“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3:16
One of the best ways to begin to properly interpret an individual verse of scripture is to look at the action verbs. These verbs almost always point to the primary meaning of the verse. Of course, context is supremely important, but if you want the gist of an individual verse, take a look at the verbs.
In John 3:16, the first half of the statement has two verbs, loved and gave. Both of these verbs are actions that are done by the same person, God. God loved and God gave. What is the object of these verbs? The world and Jesus. God loved the world, God gave (the world) Jesus. The most important part of this half of the verse is God’s love and God’s gift.
Now the second half; the action verb here is believes. Who is doing the believing? Whoever. That’s right, whoever. No exclusions; not Jews only, not men only, anyone. Whoever believes what? Whoever believes in Jesus.
So, first God loved, then God gave, so that whoever believed would what? Live forever! Never die!
God does two things – He loves and He gives. We do one thing, believe. Then God does something else, He grants us eternal life. It seems strange that with God doing and doing and doing that anything would depend on us doing anything. So that is the question I leave you with.
Does not our belief also come from God?
