December 10, 2006

…That He Gave His Only Son…
John 3:16

I’ve often been moved by lavish expressions of generosity. I always thought, for example, that Bill Gates was just another self-absorbed entrepreneur, though on a far grander scale than most. Then I heard about the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Bill has given away more than $29 billion during the last five years to help bring about economic, medical, and educational advances in some of the least developed countries of the world, and he has pledged to give away a great deal more. That’s more money than I have given in the last ten years! But heartfelt generosity need not involve such large gifts, as the wonderful story of the poor woman and her two copper coins makes clear. I myself was deeply touched a few Sundays ago, even more so than by Bill Gates, when I watched one of our children here at the Grantham Church open her purse and place a $5 bill in the offering plate. When I mentioned it to her parents, they informed me that the $5 constituted her entire week’s allowance! During this Christmas season when we read or watch Charles Dickens’ classic tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, anti-Scroogian stories like these can be very inspiring.

No depiction of generosity, however, can possibly compete with the one recorded here in John 3:16. None is more grand, and none more hopeful to the needy of the world. I suspect, in fact, that were we to gather together all the acts of generosity performed by human beings throughout history, and place them on one side of a balance or scale, their collective weight would not be sufficient to match the weight of God’s generosity similarly placed on the other side of the balance. This is generosity beyond compare: “… he gave his only Son,…”

This rather moving, anti-Scroogian portrait of God adds a great deal to the opening declaration that “God so loved the world.” In a day and age marred by indelible feelings of loneliness and of being uncared for, John 3:16 announces, “God loves the world and everyone in it.” God’s love, however, is characterized by neither self-serving ambition nor light-hearted sentimentalism. He is not courting the world solely to see what he might get out of it, and he doesn’t simply have a child-like “crush” on humanity. Instead, God’s love leads him to give voluntarily and sacrificially.

Reflect on these six, short words with me for just a few moments: “…that he gave his only Son.” It is significant, first of all, to notice that God gave freely and willingly. The idea of giving his Son to the world, as John describes it, originated in the very heart of God. Much has been made over the years of the apparent contrast between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New. The God of the Old Testament, some would have us wrongly believe, was a revengeful and hard-hearted deity who got his kicks, during his best moments, out of telling everyone on earth what to do, or during his worst moments, out of killing innocent men, women and children.

Such a view of God calls to mind a certain Hallmark commercial that I saw recently in which a well-intentioned mother sent her impressionable young son—he was perhaps four or five years of age—to deliver a Christmas card to an elderly woman living in a large, old house near the edge of town. The boy had of course heard endless stories about the old woman, and he courageously started off on this frightening journey, not knowing for sure if he would safely return. The woman was cranky and nasty, so he had heard, and she had no doubted skinned and eaten children like him before. Why in the world, he wondered, would his mother ask him to risk his life in such a way? Didn’t she care about him?

The person he met when he arrived at the old house, however, was vastly different from what his preconceived impressions led him to expect. He was greeted with hot chocolate, warm cookies, and a gentle smile. And when his visit ended, he headed home with a pervasive longing in his own heart to return to the old house and its lone occupant whenever the opportunity arose. The woman, the boy vividly realized, was not at all what he had envisioned.

It is often that way with our impressions of God. Such impressions are at times old, stuffy and grossly unreliable, often the product of theological hearsay, stories that we have heard since childhood, or even relationships we have had with our earthly parents or other significant people. God is stingy and hard to please. He lives at the edge of town in a large, old house, rarely showing up in public, and certainly not when I need him.. Were it not for Jesus, who somehow managed to soften his Father’s cold and hardened heart, our very welfare would hang precariously on the brink. So we sometimes think, and so have many others before us. In fact, it was in part such a view of God that hundreds of years ago led to the esteemed role given to the Virgin Mary in much of Christian Theology. In a day and age characterized by fear, believers thought to themselves: “If we can’t go directly to the Father, we can go through the Son. And if we are too fearful to go through the Son, we can always go through his gentle and gracious mother, Mary.”

John, with remarkable directness, paints a different picture. Without dismissing much needed ideas of God’s holiness and majesty—we never want to trivialize God or turn him into some feeble projection of our own human longings—John makes it clear that the idea of giving originated in the loving heart of God himself. No coercion was required. No arm-twisting. No pathetic rituals like those performed by the infamous prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel when they sought in vain to gain their gods’ attention. No petitions signed, sealed and delivered by earthly subjects to their heavenly representatives. We find here nothing of the sort. God loved the world so much that he himself gave. It was his idea, his compassion, and his gracious heart that led to history’s most astounding outpouring of generosity. God loved the world so much that he gave….

God gave freely, and God gave liberally. God gave “his only Son.” The phrase, though only three words in length, is both simple and mysterious. The mysterious element has been made even more mysterious over the years by the familiar reading found in the King James Version: “…his only begotten Son.” The word “begotten” sounds rather puzzling, doesn’t it—what does it even mean?—and its appearance here has more to do with an ancient controversy in church history than with the original text of John 3:16! Just a few centuries after the time of Jesus, early theologians debated and even argued about who Jesus actually was. Was he human, divine or some combination of the two? Was he equal to the Father or lesser than him? Was he of the same essence as the Father or was he made by him? In order to safeguard what became the official position of the church—that Jesus was fully human and fully divine—St. Jerome, the man responsible for making the Latin translation of the Bible that served as the standard text for the church throughout the years, stretched the original word a bit in this particular case in order to emphasize that Jesus was “born” of the Father, not simply created by him. The word that John used actually means “only” or, at times, “unique.” God gave his only Son.

