What does it mean to believe?
October 24, 2020
Commentary
No one has gone up to heaven except the Son of Man, who came down from there (v. 13). Sin caused God to punish the Israelites with fiery serpents that bit the people so that many died (Num. 21:4-9). God provided a remedy by commanding Moses to make a brass serpent, so that when any stricken person looked to this serpent, he would be healed. Likewise, our salvation happens when we look up to Jesus, believing He will save us. God has provided this way for us to be healed of sin’s deadly bite. (vv. 14-15). If we don’t know Christ, we make choices as though this life is all that we have, when in reality, this life is just the introduction to eternity. To believe in Christ is more that intellectual agreement that Jesus is God (v. 16). It means to put our trust and confidence in Him that He alone can save us. It is to put Christ in charge of our present plans and eternal destiny. Believing is both trusting in His words as reliable, and relying on Him for the power to change.
God did not send His Son into the world to condemn its people. He sent Him to save them (v. 17)! No one who has faith in God’s Son will be condemned. But everyone who doesn’t have faith in Him has already been condemned for not having faith in God’s only Son (v. 18). Sinful men love darkness rather than light because the closer they get to the light the more their sins are exposed (vv. 19-21). Just as natural light shows up what is otherwise unseen, so Christ, the Light, exposes people’s evil deeds. It is not the intellectual problems but spiritual blindness that keeps people from Christ.
Application
I am so thankful that God has revealed himself to me so that I might believe and be saved.
John 3:13– 24 (NET)
13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven—the Son of Man. 14 Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
16 For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him. 18 The one who believes in him is not condemned. The one who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. 19 Now this is the basis for judging: that the light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone who does evil deeds hates the light and does not come to the light, so that their deeds will not be exposed. 21 But the one who practices the truth comes to the light, so that it may be plainly evident that his deeds have been done in God.
22 After this, Jesus and his disciples came into Judean territory, and there he spent time with them and was baptizing. 23 John was also baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because water was plentiful there, and people were coming to him and being baptized. 24 (For John had not yet been thrown into prison.)
Illustration: Hell is no longer emphasized
Hell, it would seem, has fallen on rather lean times. It used to be that the vast majority of Christians, regardless of denominational affiliation, believed that Hell was a real place where the wicked go when they die. The very thought of the pains and torments of Hell was enough to scare sinners to repentance. It used to be that ministers of the Gospel would preach on the horrors of Hell to persuade reprobates to make a decision for Christ. But not anymore. Most American mainline and so-called Evangelical churches stopped preaching about Hell years ago. Hell made people uncomfortable. Hell was too “old-fashioned.” The topic of Hell was bad for the bottom line-attendance and income. Hell damaged people’s self-esteem. Hell has been retained in our modern lexicon as a convenient curse word, and as a metaphoric description of our worst experiences-as in “war is hell"-but hardly anyone today believes that the word “hell” corresponds to any objective reality. (Quintin Morrow, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Ft. Worth, Texas.