God so loved the world. . . (John 3:16a)
This particular verse of St. John's Gospel is so familiar that it is possible for us to skip over it without really paying attention to what is being said. God loved the world. If we insert this statement into a typical logical syllogism, we might get something like this.
God loved the world. God is good and loves that which is good. The world is, therefore, good.
Yet, a few chapters later, in chapter seventeen to be exact, we hear Jesus saying that he and his disciples are not of this world. He goes on to say that the world hates him and his disciples because they are not of this world.
It seems that St. John is contradicting himself.
It is important for us to understand that Jesus is talking about the people within the world rather than the world itself. It is the people who determine whether the "world" is good or evil. The people can be divided into two groups in St. John's Gospel: those who believe and those who don't believe. This is the central issue in the Gospel. It begins and ends and focuses on the issue of faith. Remember what we heard in the closing words of last Sunday's Gospel reading. But these are written that you may (come to) believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name. (John 20:31) John literally wrote his Gospel to assist people in coming to faith in Jesus. At the same time, he indicates that "not believing" is the only real sin as we read in today's passage: Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. (John 3:18)
So when we read that we should not be of this world, that we should be citizens of heaven, we are saying that we must be "believers" rather than "non-believers." If we place our faith in Jesus and believe, as John intends to prove, that Jesus is God in the flesh, then we are saved, saved because God so loved the world. In other words, God so loved us.
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator