Fr. Stephen: Okay, so we’ll get started here in just a moment. We’ll be starting in the Gospel according to St. John, chapter 3, verse 18, where we left off last time.

To get us caught up back where we were because we ended up leaving off in the midst of a story, and as we’ve said a couple of times already, St. John’s Gospel… the three Synoptic Gospels, St. Matthew’s, St. Mark’s and St. Luke’s tend to be very oriented toward action. There’s sort of a through line. Christ is taking this journey to Jerusalem to suffer and die and rise again. And so it’s sort of propelled forward along that trajectory, whereas in St. John’s Gospel, he takes his time. We talked about how it’s set up actually over three trips to Jerusalem. And so, we get these chapters where there will just be long conversations between Jesus and other people, these stories that are allowed to sort of breathe a little bit, where St John will go a little deeper theologically and that kind of thing, rather than just narrating the events will kind of dwell with it and interpret it a little bit more than maybe the other three Gospels do.

And so, in John, chapter 3, so far, we’ve been seeing one of those stories, one of those conversations between Jesus and Nicodemus, who is a Pharisee and who is one of the members of the Sanhedrin that we talked about, the parish council of Jerusalem, [Laughter] the elders of the people who came from various different parties, Jewish religious parties, but who were responsible for sort of the religious leadership of the people. And what we’ve seen so far is Nicodemus comes out of curiosity to see who sort of this Jesus is because he’s in Jerusalem and they’ve heard these things about him.

And in this conversation, Jesus has really been trying to put the ball back in Nicodemus’ court. Rather than Jesus explaining who he is to Nicodemus, he’s trying to get Nicodemus to really look at who Jesus is, and to commit himself to who Jesus is and to make him come to that understanding himself. And so there’s been a little bit…

Interlocutor: It’s the old teacher’s trick. If the student thinks of it themselves, it has much more meaning; it sticks with them.

Fr. Stephen: Because there’s an action, there’s a commitment involved there rather than just passively being told something and then sitting back and deciding whether you believe it or not. And so Jesus has been answering his questions with questions. He’s been saying things to him that are sort of deliberately a little ambiguous to kind of draw him out and draw him deeper into the discussion. And we saw just before we left off, Jesus, after sort of questioning how it could be that Nicodemus is one of the leaders, he’s responsible for teaching other people how it is that since he’s supposed to teach other people. He doesn’t understand these things himself. Makes a comparison between, as we saw the story in the Book of Numbers where Moses made the bronze serpent through which the people who had been bitten by snakes were healed of the poison when they looked up to it, to Christ himself being lifted up on the cross for men to look to, to be saved.

And then right before we ended, we had, of course, the famous, probably the most famous verse in the Bible, at least in the United States, for people holding up signs at ball games, if nothing else. John 3:16:

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

And we talked a little bit about that at the end of last time. I want to develop that a little bit more now as we go into the following verses, because the discussion continues here. We talked last time a little bit about how what’s established here is that the motive behind Christ’s mission, behind Christ coming into the world to do what he’s going to do, is God’s love. It’s not, God is angry and really wants to destroy everyone, but Jesus is going to substitute Himself. That’s not here, at least. It’s that God loves the world. So there is something, there is something wrong with the world.

And this is something that Nicodemus would have agreed with. Nicodemus, as a Pharisee, is looking at the world and saying not just the world in general, but Judea in particular, and saying something is very wrong here, right? The Romans are here oppressing us. We don’t have our freedom. We aren’t free to worship God. This isn’t like it was under David and Solomon. And in his understanding, when the Messiah comes, the Messiah is going to be part of God’s plan to fix this, to fix this.

And so when we find out that Jesus, as the Messiah coming to the world, is motivated by God’s love for the world, not just for one set of people, but for the world, and that he’s not there to condemn the world, because this is what the Pharisees were expecting. God was going to return to his people and judge the nations. And by the “nations” they meant the Gentiles and by “judge” they meant smite. God’s going to come and strike down these people who are oppressing us, these other nations, and destroy them and make them our slaves and put us back on top.

And so, what Christ is doing here, what Jesus is doing here is expanding or trying to expand for Nicodemus what the Christ is, the idea. We say it so often that Christ came to save the world, that we sort of take it for granted. But what St. John is saying here is that Christ is here for the world, for everyone in it.

Interlocutor: You know how the Samaritan, he said he came for the house of Israel? Did he come primarily for the Jews and when they refused Him, he expanded to the world or he came for the whole world, but first for the Jews? I’ve always been confused.

Fr. Stephen: Well, part of the reason you’re confused is that the Bible says both. It depends which Gospel you’re reading. On one hand, St. Matthew’s Gospel very much presents it as Jesus comes to the Jews first, the Jews reject Him, and so he goes elsewhere. So the Parable of the Tenants, the wicked tenants and the landlord sends messengers and they kill the messengers, so he sends his son and they kill his son, and so he goes and wipes them out and gives it to someone else who will bear fruit. So that’s very much the perspective that St. Matthew gives.

St. Luke is on the opposite extreme. When you read St. Luke’s Gospel and Acts, it’s not even clear that a transition happened. It’s just sort of Jesus comes for everyone.

St. John is really somewhere in between those two. We’ll see elements coming up. With St John, he presents it as Jesus comes to his own and his own received him not so he goes to everyone else. But it’s not causal. It’s not like Jesus intended to just come to the Jews, but that he knew that would happen, so he comes to the Jews first and then to everyone else. So he’s kind of in between.

Interlocutor: The world was on the plate, on the agenda, so to speak.

Fr. Stephen: Right. And so this is another one of those places, I think it was last time I was talking about how the church canonized four Gospels, not just one, and we get these four different perspectives. And this is an example of that. Because what we’re going to see, especially when we get into Romans and Galatians a little bit, and Romans especially, is that for the very early Christians, for the Jewish Christians, they saw this as a problem. They looked at it and said, “Okay, Jesus is the Messiah, he’s the king of the Jews. But it seems like most of the Jews have rejected him and most of the Christians are not Jews. How did that happen? How does that make sense? God made all these promises of the Old Testament to the Jews, did that fail to happen?”

And so, the writers of the New Testament are all sort of theologically praying and thinking and working through that to understand what happened.

Interlocutor: They’re trying to decide about circumcision….

Fr. Stephen: Right and how that all works. And so what St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, the whole epistle, is really his understanding of what happened, and how that happened and showing how it was… spoilers because we’re not there yet, but that it was really God’s plan all along, that from our perspective, the Jews rejected him and he went to the Gentiles. But from God’s perspective, this is what he knew was going to happen and that he still has a plan going into the future for all of this. So we’ll talk about that when we get to Romans.

But yeah, that’s why there’s the confusion on that, because those different emphases are all there from different perspectives on it.

Again, Jesus tried to expand Nicodemus beyond his beliefs as a Pharisee to understand what’s really at stake here. This is also why it’s important that he talks about having everlasting life, because that is taking the idea of what salvation is. It’s not just being saved from the Romans, right? If the Messiah comes and he overthrows the Romans and he gives the Jewish people back a kingdom with a king and they all grow old and die, how has that really… I mean, sure, their life on this earth was a little more pleasant, right? It would still be mainly back-breaking farm work, but they wouldn’t be paying taxes to the Romans, they’d be paying taxes to a Jewish king. Is that really an answer to the problem with what’s wrong with the world?

Interlocutor: Well, the Sadducees don’t believe in a life after death at all. The Pharisees believe that the righteous would come back to life under the Messiah as a reward. But only them. And they would come back to life to live in the Messiah’s kingdom. But it was not entirely clear that they would then live forever. It was more that their life had gotten cut short and they hadn’t received the blessings that they were due for having been righteous and so they were going to receive them later.

Interlocutor: And people born in the Messiah’s kingdom would just live in the Messiah’s kingdom and die in the Messiah’s kingdom?

