“THE GOLDEN TEXT”

Hugo McCord

Someone, before I was born, called John 3:16 “The Golden Text of the Bible.” Our family Bible was the King James Version:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

I. “SO LOVED”

Only one being in the universe can, without any exaggeration, be called “LOVE” (agape, 1 John 4:8, 16). LOVE is many things:

“God Most High,” ‘El `Elyon, Genesis 14:18;

“The Living One Who Sees Me,” Hai Ro’i, Genesis 16:14;

“God Almighty,” ‘El Shaddai, Genesis 17:1;

“God Everlasting,” ‘El `Olam, Genesis 21:33;

“King,” Melek, Psalm 10:16;

“Father,” Pater, Matthew 6:9.

God’s love for sinners prompted him to say, “As I live, ... I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked” (Ezekiel 33:11), and to ask misbehaving children, “How shall I give you up, Ephraim?” and to exclaim, “my heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together” (Hosea 11:8).

Since “the first man Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45) was a “son” of “God” (Luke 3:23, 38), every human being is a son of God. All people, therefore, are “the world” for whom the heavenly Father was willing to sacrifice his special Son. Such divine love

cannot be described:--Jesus Christ does not attempt it. He has put an eternity of meaning in the [Greek] particle houtos, so, and left a subject for everlasting contemplation, wonder, and praise. ... [Sin] must be an indescribable evil [if it] required no less a sacrifice, to make atonement for it, than God manifested in the flesh (Adam Clarke).

Since “there is not a righteous man upon the earth who does good and does not sin” (Ecclesiastes 7:20; 1 Kings 8:46), each one falling “short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), the magnanimity of his love is beyond human comprehension.

Not the least expression of the Father’s magnanimous love is his willingness to consider all Christians as sons and daughters in his family in which Jesus is “the first-born among many brothers” and sisters (Romans 8:29). “Behold! How glorious is the love the Father has showered upon us, that we should be called God’s children, and we are!”

II. NOT “ONLY BEGOTTEN”

Four translations of the “golden text” of the Bible (John 3:16) describe Jesus as God’s “only begotten Son” (KJV, NKJV, ASV, NASB). The translators of four other versions, recognizing that the Greek text of John 3:16 does not have the word for “begotten,” describe Jesus as God’s “only Son” (RSV, NRSV) and as God’s “one and only Son” (NIV, NNIV). But study shows that Jesus was neither God’s “only begotten Son” nor his “only Son,” nor his “one and only Son.”

Many Christians (of whom I was one) were brought to believe that Jesus is dishonored if one does not call him God’s “only begotten Son.” Now I have learned, since Adam was a “son” of “God,” that all of Adam’s descendants are sons of God, including Jesus (Luke 3:23, 38).

Jesus, like all sons of God, was begotten (gennao, Luke 1:35), but that fact is not mentioned in John 3:16. John 3:16 says that, among all human beings, among all the sons of God, Jesus was special. Instead of Jesus being “only begotten,” a phrase added by Jerome (345-420 A.D.), and followed by the KJV, NKJV, ASV, and NASB, Jesus was and is “one of a class, single” (monogenes, from monos,”only,” and ginomai, “come to be”). Jesus was and is one of a “kind, sort, class” (G. Abbott-Smith, 91). He was and is “unique” (monogenes, B-G-D, 527). Webster defines a “unique” person as “different from all others; having no like or equal.” A unique person “is the only example of” his “category” (B-G-D, 527). Thus, in the category or class of all sons of God, Jesus is God’s unique Son. Accordingly,

God so loved the world that he gave his unique Son, so that no one who believes in him will perish, but he will have eternal life (John 3:16).

A parallel to the mistranslations of John 3:16, as discussed above, are the mistranslations of Hebrews 11:17, making Isaac the “only begotten son” of Abraham (KJV, NKJV, ASV, NASV), and his “only son” (RSV, NRSV), and his “one and only son” (RSV, NRSV, NIV, NNIV). The eight translations all contradict themselves in listing the names of eight sons of Abraham (Isaac, Ishmael, Zimram, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, Shuah, Genesis 16:15; 21:3; 25:1-2), and then saying that Isaac was Abraham’s “only son” (Genesis 22:2, 12, 16).