Elsewhere in both the Old and New Testaments, various writers sometimes refer to the people of God as his sons and daughters. “You are children of the Lord your God,” the Israelites are told in Deuteronomy 14:1, and years later the prophet Isaiah announces on God’s behalf: “…bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth…” (43:6). Both Matthew and Luke likewise refer to their readers as children of “your Father” or “the Most High” (Matt. 5:45; Luke 6:35), and Paul uses similar imagery on several occasions (Rom. 8:14, 19; 9:26; 2 Cor. 6:18; Gal. 3:26; 4:6-7). “You are no longer a slave,” he informs the believers in Galatia, but “a child” (4:7). In each case, however, we humans become sons and daughters of God because of another “Son.” That Son is unique—one of a kind—as Paul so eloquently explains to the believers in Colossae. John says as much here in 3:16. Jesus is different. Jesus, who by his own testimony is one with the Father, is uniquely God’s Son.

But what does all of this tell us about God and his love? Commentators have for years noted significant parallels between John 3:16 and the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22. In that familiar story, God longs to know the extent of Abraham’s devotion to him, so he asks him to sacrifice—to give up—his most treasured possession: Isaac. Isaac, the writer informs us, was Abraham’s only son, although we know that that was not biologically true. Isaac was, however, Abraham’s only son of the promise, the only son through which God’s saving work would occur. Isaac, therefore, was unique—everything that Abraham believed in and hoped for rested upon this young man. Isaac was Abraham’s life, and Abraham loved him.

Yet Abraham loved God more, so he took this “only” son to a secluded hill in order to sacrifice him. King David once commented, “I will not offer burnt offerings that cost me nothing” (1 Chron. 21:24). Abraham demonstrated that same conviction to the extreme. He agreed even to give up his son, Isaac—youthful, cherished, irreplaceable Isaac. How much did Abraham love God? Enough to give up everything. And God, it seems to John, feels much the same way about the world. I can easily imagine John writing this third chapter of his gospel with a copy of Genesis 22 resting somewhere on his desk. Moved to tears by the story of Abraham and Isaac, John wonders to himself, “How much does God love the world?” “How much does God love people of all shapes, sizes and colors?” “How much does God love you and me?” Even more than Abraham loved God, John realizes. So much that he refused to hold anything back. So much that he played by the same rules announced by David: he gave something—someone—that cost him more than you or I could ever imagine. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son….” His only perfect, unblemished Son.

I once heard Brennan Manning tell the story of two Marine corporals named Jack Robison and Tim Casey. Robison and Casey had been close friends for nearly a year, and they fought together during the Korean War. On one particular occasion during the winter of 1952, Robison and Casey found themselves crouched in a bunker some one hundred yards inside enemy lines. A few minutes after midnight, as the two friends huddled together, a hand grenade landed directly between them. Casey spotted it first and, without hesitation, fell on the grenade. It detonated instantly, Casey’s body absorbing the full force of the explosion. Suddenly, he winked at Robison and died.

Four years later, Jack Robison entered the priesthood. As part of his vows, he changed his name to symbolize his new life in Christ. In the hopes of modeling Tim Casey’s spirit of self-sacrifice, Jack changed his name to Casey—Father Casey Robison. He also befriended Casey’s widowed mother who lived in Chicago, spending time with her whenever possible.

One summer, Father Robison paid a surprise visit to Mrs. Casey. He was tired and depressed, and after supper reminisced with Mrs. Casey about the days when her son was still alive. Suddenly he blurted out, “Ma, do you think Casey really loved me?” She laughed. “Oh, Jack, ya sure got a way with ya,” she replied in her thick, Irish accent. “Ya can’t ever be serious.” “I am serious,” Robison replied. With tears in her eyes, she replied, “Now stop funnin’ me, Jack.” “I’m not funnin’, Ma.” She looked at him in disbelief, and her fear turned to anger. With mounting aggravation, she screamed, “In the name of heaven, Jack, what more could he ha’ done fer ya?” Then she sank down into her chair, covered her face, and wept. Over and over again she asked, “What more could he ha’ done fer ya?”

After a few minutes that seemed like an eternity to Jack, old Mrs. Casey looked up at him, smiled, and said softly, “Ah, Jack, I guess we all need those reassurances from time to time.” And in that moment, Father Jack Robison gave up his insecurity and, in Manning’s words, “found the peace that comes with genuine trust.”

Mrs. Casey was right, wasn’t she? We all need those reassurances from time to time. Reassurances that we are important. Cared for. Loved. Reassurances that God is good, and that he always has our best interests in mind, even during the worst of times. Reassurances that God loves us and, as the following lines in John 3:16 point out, that he fell on the grenade in the trenches so that you and I might live. “For God so loved the world—For God so loved you and me—that he gave his only Son….” Honestly, what more could he have done for us?