Last Sunday’s Gospel reading included the ubiquitous verse, John 3:16. This verse appears nearly everywhere Christians assemble, and is one of the first we learn:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have
eternal life…” — John 3:14–18 (ESV)
The problem is, we probably haven’t had the most accurate understanding of it. Even so, we can fix that. In fact, especially so. Because “so” is part of the problem.
We likely grew up believing that the word “so” in John 3:16 indicates how much God loved the world. Some English translations (The Message) even phrase it that way to sound clearer: “This is how much God loved the world…” or (Good News Translation) “For God loved the world so much …”
But the Greek word John uses that we translate as so refers to how not how much. The standard definition of it is in this way. Of the 194 times the word appears in the Bible, it is translated as so 114 times.
Just a few examples:
They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet… — Matt 2:5 (ESV)
And they did so, and had them all sit down. — Luke 9:15 (LEB)
For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. — John 5:26 (ESV)
So, we see that John is showing us how God loved the world, because as John recognized, to God love is an action instead of a feeling. We are called to love by doing. We love our neighbor through individual acts of kindness.
We don’t love them by merely thinking good thoughts about them.
John’s point is that God’s plan to save the world from the result of its sin was an act of love that can be accepted by anyone believing in Jesus. We can’t accept a gift that we don’t believe exists, hence the need to believe in Jesus and his sacrifice for us in order to get its benefit.
The idea that God loved the world so much that he did this for us is not inaccurate. It’s definitely a true statement. It just isn’t what John wrote or meant in that particular verse.
That’s why I prefer multiple translations, like in a parallel Bible, so we can see the nuances of some of the phrases in the text. Translation is not math. Despite what we’ve been told all our lives, there is no such thing as a “word-forword” translation of anything. Every translation is “thought-for-thought.” Some try to stay close to the original sentence structure, or syntax, while others allow more leeway in formatting the prose. But context is everything.
And so it goes.
Blessings,
Fr. Austin