The same Greek word (monogenes) that describes Jesus as God’s unique Son in John 3:16 describes Isaac as Abraham’s unique son. However, Isaac and Jesus were unique in different ways. Jesus was unique in being “God” (John 1:1), in being virgin born (Matthew 1:23, in his teaching (Matthew 13:54), and in his resurrection (Romans 1:4), while Isaac was unique, being the only one among eight sons to be the heir of the “promises” which God had given to his father (Hebrews 11:17; Genesis 12:1-3; 17:21). Accordingly, Hebrews 11:17 should not say that Abraham offered “up his only begotten son,” but

By faith Abraham, being tested, offered up Isaac. He who had received the promises offered up his unique son.

III. BELIEVING IN HIM

The only way that sinners can be saved is to learn from the Bible “that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that” by believing they “might have life in his name” (John 20:30-31). Faith in Jesus by reading the Bible (Ephesians 3:4) and by hearing Jesus being preached (Acts 8:35).

Sadly, “false teachers” (2 Peter 2:1) affirm that faith only brings salvation. On the other hand, the inspired James wrote that a man is not justified “by faith only” (James 2:24). However, the uninspired Martin Luther (1483-1546) rejected the book of James as “an epistle of straw.” Also, Luther presumed to improve on the language of the inspired apostle Paul, in his German translation of Romans 3:28, making Paul to say that “a man is accounted as righteous by faith only without the works of the law.” Moreover, Article nine of the Methodist Discipline has followed neither James nor Paul but Luther, saying that a sinner “is justified by faith only, which is a most wholesome doctrine and very full of comfort.”

But the Bible teaches that faith alone is not enough: “many among the [Jewish] rulers believed in” Jesus, but “because of the Pharisees they were not confessing him, lest they be expelled from the synagogue. They loved the praise from men rather than the praise from God” (John 12:42).

In addition, faith only without repentance is not enough, for Jesus said, “except you repent you will all ... perish” (Luke 13:3, 5).

In addition, faith only without baptism is not enough. A man who described himself as the “chief” of “sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15), when he came to be a believer was yet in misery, neither eating nor drinking “for three days” (Acts 9:9). When the God-sent Ananias arrived, he did not tell Paul that “your faith has saved you.” Instead, he said, “Arise, be baptized, and wash away your sins” (Acts 22:16).

In addition, though faith plus confession plus repentance plus baptism do remove every sin (Hebrews 8:12; 10:14), a continuing mental faith only is still not enough to get a person to heaven! He is instructed, from the day of baptism until his dying day, to “work out” his future heavenly “salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).

To a Christian’s initial faith he is instructed to add virtue, knowledge, self-control, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love (2 Peter 1:5-7). The only kind of faith that keeps a baptized believer, a Christian, on the road to heaven is a “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6). If he leaves his “first love” (Revelation 2:4), “it would have been better for” him “not to have known the way of righteousness, than, having known it, to turn back from the sacred commanded delivered to” him (2 Peter 2:21).

The believing in Christ of John 3:16 that takes a sinner to heaven is not a mental act only. From the examples cited above it is clear the believing in Christ of John 3:16 includes five actions: (1) belief in a person’s “heart” that Jesus is the Son of God (Romans 10:10); (2) making “the good confession” (1 Timothy 6:13) with the “mouth” (Romans 10:9); (3) repentance (2 Corinthians 7:10); (4) being “buried” in “baptism” (Romans 6:4); and (5) being a “faithful” Christian until death (Revelation 2:10). Thus the faith in Christ of John 3:16 is a package word, a carrier word.

