Not to Condemn

i had a... very heightened sense of justice when i was in kindergarten. i understood and forgave the teachers for their seeming neglect of certain important matters. But, in that understanding, i decided that something had to be done about it: a responsibility that i could entrust to no one but myself. In short, i was what you call a tattle-tale.

That’s kind of like what’s going on here. Jesus has already baffled poor Nicodemus with all this talk about being “born again” and comparing the Son of God to a rather bizarre incident in Jewish history. Now, he’s got yet another thing to sort out.

John 3:16-21

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.

Back in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That’s called the Fall of Man. They messed things up. But even in their disobedience, God promised them that someone would come to make things right again (Genesis 3:15). Thus, we have this promised Messiah. Over the years, God speaks through certain people to reveal more and more about this person anointed to save mankind from his sin. However, along the way, the Jews developed certain notions about what this Messiah was going to be like—notions that weren’t necessarily what God really had in mind.

One of those was the idea that the Messiah would show up and ‘put everyone in their place’ as it were. This is logical. It pains us when things ‘just don’t go right;’ we want someone to come and fix them. The problem with this is that they were trying to give the Messiah their own agenda. Later on in history, this idea came to be personified in the Gentiles, or non-Jews. The Messiah would come and condemn everyone... everyone who the Jews didn’t like, that is. Nicodemus probably agreed with all of this about Israel tattle-telling on the rest of the world.

i once read that “you can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do” (Lamott, 22). i think that’s true for here. The Jews had made up this notion about what God was sending the Messiah for that was completely missing the point. Jesus rebuffs that idea by saying that God loved “the world,” a term sometimes used derisively by Jews to refer to everyone but themselves, and that the Son of Man didn’t come to condemn the world like they thought, but to save it (John 3:16-17). The real test of whether or not someone is condemned is not whether they are born into a certain family (Jewish or Gentile) but whether or not they have “believed in the name of the Son of God” (John 3:18).

As was mentioned previously... in the Bible, light is associated with righteousness and darkness is associated with wickedness. Jesus says here in verse 19 that people are evil and they loved the darkness that they were in because of their evilness. That’s the reason why the light (i.e. Jesus Himself) had come... to bring light. He, as Messiah, hadn’t come to hold some sort of tribunal to pander to the Jews’ injured sense of justice. God is just. He will deal with all of that... but on His own time.

Here’s what it comes down to. i was evil. i hated the light of God’s Truth because of that. i didn’t want what He was offering because in order to take it, i had to “come into the light” where my wickedness would “be exposed” (John 3:20). i was condemned in my unbelief.  Yet, i don’t understand exactly how, i believed in Christ and God saved me. i didn’t deserve it. Now, there is no more condemnation (Romans 8:1).

And that’s it. i love that Jesus didn’t bow to what was had been expected of Him for hundreds of years. He didn’t hijack God’s plan and set up shop smiting everyone who didn’t do what He wanted. Instead, He died and offered much-needed grace to both the people who had been condemned and those who had done the condemning. He had something much bigger in mind—the redemption of the whole world.

Isaiah 9:2
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.

Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird. New York: Anchor Books, 1995.