So far in the sermon series on John 3:16-17, we have demonstrated that the whole premise behind the Good News is “For God so loved the world.” We have also defined eternal life in a way that is true to the New Testament. And we have found that trust leading to a faithful following of Jesus is essential in our entering eternal life.
In this final sermon in the series we conclude by looking at the word “perish” in the second half of John 3:16. Most Evangelicals interpret this word to refer to the fate of those who don’t believe in Jesus. According to the theology of many, those who don’t believe in Jesus will spend eternity in hell. (In the near future we will look at the concept of hell in some detail. For many Christians what we find will be very surprising.)
Once again, I want the Bible to speak for itself without our preconceived notions determining what it says and means. In John 3:16 “to perish” is contrasted with having eternal life. And if eternal life refers to the life of God we can share and which is best defined by what we see in Jesus, then “perishing” obviously refers to a life lived alienated from God and in contradiction to what we see in Jesus. It is a life without sacrificial love, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, joy, sharing, hope and deep trust in the goodness and faithfulness of God.
What we need to understand is that throughout the Bible, life is contrasted with death. Death is understood not only to refer to the physical occurrence of death (as when the heart stops beating and the brain goes dead). Death is anything which threatens life—illness, famine, war, depression, grief, shock, evil, sin, greed, violence, etc. All these are harbingers of death because they threaten life—life as willed by God, life as joy and love, life as peace and security, life as goodness and mercy. The prophets spoke of people living in the shadow of death. Death was all around them as it sought to break into their lives and world. The focus is on metaphorical, figurative death, not literal death. Such an existence reeks of death as opposed to abundant life flowing from a love of God and one’s neighbor. That’s why Matthew quotes the prophet Isaiah concerning the coming of Jesus: “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, for those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned.” (Matthew 4:16 quoting Isaiah 9:1-2) [The Book of Psalms has many references to death, and most of the time it is obvious that the psalmist does not mean literal death.]
I John 3:14 is very helpful in understanding the New Testament take on life and death. “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death.” Those who love are alive because they share the very life of God who is love. Those who do not love partake of death on a daily basis. They are already dead to what really matters in this life. They are walking corpses as far as the Kingdom of God is concerned.
Paul also shares this idea of life and death. In Romans 6:13 he writes, “No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness.” (“Members” refers to the faculties and functions of the person.)
In Romans 7:13, Paul explains why all his attempts to win God’s favor in his old life as a servant of the Jewish law failed. He writes, “Did what is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, working death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.” (I will grant that Paul is not always easy to follow in his logic. What is pertinent for our purposes is to see that Paul sees sin “working death” in the midst of what we call life.)
And in Romans 8:6 Paul writes, “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” Contrary to what many Christians over the centuries have thought, by “flesh” Paul does not mean the body, sex, or anything physical. He means an existence lived contrary to the presence, will, and character of God. He can also use the word “world” in the same way. Whenever we see “world” in the New Testament we must decide if the writer means world as creation or world as a realm controlled by the principalities and powers of evil. With his Jewish background, Paul saw creation as good. The world formed by the Roman Empire and other evil forces was corrupt at every level.
So we might ask if Jesus also shared this view of life and death that we find in the Hebrew Scriptures and throughout the New Testament. The answer is “yes.” He assumed this perspective throughout his teachings. I want us to look at just three passages, although I assure you we could have a long series of sermons on this topic in Jesus’ teachings.
In Matthew 23:27-28 we read these words as Jesus denounces the religious leaders of his day: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” Jesus sees these religious leaders as being walking corpses—zombies. They are dead to what really matters in this world. They are dead to the truth and grace he brings. And they are dead to the very presence of God in their midst. Like zombies, they are going through the motions of life, but in reality they are dead—so dead that they stink before God!
This is probably the meaning behind that famous and enigmatic phrase of Jesus, “Let the dead bury the dead.” In other words, let those who can’t see what is right before them (God in Christ loving the world into its redemption) go about their business as if nothing is happening. Once again Jesus is referring to those who simply go through the motions of life oblivious to the presence of God in their midst—oblivious to the potential of life lived from, with, and for God—oblivious to anything that really matters in this world and in the eyes of God. These zombies are the proper ones to bury the dead because they are already dead—dead to God, dead to love, dead to life worth living.
The final passage is found in Mark 8:34-37. Jesus called the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the good news will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life.”
This passage is perhaps the most important part of Mark’s Gospel. Everything he has said up to this point has been preparing us for these words. Discipleship means to deny a life of greed, arrogance, and looking out for number one. Following Jesus means to be willing to pay the price of living a life characterized by what we see in Jesus in a world hell-bent on greed, violence, arrogance, and death. In this teaching Jesus offers a paradox. A paradox is something which seems to be contradictory, but on deeper analysis or through experience becomes a profound truth. The only way to save your life is to give it away—to give it away to the will of God and to give it away for others. And the irony is that once we give our lives away in this manner, we discover life in all its joy and abundance. We discover a life worth living. Even if we gained the whole world but lost out on this opportunity, we would gain nothing. Just think of how many of us sell our souls for next to nothing. But here Jesus says if we gained the whole world (something no conqueror in history has ever been able to do) and lost ourselves/our souls/our integrity/our unique chance to be all that God would have us to be and at the same time to experience abundant joy and purpose, it wouldn’t be worth it.
Now, we are afraid to make the kind of commitment Jesus talks about in this passage. We’re not too sure about his call to lose and deny ourselves or taking up our cross and following him. But the reason for our fear is because we don’t trust. If God’s love for us is as great and unconditional as we say it is—if God wants to fulfill our lives and give us abundant joy, then whatever we surrender to God is nothing compared to what God wants to give us. And what does God want to give us? The opportunity to share in God’s very own life, joy and love both now and forever. It’s all a question of trust. Do we really know anyone or anything else (including our own selves) that we can trust to seek what is best for us and who can do it better than God? It’s a no brainer!
So in John’s Gospel, to perish is what happens when we choose to miss out on eternal life—when we reject a life characterized by the love, mercy, forgiveness, justice, joy, and compassion we see in Christ. Death begins for so many people long before the heart stops beating and the brain ceases to function. We live in a world going about its own business under the shadow of death. Death as it is understood in the Scriptures is like a disease—like cancer that slowly claims our lives cell by cell, bit by bit until we become walking corpses/zombies to anything that is really important in this life.
But John says that is doesn’t have be that way. We can enter eternal life—God’s very life as we follow and trust God’s Son with our very lives. And it is in that very commitment, in that very trust, and in that very dying to fear and selfishness that we are born to eternal life—a life worth living now and for all eternity because it is lived from, with, and for God.