In the neighborhood of Topeka, Kansas, is a large, underground silo where ballistic missiles are stored. When one walks out of the elevator that brings him down to the storage area, he is not immediately in the room where the missiles are. One has to pass through the doors of three rooms before he opens the door into the room where he sees the missiles. As there is no entrance to the fourth room without passing through three rooms, so a sinner has no entrance into heaven biblically without the five actions as stated above.

What believing in Christ in John 3:16 means is stated in another way in Hebrews 5:8-9:

Although he was a Son, he learned obedience from the things which he suffered, and after he was complete, he became the cause of eternal salvation to all those who are obeying him.

The opposite of the believing in Christ in John 3:16 is stated in John 3:36:

The one who believes in the Son has eternal life; but the one who does not obey the Son shall not see life, for God’s anger remains against him.

IV. “ETERNAL LIFE”

The opposite of the “eternal life” promised in John 3:16 to believers is that they will avoid “perishing.” The Greek word back of “perishing” is apollumi, a word that sometimes means “to destroy utterly” (G. Abbott Smith, p. 52, Mark 1:24), as of a child being thrown “into fire and water” (Mark 9:22), as when “fire and brimstone rained from heaven and destroyed [apollumi] every one” in Sodom and Gomorrah, and “the smoke of the land went up as the smoke of a furnace” (Genesis 19:24-28; Luke 17:29).

Because apollumi at times means “to destroy utterly,” some say that hell (geenna) is nothing more than a temporary bon fire that leaves both bodies and souls annihilated and non-existent. But they overlook the fact that sometimes apollumi does not mean annihilation, but “to be delivered up to eternal misery” (Thayer, p. 64, John 3:16). Sometimes apollumi does not mean “extinction, but ruin, loss, not of being, but of well being” (Vine).

Those who say that “hell fire” (Matthew 18:9) is simply complete annihilation, and soon overwith, have to dispute Jesus who spoke of “everlasting fire” (Matthew 18:8), of “unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43), and of “everlasting punishment” (Matthew 25:46).

Furthermore, though human physical bodies can be completely destroyed, and return to “the dust” from which they came (Genesis 3:19), no person’s soul\spirit\inner man (Genesis 35:18; Ecclesiastes 12:7; Matthew 22:32; Luke 20:35-36; 2 Corinthians 4:16) can ever die (Revelation 6:9-11). Immortality did not originate when Jesus arose from the grave, but his resurrection brought immortality “to light” (2 Timothy 1:10).

The “everlasting” (Psalm 90:2) God, before he created angels and people, was “the only immortal being” (1 Timothy 6:16). But he, as “the Father of spirits” (Hebrews 12:9), who “forms the spirit of man within him” (Zechariah 12:1), by the word “Father,” is announcing that all human beings are his sons and daughters.

As an earthly father imparts some of himself to every one of his children, so the heavenly Father imparts some of himself to every one of his children. That impartation includes immortality, for the soul of a human being can never die: “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Matthew 22:32).

“God Almighty” (Genesis 17:1) is able to annihilate wicked souls (Matthew 10:28), but for a reason unknown to us “the only wise God” (Romans 16:27), who is “LOVE” (1 John 4:8, 16), says that for some sinners hell will be “everlasting punishment” (Matthew 25:46), with “the smoke of their torment” ascending “forever and ever” (Revelation 14:11).

The opposite of “everlasting punishment,” according to John 3:16, is “everlasting life.” God “has set eternity in” (Ecclesiastes 3:11) human hearts, with result that every normal person loves “life” and craves to “see good days” (1 Peter 3:10) both now and forever.

Two glorious expectancies in heaven’s “everlasting life” were written by David in a prayer 3000 years ago: “As for me, I will see your face in righteousness. I will be satisfied when I awake in your likeness” (Psalm 17:15). Up to now, “No one has ever seen God” (John 1:18). But David was looking forward not only of seeing God, but also of being like God!

The same two expectancies in David’s heart about heaven were in John’s heart too:

Beloved, now we are God’s children, but what we shall be has not yet been made known. We know that, if he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him just as he is (1 John 3:2).

2-23-00