Whoever Believes

 

September 14, 2025, First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y.

For many of us, all we have to hear are the words John 3:16 and we know exactly what it means.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”

It helps that we have heard these words our earliest years in Sunday School. It also helps that “John 3:16” is a meme that spreads throughout our culture. We see it on bumper stickers, on billboards, in spray-painted graffiti on abandoned buildings, on lapel pins, and of course on thousands of church lawn signs.

At first glance, these are among the most comforting words in the New Testament. God loved us so much and God will not let us die. For reassurance, we might be inclined to skip on ahead to John 3:17 “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

So we can relax and not worry about what is going to happen at the end of our lives.

Unless, of course, we look a little closer at the passage.

“Everyone who believes.”

Oh oh. 

On most days I’m a believer. But not every day. Some days I like to end the day in meditation and prayer. Other days I’d rather close the day playing computer games or laughing At Seth Myers’ sardonic humor and my thoughts are far away from God. On some days I love my neighbor and on other days I’d be glad if he disappeared forever. Like Clarence Darrow, I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.

Have you ever been at the funeral of a loved when your grief turns to unease? You look at Dad in the coffin and you can’t stop thinking: did he believe? I don’t think he ever went to church. I don’t think he was very religious. In fact, as much as I loved him, he could be quite nasty. Did he believe enough to merit eternal life?

Angela Zimmann, pastor, Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, Jerusalem, Israel, feels our pain.

“These are not simply theoretical questions meant for dusty library debates. In emergency rooms, at funerals, in the push-and-pull of parish life, the men and women in our pews struggle with these questions, and the nagging doubts: do I believe? Do I believe enough? What about my loved ones who don’t profess belief? Will they perish? The Bible says so, doesn’t it?”

These are all appropriate questions, especially on Holy Cross Sunday. It was on the cross that Jesus accomplished God’s mission of love to redeem the world. Last week in our study of Luke 14, Jesus said, “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

If we are seeking reassurance of our salvation, that passage is troublesome. The cross is a horrible fate and Jesus’ followers knew it.

Crucifixion was an extremely well-known method of execution of particular (and painful) relevance to Jesus' Jewish hearers. Josephus described the religious persecutions of the Jews under the Seleucid king Antiochus IV, “they [the Jews] were whipped, their bodies were mutilated, and while still alive and breathing, they were crucified” (Ant. 12:256) – Biblical Hermaneutics

After the final defeat of Spartacus in 71 BCE, the Roman general Marcus Licinius Crassus ordered the crucifixion of approximately 6,000 surviving rebel slaves. The bodies were lined along the Appian Way, a major Roman road, for over 100 miles as a horrifying public warning to deter any future slave revolts against Roman authority.  

Happily, we don’t crucify rebels any more and many commentators seek to clarify what Jessus must have meant when he said carry the cross.

Wise commentators say it means to deny oneself, to prioritize God's will over one's own desires and plans, and to be willing to suffer, endure hardship, and make sacrifices for the sake of the Gospel. This concept requires a daily, active commitment to Christ's teachings, involving self-sacrifice, obedience, and a continuous renunciation of the self as the primary focus in favor of His will and service to others.

Right. If that is what believing in Jesus requires to merit God’s love and eternal life, I’ve got to confess: I’m in trouble. Who could live up to those unyielding standards? Even Pope Leo XIV takes breaks from poping to play wordle with his brothers.

Reading further in this passage from John, Jesus refers what may, to many of us, be an obscure passage from an obscure book, Numbers. “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” (Jn 3:14-15)

The story of the serpent takes us back to the wilderness wandering of the people of Israel. After years of roaming, the people are getting tired and angry. They are rebelling against Moses and God and their entire pilgrimage seems doomed. God – in one of the bible’s strangest examples of tough love – sends venomous serpents to attack the people. Many are bitten, and many die of the poison.

“Moses made a serpent of bronze and put it up on a pole, and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.” (Nu 21:9)

As bizarre as the story seems, many commentators believe it is a metaphor that goes to the heart of what John – and Jesus – are teaching.

Jennifer Garcia Bashaw says John uses the bronze-snake analogy to demonstrate how people will receive life from Jesus. When the Israelites looked at the bronze serpent, they saw a mirrored representation of the poisonous destruction they faced from the poisonous serpents. The source of their death became the agent of their healing and survival. So it is with the cross.

“When people look at Jesus lifted up on the cross, they are looking at a mirrored representation of their own destruction—the evil of empire, the oppression they participate in, the violence that beats at the heart of society, the scapegoating tendencies of people who allow innocent people to suffer for sins that aren’t their own. When they truly see what Jesus’ death represents—humanity’s self-destructive nature that drives societies to fear and violence—that revelation, that recognition of the truth will be enough to help them start healing humanity. The cross is the symbol of misplaced blame and oppressive violence, and it is the means by which we repent of the cycle of blame and violence. We cannot be healed from a disease that remains hidden.”

Angela Zimmerman writes that “the original meaning of the Greek word translated as ‘belief’ or ‘believe’ is pistis/pisteo. ‘Pisteo’ is fully grounded in relationship. To ‘believe’ is not simply a mental exercise, but ‘an all-embracing relationship, an attitude of love and trust in God.’ The connection between God and humanity is central to the notion of pisteo.’ The growing relationship between Jesus and the community, the signs and wonders which permeate the Gospel embolden and enable such belief.

“And after this explanation of salvation, we come to John 3:16. It is the next step into the kingdom of God, not the first one. After we see ourselves in the mirror of the cross, then we can come to understand and trust in God. The word we translate as “believe” (pistis or pisteuo) also means “to put faith in/to trust in.” When John uses the word, it carries the connotation of action (to follow); it is not merely an academic or mental exercise. 

Zimmerman translates John 3:16 this way:

“For God loved the world in this way, that God gave the one and only Son, so that everyone who trusts (and follows) Jesus will not perish but will have eternal (abundant) life.

“Salvation comes to those who trust in who Jesus is and follow him, but only after the cross has shown them who they really are and how they participate in the violent, scapegoating ways of all human societies. 

God loved the world enough to show us the truth—that we cannot be healed until we recognize the disease that afflicts us. As John 3:17 says, “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him.” 

Salvation comes not in belief (mere intellectual assent), but in looking on the cross, recognizing ourselves in it, and allowing the truth to heal us so that we might trust and follow the Crucified One.

Amen.