Just One More Verse

Read John 3:1-17 Second Sunday in Lent (Year A) Just One More Verse When Jesus says, “God so loved the world,” it is not a sentimental slogan for coffee mugs and bumper stickers; it is a staggering claim about the very heart of God.  God loves people who don’t love him back, people who would rather stay hidden in the dark, even the very world that will eventually crucify his Son.  If we wanted to feel the shock of John’s language, we might almost hear it like this: “For God so loved the God-hating world that he gave his only Son,” and, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn even this world that despises God, but so that the world that rejects God might still be saved through him.” In other words, God’s love is just that audacious and just that unexpected.  Verse 17 pulls back the curtain on God’s motive: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  The mission is not condemnation but salvation; Jesus doesn’t show up to point out a problem that wasn’t already there, he comes to address the problem we could never fix on our own. In this episode, as we sit with John 3:1–17, I want to invite you to lean in with me to “just one more verse”—to see how this famous passage is not about a distant, generic love, but about a relentless, pursuing, saving love for a resistant world, and for people like us.