God Loved What?

John 3:16 has long been considered to be one of the most important statements in the Bible. Kids have been encouraged to memorize it in Sunday school. Preachers have expounded on it for centuries. Missionaries have been motivated to go to the far reaches of the planet to tell people about it. And football fans have created large signs to hold up for the cameras during televised games.

“God so loved the world,” it says. But who or what is it talking about?

“World” in this verse is the Greek word “cosmos” and in Classical Greek, it had to do with order, arrangement, or adornment. In the New Testament, it may be a reference to the universe or to our planet. A second possible meaning has to do with the corruption that we see in the world. And a third definition refers to the people who live on this planet. Human beings.

This is what the writer of the gospel has in mind when he writes “God Loves the World.” Very clearly, he is saying God loves people. Not some people . . . all people. He doesn’t love some people more than others. He loves all people equally. There are other statements in the New Testament that quite explicitly tell us God doesn’t practice favoritism.

God loves everyone.

At the very end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples to take this message to all the nations. To all the “nations”? This is a different word, but the meaning has an interesting overlap with “world.” Nations in the Greek is the word “ethnos” and really means “people groups.” It’s where we get the words “ethnic” and “ethnicity.”

God loves people. Everyone. All people groups. No matter what language we speak. Regardless of the tone of our skin. No gender more than another. It doesn’t matter who our parents are or were or where we came from. God loves people.

What this means to me is that anyone who claims to be a follower of God should adopt his values because in a certain sense, we represent him to the world. And if we’re not in the habit of loving people, we’re not doing a very good job representing the God who is Love.

The picture below is the cover of a booklet my wife received when she was a young girl in Vallejo, California. She started attending Sunday School at a nearby Presbyterian church and was given this collection of stories from around the world. Published by the Westminster Press in 1956, and written by W. L. Jenkins.