by Dottie Gravely – [email protected]
I will never forget his comment. The young preacher boy at the youth rally in my teens said, “They might as well have ‘condemned’ written across their foreheads.”
He was talking about people who refuse to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Where did he get such an idea? Well, his text came just below the famous, famous verse in John chapter three: John 3:16.
I recently saw just how famous it became when the well-known Heisman Trophy winner, champion football quarterback, speaker, and author—Tim Tebow—decided to write it below his eyes during televised games. He was shocked to learn that Google had some 90 million hits from inquirers after seeing it on Tebow’s face. It also went viral on social media. (Tebow tells his own story in the short 9-minute YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyxjRcyrj8s, accessed 4/1/2022)
John 3:16 & 17 speak comfortingly about God’s love:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (NIV)
But there is another attribute of God that also must be reckoned with, His justice or holiness. The five-point Evangelism Explosion (EE) method taught by the late Dr. D. James Kennedy in his EE method (point three) explains so well that this latter attribute is the one that gets us into trouble. We have offended God and can never measure up to His perfect standard. (See slides 9 and 10 of the free downloadable PDF from the EE website: https://evangelismexplosion.org/wp-content/uploads/DYKFS_Tract_v2.pdf, accessed 4/1/2022.)
We find this point of Dr. Kennedy’s outline (love/justice) just two verses below John 3:16-17. Read on:
John 3:18-19—Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. (NIV, emphasis mine)
By the way, these beloved verses in John appear in red letters in red-letter editions of the New Testament. That means that Jesus was speaking. These condemnation verses alert us to something that Dr. Kennedy calls a “dilemma.” That something is like a chasm between what we are and what God wants us to be. It is a chasm that we cannot cross on our own; therefore, God solved the dilemma through sending His Son to be our sin-bearer. He crossed the chasm through The Cross and His resurrection.
So those verses in John are where the young preacher boy found his text. Our goal should be to make sure that we are not labeled “condemned.” Those red letters give us words spoken and preserved miraculously for two millennia by one respected as the One He claimed to be. The brilliant mind of the professor, famous author, and former atheist —the late C. S. Lewis—concluded logically that Jesus Christ must have been either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. Lewis became convinced that the third option was true and worthy of his service to Him the duration of his life. Our friends at Wikipedia have preserved this argument so well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis%27s_trilemma#:~:text=Lewis%20in%20a%20BBC%20radio,some%20way%20difficult%20to%20accept (accessed 4/1/2022).
Let the “condemned” search for Him. Let those who already believe speak freely of Him and never keep their Good News to themselves.