giving. When we love something, we give our time and attention to it; the same with people – and we give them our hearts, we share our dreams and desires, our hopes and fears; we give them gifts. Giving is loving.

1 TIMOTHY 6:17 talks about “…the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy;”

ROMANS 8:32
³² He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

And our love for God is likewise demonstrated in giving:

PSALM 96:7-9
⁷ Give unto the Lord, O ye kindreds of the people, give unto the Lord glory and strength. ⁸ Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name: bring an offering, and come into his courts. ⁹ O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: fear before him, all the earth.

One could say that God believes in the doctrine of Hallmark cards, “When you care enough to send the very best!”

~ JOHN 3:16
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only…”

God did not give us something that belonged to another or something that He was given by another, but didn’t want, so He passed it on. God didn’t give us a white-elephant gift! This is something of His own.

Any gift that you give to another will cost you something; and you are willing to pay the price of that gift because you are motivated by love to do so!  The greater the cost, you could say, the greater the demonstration of love (or the size of your bank account?). The fact that God gave “His only” makes this love He demonstrates even more precious, because it was His ONLY – He didn’t have others – just the one!

In the movie Tombstone, Wyatt Earp and his allies are going after the outlaws who named themselves ‘the Cowboys’ who killed his brother; one of his allies was his long-time friend Doc Holliday who was slowly dying of emphysema; even as they were out hunting these outlaws seeking vengeance, he was sickly pale and coughing up blood. One of the men asked, “What are you doing out here Doc? You should be resting in bed.”
To which Doc simply said, “Wyatt is my friend.”

The other replied, “Well, I got lots of friends.”
And Doc said, “I don’t.”

Wyatt’s friendship was precious to Doc, because he had so few.

This “only [one]” was precious to GOD and the greatest cost God could possibly pay! 

~ JOHN 3:16
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…”

Now we see the extreme of God’s love! The love that He demonstrated for who? All the world!  This is agapeo love, this is the grace of God! Is the world deserving of this Gift of Jesus? Are they worthy of this? Yet God unconditionally gave His Son as a sacrifice! He gave His only begotten Son, and by begotten, in the human sense, we understand this means our offspring, the children that we have conceived.

Now here is an important point: those who are begotten by us as human beings are our children who didn’t exist prior to their conception. Once conceived, they exist as we do: they are human beings just as we are, because we, like all physical things, create after our own kind. Every human attribute that we have, our children will have, because they, like ourselves, are also human.

God’s Son however was never created – in the humanity of Jesus, God created for Him a body; we read about this in HEB 10:5. But as God the Son, Jesus was never created – so why is this word “begotten” found here? To reveal to us that the Son is just like the Father – Jesus is after His own kind, that kind being God. Just as the Father is eternal, so is the Son; just as the Father is all knowing and all powerful, so is the Son; just as the Father is full of grace and truth, so is the Son. What did Jesus say?

JOHN 14:9
Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?

“Begotten” in this sense is also used to reveal the relationship that Jesus has with the Father; just as any good son is submissive and obedient to their father, so Jesus is perfectly, sublimely and gloriously submissive and obedient to the Father:

JOHN 8:29
And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him.

MATTHEW 3:17
And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

JOHN 5:30
I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.

Some suggest that because Jesus can’t do anything independent of His Father, that He is somehow less than and inferior to the Father. But if we look at this verse carefully we note that Jesus doesn’t seek His own will, but the will of the Father.

What if there were two people who were exactly alike – not identical twins, because they have their own personalities and abilities that differ (even though they look alike). I mean two people that are exactly alike in form, in heart and mind, their thinking, their personality, their character, their conduct and actions. If they were exactly alike, would it be possible for one of them to do or say something different than the other? No.

Such is the case with the Father and the Son. The Son is the perfect representation of the Father – they are One in complete unity, “a unified one (echad)” – as well as the Holy Spirit of course!.

2 PETER 1:17
For he [Jesus] received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

So, we understand what the Scripture says, when it says that God gave His only begotten Son: He gave His Son to the world for the purpose of salvation!

READ ISAIAH 53:1-12, note esp. vs. 10

~ JOHN 3:16 

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever…”

What does whosoever mean? It means, WHOSOEVER! That means, anybody and everybody. If I bring a chocolate cake to church and I say, Whosoever wants a piece of this cake, come and get it; I’m not limiting this offer to any select group of people – it’s “up for grabs”, and so is this salvation that God the Father offers to the entire world, the “entire order” of humanity! Yet even though this salvation is free for the taking, we know that most will reject this offer (MATT 7:13-14):

REVELATION 5:9
And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;

~ JOHN 3:16
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him…”

People all over the world claim to believe in God, that is, that He is real, that He exists, and they think that by doing so, they are approved by God and accounted worthy of heaven.
Question: are demons going to heaven, yes or no?

