“Make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.” –2 Peter 1:5-7 (NIV)

“Loving the world at large can only be done by loving face-to-face the world that is not so distant.” –Calvin Miller

Without a doubt, John 3:16 is the most quoted verse of the New Testament.  You’ve probably heard it quoted hundreds of times at church or on television or in conversations with followers of Christ.  It goes, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (KJV).

OK, God loves the world and Jesus died to bring eternal life to anyone who believes in him.  What does that have to do with you?  If you believe, there is a wonderful promise here for you.  You won’t perish and you’ll have eternal life.  But that’s not all—if it’s true that we love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19), and if it’s true that Jesus calls us to love each other in the same way he loved us (John 15:12)—then this verse (John 3:16) is more than just a promise to us . . . it’s also a call to action for every Christ-follower.  God so loved the world . . . that he did something about it!  God’s love is a love of action, of sacrifice, of immense generosity.  And it’s how our love should be, too.  God so loved the world—let it be true that every single Christian so loves the world.

A while back, about 55 believers from a church in Florida teamed up to show the generous love we’re talking about to the community of Pensacola.  They used all sorts of practical ways to communicate God’s kindness to the people there.  They washed cars for free, gave away free hamburgers, hot dogs, and cold drinks, and went door-to-door handing out free light bulbs.  Others brought bathroom-cleaning supplies from home and scrubbed about 40 restrooms in local shops and gas stations explaining to all who asked, “We’re just looking for small ways to serve people that say ‘God loves you!’”  John, the pastor who was leading this outreach tells a story of one of the encounters they had that day. . .

After the bathroom team finished, I took them to get a cold drink at a local gas station.  Tina, one of the cleaners, told us someone had snuck a twenty-dollar bill into her cleaning bucket and she was wondering what to do with it.

I suggested that we stick around the gas station and add five dollars of “free” gas to the tanks of the next four people that came in.  The first customer who came in was a little boy.  His dad had given him a small plastic bowl filled with pennies to prepay for what little fuel it would buy.  Talk about divine appointments.  This was one for sure.  When Tina gave him the extra money, the little boy’s eyes practically popped out of his head and neither he nor his father could believe what was happening.

The little boy, his father, and several hundred other Floridians got a little taste of God’s generous love that day, but that’s not all that happened.  The 55 Christians carrying out kind actions in God’s name got a tiny taste of what it means to so love the world like God does.  They reached out beyond the walls of their church and experienced what 2 Peter 1:4 is talking about when it says we can “share [God’s] divine nature.”  They felt and smelled and tasted a bit of what it’s like to give themselves for others.  They saw the surprised looks on people’s faces and they witnessed in many people a hunger to believe in a truly generous God.

In the same letter in which Pastor John told us the stories above, he also mentioned that another young man they’d served decided to trust Jesus was baptized the very next Sunday.  After his congregation witnessed this baptism and heard the young man’s story, other church members started talking about how they too might go out and start serving the world in Christ’s name.  They had seen the results of God’s love in action—and were getting excited, thinking that perhaps, just possibly, they could participate in it, too.  Witnessing Christ’s sacrificial generosity at just about any level is contagious.  It will motivate you and the people around you to action far more than guilt or duty ever could.  And it helps overcome dangerous and negative imprinting.

Overcoming the Negative Imprints

Perhaps you’ve heard of how newly hatched ducklings and goslings connect with the first moving object they see.  Maybe you’ve watched those humorous videos or seen the silly pictures of baby ducks trooping along after a dog or a cat—thinking they were following their mother.  Scientists once thought this bond was imprinted irreversibly on the bird’s nervous system, but fortunately for the ducks and for us, that’s not always the case.  This is important because it turns out that imprinting isn’t just a duck-thing, it’s a spiritual-thing, too.  Many of us who set out to follow Christ often end up mirroring the behavior of the human leaders we knew in the early stages of our spiritual growth; for better or worse, we are imprinted with the outlooks, values, and behavior of those leaders.

Because of negative spiritual imprinting, many of us who set out to follow the generous ways of Jesus often end up living in stingy ways more akin to the Pharisees of Jesus’ day.  Instead of loving the world in ways consistent with the love God modeled in John 3:16—instead of reaching out with practical acts of generosity—we allow ourselves to become imprinted with some rather opposite ideals.  We become sour, judgmental, and argumentative.  We follow the role models who have imprinted their values on us—role models who are found in far too many religious organizations and churches today.  Too often we eagerly parade after these role models, until we too are displaying similar attributes—selfishness, subtle hatred, fear of those who are different, the list goes on. . . This doesn’t mean we won’t frequently speak of God’s love, but what we follow is often more foreign to Christ’s compassion than a dog is to a duck!

In Matthew 23:13 Jesus proclaims, “Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!  You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces.  You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to” (NIV).  Jesus pronounced this false, mean, and miserly spirituality as antithetical to his kingdom of love.  One of the top reasons we believe the watching world doesn’t respect the church in America and Western Europe is that, more often than not, we’ve fallen into the trap of disconnecting Jesus’ message from the caring and sacrificial actions crucial to validating its authenticity.

