Jesus' Vindicating Love

“This is the verdict:

Light has come into the world,

but people loved darkness instead of light

because their deeds were evil.

Everyone who does evil hates the light,

and will not come into the light

for fear that their deeds will be exposed”

(from John 3:14-21)

The most familiar Bible passage is John 3:16, “for God so love the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.

The idea is that God gave Jesus to earth to save it with love by sacrificing his body on the cross saving those who believed in him.

 This raises questions: What does it mean to believe in?  Did Jesus need to come into the world because of sin? What kind of sin then?

 As I search the scriptures to discover God’s work through Jesus according to John, I need to constantly go back to John’s main theology: there is light and there is darkness and followers of Jesus are called to live in the light.

So, I begin with verse 19: This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.

There is a choice: be part of ending the sins of hate, injustice, oppression and replace them with justice, compassion, mercy, love, equality.

Loving Jesus is accepting his teachings and taking a stand based on them in a world full of evil, injustice and oppression.

Believing in Jesus is making decisions in a world full of misdoing by embracing the call live by compassion, mercy, love, equality.

Now when I read John 3:16 in context with the other verses, I see it as a call to resist evil, injustice and oppression as Jesus lived and taught.

Think about it: What does it mean to you to love light rather than darkness and to “come to the light” each day? (John 3:19-20)