What does the Scripture say about the demons?

JAMES 2:19
¹⁹ Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the [demons] also believe, and tremble.

I love this verse, because in the Greek, when James says “you do well” the tone is one of extreme sarcasm!

Remember the example of faith that I gave a while back about the acrobat that crossed the Niagara Falls? For those who haven’t heard it, let me quickly talk about this.
[Relate the story here]

So, returning to James once again, we read:

JAMES 2:18,20
¹⁸ Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. ¹⁹ Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. ²⁰ But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?

An interesting passage of Scripture that further elaborates this point:

ACTS 16:31
And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.

Note what it says here: not: “believe in” but “believe on”. So, what’s the difference?

The young man believed in the acrobat at Niagara Falls, his abilities and how he would be capable of transporting a person in a wheel barrel across the high wire, but he didn’t believe on him; he didn’t trust in him, because that would be putting his own life at stake, and he wasn’t willing to gamble with his life that was precious to him.

I can believe in a chair, that it’s strong and stable enough to support me when I sit on it and not collapse from the weight of my body. In fact, we all exercise this kind of faith every day. We’ve sat in thousands of chairs over the course of our life time and not once (or maybe just once) did any chair break on us.

We regularly place faith in our doctors and dentists, in our teachers, in our financial advisors; we place faith in cooks in restaurants we visit; we place faith in airline pilots when we hop onboard a plane that takes us 30,000 ft into the air.

Believing in Jesus for justification means to completely trust in, rely upon, commit oneself to, to express confidence in. And just as we trust in Jesus for our salvation from death and hell, we also trust in His salvation from sin – that is, by expressing faith in Christ, we are trusting that His Spirit will work in our hearts and lives so that we gain victory over sin, step by step, bit by bit – and become a little more like Jesus every day: that’s sanctification!

It’s been said, “Christians aren’t sinless, but they should sin less!”

Homework assignment: ROMANS Chapters 6 through 8 – you will see how justification and sanctification are all part of the same process of salvation.

Such salvation from genuine faith results in genuine spiritual life, thus obedience to the LORD, good works and good fruit are produced as a result of this kind of faith:

JOHN 7:38 

He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his [heart] shall flow rivers of living water.

1 JOHN 5:3-5
³ For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous. ⁴ For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. ⁵ Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?

TITUS 3:8
This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that thou affirm constantly, that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable unto men.

ROMANS 6:22
But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.

~ JOHN 3:16
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish…”

This word “perish” is an all-encompassing word; the Greek word is apollumi and it means “to destroy, to lose, to be in a state of perishing resulting from death, to fully destroy but not in the sense of non-existence, but in ruination; destroyed in the sense of being unusable, unsuitable, non-functioning.”

This is the desperate state that those who don’t receive salvation in Christ find themselves in, not just in this life, because “the wages of sin is death” (ROM 6:23b) and death there means a process of death, deterioration, dilapidation and ultimately death itself for an eternity in hell – a place that God never intended for humanity, but for “the devil and his angels” (MATT 25:41); but humanity that remains under the curse of sin, and not saved from that curse through Christ’s death and resurrection will nevertheless find themselves there. And there are no exist signs in hell!

~ JOHN 3:16
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Glorious, eternal, potently joyous, peaceful and abundant life as a result of salvation and acquiring personal knowledge of God the Father and the Son, and of the Truth of His Word; eternal life is not something we’re waiting for once we get to heaven. Our dear brother Francisco is in heaven right now, so is our brother Spoon – but they both enjoyed the blessing of eternal life when once they became born again; it’s just now that they’re in heaven, they’re blessed with the fullness of eternal life without the burden of a sin-nature that conflicts with the godly nature we inherit through Christ.

JOHN 10:10
The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

JOHN 17:3
³ And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

JOHN 14:6
⁶ Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

ACTS 4:12
¹² Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

1 JOHN 5:11-13
¹¹ And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. ¹² He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. ¹³ These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.

If we are confident in Christ’s finished work of salvation and are confident that we have trusted Him for salvation, then we can have confidence, “we may know” that we have eternal life by believing ON the name of the Son of God.

AMEN!