Steve [Sjogren] makes a practice of conversing with his restaurant servers about their life stories . . . and about their favorite and least favorite days to work.  Almost without exception, they say the same thing regarding their least favorite day to wait on tables: “I hate coming in on Sundays,” they say, “especially right after church lets out.”  They’ll frequently go on to say that church people are often the rudest, most demanding, and least generous people who come in each week.  If they leave a tip at all, it’s 10 percent or less.  It may be that all the servers Steve talks to are just prejudiced, but it’s more likely they’re honestly relating a depressing truth we’d rather not hear.

Getting Out

We hate to talk about discouraging problems without pointing you toward solutions that you can put into practice.  So, beyond being more friendly and generous to waiters and waitresses, how can you overcome the negative spiritual imprinting to which you’ve been exposed?  A good way to challenge the less-than-loving spiritual behaviors you’ve become comfortable with is to get out and spend time around people who don’t believe or behave as you do.  We know this may go against what you’ve been taught, but we think we’re on solid biblical ground here.  We’ve looked at it before, but let’s look at Jesus’ last command again:

“Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth.  Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you.  And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20).

Maybe this seems a little obvious, but how is it possible to go and make disciples without getting around people who aren’t yet disciples?

Maybe you’ve been imprinted with the false notion that evangelistic outreach is for experts, but you won’t find such a notion coming from Jesus.  And as we’re said before, most people who come to Jesus don’t come because of experts.  They come because a caring friend walked the road to faith with them.

OK, here comes another obvious idea.  It’s not possible for you to help a friend become a disciple unless you have a friend or three who aren’t disciples yet.  We’re not trying to make you feel guilty if you don’t have any friends who aren’t Christians.  We just want to encourage you to step out and be a little friendlier and more generous to those outside your familiar circle of friends.

One way to do this is to get around naturally generous and friendly people and learn from them.  This may sound like heresy to some, but one way to go into all the world is to volunteer somewhere outside of your church like the Humane Society, Habitat for Humanity, or the National Kidney Foundation.  Organizations like these do noble things and are constantly on the lookout for warm bodies to help.  They’re also great places to rub shoulders and make friends with people who want to make a difference.  It’s amazing how open these compassionate people can be to an authentic relationship with Jesus.

Another idea is to go take an art class or another of the educational offerings at your local YMCA or Chamber of Commerce.  It’s a great way to build relationships with the people who come every week.  Or kill two birds with one stone by joining a sport team: You can exercise physically and reach out to teammates spiritually at the same time.

If you’ve been living a form of Christianity that’s predominantly inward-focused, it will take some effort to change your mind-set.  Just remember God loves the world so much he sent his Son.  God wants to send you, too.  If you’re willing to represent him, you can be God’s hands and feet and voice in the culture around you.  God doesn’t want you to be content just donating money to outreach experts who are more comfortable doing it than you are.  God wants you to go out to the spiritually hungry and thirsty, because that’s where he went when he was on earth (Matthew 9:9-12).  We’re not trying to fan your sense of guilt or duty.  We just want you to get “hooked” on loving like Jesus.  Here’s the kind of love we’re talking about:

Jesus’ love is active, not passive; it doesn’t wait for people to show up at church.  It’s like the father in the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15.  While the wayward son “was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him” (NIV).  Isn’t that the kind of energy we need to imprint on our lives and the lives of every Christ-follower?  God’s love is directed outward, not just inward.  Luke 19:10 tells us that, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save those who are lost.”  Jesus couldn’t stay in heaven where he was comfortable because Jesus knew his Father’s passion for gathering those he loves under his wings.

If we embrace Jesus’ love for the world, we’ll start acting like him—not one day, way down the road, but today.  We’ll start living differently, and with the help of God’s Spirit working inside us, we’ll begin treating those he loves differently, too.  We won’t do it perfectly, but we’ll do it persistently over and over and over . . . until we begin to think and feel and become more like Jesus.  That’s the goal of our faith and the hope of the gospel—to fully experience the love of John 3:16, you have to partake of it yourself and share it with others.  God loves you so much that he won’t be content until you are so full of his goodness, compassion, honesty, and kindness that it will overflow into the lives all around you and even to the uttermost parts of the earth.  The next reading will talk about how to live the love you’ve been given and share it far beyond the borders of your life.

Getting You Feet Wet

Get five 3X5 cards or sticky notes and copy John 3:16 on each one—in your own handwriting.  Strategically tape the cards on your bathroom mirror, on the back of your front door, on the dashboard of your car, on your telephone at work, and on your checkbook cover or wallet.

Whenever you see one of these cards during the next week, ask God, “How can I so love the world today?”  Pray that God would place someone or someplace specifically on your mind.  When he does, think of some little thing you can do for that person or the people in that place—something that says, “God loves you.”  Then go do it.  When you’re done write what you did on one of your five cards.

Once you’ve written on all five of your cards, take a few minutes to reflect and thank God for the ways he’s making the love of John 3:16 a living and growing part of who you are.

The Reflection Pool

• How might so loving the world change the way you see the people around you?
• Where can you go, or what can you do, to naturally engage with more people who are not yet disciples of Christ?
• How could loving the world become a part of your lifestyle and not just something you making yourself do?