That the Whole World Might be Saved through Him: But How?

In the Gospel of John 3:14-21, Jesus tells Nicodemus that like the bronze snake lifted up by Moses in the wilderness, so must the Son be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life!  This is what Grace looks like, that one person, in this case one Christians believe to be both human and divine is willing to live, and perhaps die, in such a way that the person’s  relationship with God and life’s actions bring people into (or back into) a saving relationship with God and with other human beings.  “This is the first and great commandment. You shall love the Lord your God with all your soule and mind and strength.  The second is like it you shall love your neighbor as yourself.  There is no Commandment greater than these.”(Mark 12:29-31) 

Grace continues as we hear the familiar words from John 3:16, “for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that evryone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  Eternal life according to the Gospels is “to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom the true God has sent” (John 17:3) and that “in the resurrection we neither marry nor are given in marriage, but we are like the angels in heaven.”(Matthew 28:30) 

The Grace of eternal life for Christians, then, is that we will know God and Jesus Christ, and that eternal life will be nothing like anything we have ever experienced.  Being in the presence of God, wherever that may be and whatever it looks like is sufficient grace for me.  The details I leave up to God. 

John14-21 continues to provide comfort to those of us who believe in God through Jesus: “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the whole world might be saved through him.” As one who believes that God wants to save the whole world, I find this exciting and life giving, a source of Joy.   My joy is short lived, however, as I move from what I consider to be one of the most comforting and inclusive passages in the Gospels, to what I consider one of the most uncomfortable and exclusive passages, without even moving to another chapter, much less another book. 

¹⁸Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.  How do those of us who believe that God loves all of God’s children reconcile this statement recorded as the words of Jesus? 

I truly believe that God wants to save the world and that the “world” in scripture refers to “all people,” thus, that God wants to save all people.  But Scipture clearly says something different.  How can we remain faithful to Jesus and still believe that God can save God’s children around the world who follow different faiths, or no faith at all? 

First, I believe that we who are Christians do, in fact, know God most fully through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and if Jesus brings Grace into the world, that perhaps, this grace is not limited only to those of us who know God in this way.  If this is a possibility, then I am willing to take a chance on letting God out of the box we often place God in.  After all, in his teaching, Jesus invited his fellow Jews to love the Lord their God with their entire being and to recognize their God through him, not to worship Jesus, himself.  He also tells the Samaritan Woman that the “day is coming when the Jews and Samaritans will worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth. 

Perhaps the last section of this Gospel can help us move to an understanding that will allow God to be God:

¹⁹And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. ²¹But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God. 

If our deeds are done in God, then I believe that the scripture has not changed, but that the Holy Spirit has led us to see the Gospel and the World in a new light.  I believe that we have been able to let God out of the box and that God’s Spirit continues to lead us and Guide us into all truth: a truth different from what we once believed, but a truth based on our openness to scripture, tradition, reason and life experience as shown to us by God’s holy, eternal, unchanging and life giving spirit.  

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— ⁹not the result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”(Ephesians 2:8-10)