"The Gospel in miniature"
The unprecedented story within the world's favorite verse | Favorite Verses part I
A few weeks ago, I was listening to a lecture about the historicity of Jesus’ life when I was struck again by how crazy the story of Christianity really is.
Think about it with me for a moment: God creates humanity and lives in community with them in Eden, a garden of paradise. He gives them boundaries, but he also gives them the freedom to defy those boundaries.
They do defy those boundaries. They’re kicked out of the garden, into the wild, dangerous, unpredictable world where their very survival will be toil. But, they’re not totally abandoned. God chooses a person (Abraham) and ultimately a people (the Israelites) through whom he promises to save all of humanity.
Things look great…for about 15 minutes. Then, the Israelites begin doing what we all do best: shirking God’s commandments in favor of what seems good in their eyes. (Spoiler alert: it is not Good.)
For centuries, the people of God struggle. They are enslaved; they are exiled; they are victorious in battle; they are routed by their enemies; they have periods of spiritual rejuvenation; they forget God’s commands for generations; they worship other gods; they develop new traditions; they assimilate into the empires that rule them.
And then, in a barn in Bethlehem, comes the most unexpected twist yet: God himself is born as a baby named Jesus. Over the next 30 years, that baby grows into a man who performs miracles, preaches a subversive message, and claims that he is able to forgive sin.
His ministry and his controversial claims draw the attention of the Jewish and Roman powers that be, and he is sentenced to death by crucifixion, a shameful and painful execution. His followers are distraught. This “new kingdom” they’ve been hearing all about—that they’ve even been preaching about themselves—must not look how they thought it would.
And it doesn’t. It can’t possibly, because they’re expecting the political power and military victories that the kings and fathers of their faith exemplified for thousands of years.
Three days later, when two female followers go to Jesus’ grave to anoint his body, they’re met with a scene more unexpected than his shocking death. The stone that covers the entrance to the tomb has been rolled away, and Jesus’ empty grave clothes are folded neatly where his body should be.
Instead of the corpse of their teacher, they find an unfamiliar man dressed in white who tells them, “He is not here. He is risen, just as he said.”
Suddenly, everything comes into sharp relief for this dismayed group of followers. All those cryptic parables; the unfulfilled prophecies about messiahs and suffering servants; Jesus’ submission to his Father, even as he approached a certain and painful death; the resurrection recontextualized everything.
The victory we’ve been talking about all this time is something bigger than the flimsy power structures we’re familiar with; it’s Christ himself, standing on the neck of “the last enemy to be destroyed,” death itself.
What a story! How could you dream up something more compelling? God creates a world, knowing that the humans he designed will almost definitely use their free will to disobey him. But, instead of forcing them to figure out how to earn or work their way back into his good graces, he does the unthinkable: he himself steps into the story and becomes the vehicle of salvation, “the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.”
It’s like J.R.R. Tolkien realizing Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship don’t, after all, have what it takes to destroy the One Ring, so he writes himself in to do what his beloved characters can’t. Or if J.K. Rowling, seeing that Harry Potter is, after all, a teenager, decides to take up a wand herself and defeat Voldemort.
It’s unprecedented, unimaginable, but undeniably (in my estimation) true.
“Favorite verses”
So, where am I going with all of this? I was thinking today about the Bible verses that have become so pervasive in our culture that we can rattle them off almost without thinking.
That’s not a condemnation of any kind—it’s better to have scripture memorized than not, and it’s easy for things to seem commonplace when we hear, see, and say them all the time.
But, Warranted is about thinking deeper, continually contemplating the story of Christianity. So, maybe we know the memory verses, but how often do we meditate on the story behind them?
Or—maybe you don’t know the memory verses. That’s fine, too! You’re welcome here. My point is that memory is good, but meditation is better. Over the next weeks and months, I want to dedicate space here to examining these “favorite verses,” the most quoted and most pervasive passages of scripture in our culture.
I’ve read plenty of articles condemning well-meaning Christians for quoting Jeremiah 29:11 (“For I know the plans I have for you…”) or Philippians 4:13 (“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”) out of context. That’s not what we’re doing here. Instead, I want to use these verses as a jumping off point for deeper study and reflection.
I’m sure no one is surprised to learn that the most quoted, most searched, and best known verse in the Bible appears to be John 3:16:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
It’s easy to see why this verse is referenced so often; for one, it’s incredibly efficient. The story that took me nearly 500 words to tell at the top of this article is summarized in just over 20 here (depending on the translation you read, of course—but you get what I’m saying). Martin Luther himself reportedly called it “the Gospel in miniature.”
I seem to have a memory of receiving a new Bible as a child and immediately flipping through to the book of John to make sure I underlined that verse. It’s a funny memory now, but as an adult it’s heartwarming to think that this specific verse, with all of its depth and significance, was already a priority in my little mind. I may not have fully understood what I was doing or why, but I was doing my best to be faithful with what little measure of faith I had.
Verse 16 comes after a somewhat confusing conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, a Pharisee and “ruler of the Jews” who seeks out Jesus under the cover of night to try and understand his teachings.1
There’s not a clear outcome to this conversation—throughout, the two seem to be speaking different languages, with Jesus making statements like “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God,” and Nicodemus responding with “How can a man be born when he is old?” Clearly, there’s some miscommunication here.
But, Nicodemus is willing to engage, and Jesus takes the opportunity to further explain who he is and what he’s about:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”
John 3:16-21
Next time you hear these familiar words, take an extra moment to reflect on the story they represent.
“Here is gospel, good news indeed,” Matthew Henry says in his Concise Commentary. “Here is God’s love in giving his Son for the world. God so loved the world; so really, so richly. Behold and wonder, that the great God should love such a worthless world!”
From the archives:
Find your next favorite verse with this quickstart guide to Bible study.
Nicodemus shows up two more times in John’s gospel: once in chapter 7, defending Jesus against the skepticism of other Pharisees, and again in chapter 19, helping Joseph of Arimathea take Jesus’ body down from the cross and bringing myrrh and aloes to anoint the body.