4th Sunday of Lent – 14th March 2021 – Jn 3,14-21
God’s Amazing Free Gift
Today’s Gospel text (Jn 3,14-21) forms part of nighttime conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, one of the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem and a Pharisee by association (Jn 3,1-21). This conversation has moved from dialogue (1-9) to monologue (10-21), where Jesus offers himself as God’s astonishing means of deliverance. Through two Old Testament imageries, Jesus teaches about eternal life (3,14-18) and eternal light (3,19-21) to those who believe in Him (3,14.16.18).
In an analogy of serpent, Jesus presents God’s saving love as a free gift. He recalls how God told Moses in the wilderness to mount a bronze serpent on a pole as a way of healing his people (Num 21,4-9). When the Israelites grumbled against God’s wilderness provisions, the Lord sent poisonous serpents to reveal their mistakes. To experience healing, the Israelites must look to the mounted serpent: that is, they must see the image of their sin and acknowledge their wrongdoing in order to accept God’s gift of life. Like this serpent, Jesus’ mission to the world is one of revelation but, as in Numbers, his arrival is a mixture of rescue and punishment. Nevertheless, those who believe in Jesus lifted upon the cross will receive eternal life (3,15). The process of believing does not mean simply accepting Jesus’ teachings and signs, but personally receiving and surrendering to the full implications of God’s saving love. Unlike God’s saving deeds with Israel in the past, the scope of God’s saving love is worldwide: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (3,16). God did not send his Son to condemn the world, but “so that the world might be saved through him”(3,17).
Jesus, then, uses another imagery familiar in the Old Testament and the Gospel: light and darkness. He is the “true light” who came into the world (Jn 1,9-10). Jesus displays this light first in conversations and later in confrontations with individuals and crowds in the Gospel. While some look upon him and receive his light, most turn away. The reason why people do not accept God’s love and “believe in him” is because of their love for darkness and fear that their evil deeds will be exposed in the light (3,19-20). When people discover the light, they are faced with the choice of either coming into the light and recognizing their sins or running back into the darkness so as not to see their lives clearly. When people welcome the light and confess their sins, they do what is true and receive eternal light. Jesus is never surprised by people in John’s Gospel, but he continually surprises, challenges, and confuses those who see him.
Nicodemus finally did “come to light”. He was in the “midnight of confusion” (Jn 3,1-21), but eventually he came out into the “sunlight of confession” when he identified with Jesus Christ at Calvary (Jn 19,38-42). He realized that the uplifted Saviour was indeed Jesus, the Son of God.
