The Gospel in Miniature

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." Martin Luther once said that John 3:16 is "the gospel in miniature."  It is one of the most well known verses from the whole Bible, let alone the gospels. I have seen it on signs at Super Bowls, billboards, church signs, and out of the mouths of new Christians and long-time ones too. It might be the gospel in miniature, but there is nothing else small about it.


Scholars have debated it, but it seems as though the words in John 3: 16-21 come from John the evangelist himself, not Jesus. Here, the author of the gospel is reflecting on a crucial conversation between Jesus and "a man of the Pharisees" (part of the religious authority who contended with Jesus) named Nicodemus. They have this conversation about what it means to be "born again" in the beginning of chapter 3, and then the evangelist John begins to reflect on what he has learned from this interaction.

I will admit that to comment on these verses, John 3:16-21, is quite humbling. Here, I am encountered with, much like the author, the awesomeness of God, the love of God. These verses can stump my speech and take my breath away.

If we agree with Luther that John 3:16 is the gospel in miniature, perhaps we would agree with him when he says "If I were as our Lord God, and these vile people were as disobedient as they now be, I would knock the world in pieces." But God "so loved the world..." God's foolish, blundering, wayward, sinful world...and God cannot bear to leave it in its troubles and disasters, but has done all that God can do to save it. God gave us Jesus. God can not, will not, let us go. We have given God every reason to, and yet God has remained our God. God has remained faithful to us, and given us eternal life. That life begins now, no matter how deep in sin or shame you are. And it continues forever.


"Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." (John 3:17)

Come to Jesus, for the first, tenth, hundredth, thousandth, or millionth  time, to be saved.


*Prayer:

Dark is the stain that we cannot hide.
What can avail to wash it away?
Look! There is flowing a crimson tide,
brighter than snow you may be today.

Grace, grace, God's grace,
grace that will pardon and cleanse within;
grace, grace, God's grace,
grace that is greater than all our sin!

*Grace Greater than Our Sin, The United Methodist Hymnal, 365

In Christ,
Jack