“…so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish….” John 3:16

10 March 2024   John 3:14-21    

In the Bible, the opposite of “spiritual” is not “physical.” There were ancient philosophies that regarded the physical world as the seat of evil and corruption, but they are all foreign to the Bible. The Bible’s consistent message is that God created the physical universe, and our world, good, with the clear message that the closer you look at the physical world, the more you will find the goodness of God, and God himself. It is this insight, central to the Biblical witness, that has given us modern medicine and modern science. It is why modern medicine and science arose in Christian culture and not pagan culture. It is this essential Biblical insight that has largely made the Christian culture of the West, a culture in which spiritual and physical go together.

In the Bible, the opposite of “spiritual” is not “physical.”

The opposite of “spiritual” is “dead.”

This message is the heart of the gospel, and the clear message in what is perhaps the most well-known verse from the gospel, John 3:16. Life in Christ, which is the epitome of the spiritual life, is the opposite and opponent of death. To choose anything other than life in Christ is to choose death.

And it is death that so many in our time sense all around them.

People are isolated and lonely – the Surgeon General published a lengthy report on the “Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation” in 2023 (cf. HHS.gov). People are confused and afraid; young people especially are unable to say what a woman is, what a man is, and if they raise their questions they are afraid of being shunned by their schools and their peers. And people are addicted to the very technology that increases and amplifies their loneliness, fear, and confusion – it is one of the problems cited in the Surgeon General’s report (ch. 4, pp. 45ff.). It is the scent of death, and not unnaturally people fear it.

Nicodemus had a sense of the death around him in his own time. When he asked Jesus, “Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” (John 3:4), he likely wasn’t unaware that Jesus was talking about being born again in a metaphorical way. It is more likely he was thinking wistfully: “We are all the sum of our yesterdays, a sad and tainted amalgamation of hopes and fears, successes and failures, sins and virtues, good habits and bad, all adding up to powerlessness and disappointment. We aren’t strong enough to do anything about the things that are killing us. It would be wonderful to break the grip of the past, but how can that be done?”

That is what people think when the scent of death is all around them.

And that is why Jesus says that he came for precisely that reason, viz., to break the grip of the past, to banish the scent of death, and surround us with everlasting life: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish, but have eternal life.” He came to be, and to make us, the scent of life, the atmosphere of hope and joy, wisdom and communion, courage and light in a dark and choking world.

One of the most encouraging things about these days is that for the first time in a long time previously committed non-believers, to their surprise, are finding in the Bible the scent of life that they had previously sought in secularism, scientism, and materialism and been disappointed. Psychologists like Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt, historians like Tom Holland, journalists like Douglas Murray, podcasters like Dave Rubin and Joe Rogan are all, in their own way, finding that the scent of life is in the Bible, and death in the places they had been looking before. They aren’t believers yet, but they seem now to be facing the right direction.

The opposite of “dead” is “spiritual.”

God willing, we are reaching a cultural turning point that is finally turning the right way.