Fr. Stephen: Right. Same when they lived in David’s kingdom and died in David’s…. Right? And so, Jesus is also trying to expand… what is it that’s really wrong with the world? What is it that’s really wrong? What is it that really needs to be fixed? So that he can then understand that’s what the Messiah is really here to do is to fix that. And so that’s important to have in mind now here as we continue. So John, chapter three, verse 18:

“He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

So we see, I’ll sort of work backwards, another tip off here where St John is telling us that Jesus is God, because again, he talks about believing in the name. And we’ve talked about that before that the name Hashem was a way of referring to God without using the name of God since it would never be used. So the idea of if you’re talking about believing in the name of the Son of God, you’re implying that the Son of God is also God.

Interlocutor: What word is Jesus using here when he says God, when it’s translated as God?

Fr. Stephen: It’s just theos.

Interlocutor: In Aramaic, there would have been the circumlocution?

Fr. Stephen: Well, no, for God he would have just used the equivalent of Elohim. Now, if it said the Lord, that’s where you get into…

But notice, “the one who believes is not condemned, but he does not believe is condemned already”. So Jesus isn’t talking about here about the Pharisees’ belief, “OK, yeah, when God returns at the end, there’s going to be a judgment. God’s going to condemn the Gentiles and vindicate the Jewish people.” So they’re thinking about this as future, this future thing. Whereas Jesus says he who believes in him is not condemned, present tense. So the person who believes in Jesus is a person who is not condemned. The person who does not believe is condemned already.

Interlocutor: Before there’s a judgment day.

Fr. Stephen: Right. Before even he believes or doesn’t believe. Okay, so this goes into one of St. John’s themes that we talked about. The reason the person believes or doesn’t believe…

Interlocutor: Is because of his heart.

Fr. Stephen: Right, is because they are a person who is under condemnation or they are a person who is righteous. So this isn’t saying “Well, if you believe, then on that future point…” This is saying the fact that a person believes or does not believe when they encounter Jesus that they accept him or reject him is based on whether or not they are condemned. The person who rejects him is already condemned.

Interlocutor: So this in a sense takes care of the, “What about the righteous person who’s not a Christian?” What it’s saying here is if a righteous person truly encounters Christ, which many have not, then they will recognize him.

Fr. Stephen: They will recognize him.

Interlocutor: The righteous person who is not a Christian is simply a righteous person who hasn’t encountered Christ properly.

Fr. Stephen: Or not truly righteous.

Interlocutor: Yeah. Or not truly righteous.

Fr. Stephen: And so this is part of what’s going on, the same ideas what’s going on in the background of the story of St. Peter and Cornelius in the Book of Acts. Cornelius is a Roman. He’s not Jewish. He has not converted. But he is a righteous man. And so when God sends St. Peter to his home and St. Peter tells him who Christ is, Cornelius immediately accepts. He immediately accepts because he’s ready, and he recognizes that what he’s hearing is the truth.

Interlocutor: This gets to something that I wanted to talk to you about sometime, you wrote, either on the blog or something. Something against the idea of universal salvation.

Fr. Stephen: Oh, yeah.

Interlocutor: And I’m a big fan of universal salvation.

Fr. Stephen: That was popular with some people and not popular with some people. [Laughter]

Interlocutor: I chose my patron saint, St. Gregory of Nyssa, because he seems to be the most universal. But I’m willing to be taught. But this is, if you believe in the universal salvation or the potential. Not necessarily the fact, but the potential, this seems to be saying that, “No, there are some people who just don’t make it.”

Fr. Stephen: Right. And see it’s tricky from our perspective; there’s a reason why Origen was condemned for his universalism, and St. Gregory of Nyssa is Saint Gregory of Nyssa, because there’s a fundamental difference in what they taught. St. Gregory of Nyssa held out the hope that everyone would be saved. Origen said everyone in everything in Origen’s case, even demons, had to be saved or God had failed in his vision. And those are two very different things to say.

And so, the only person who we’re told in all of the Scriptures found eternal condemnation is Judas. Nobody else, no matter how bad, no matter what they did, we’re never told. And so, holding out the hope of salvation for everyone, praying for everyone, that they would come to the knowledge of the truth, because we know that’s what God desires is that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth is a good thing. But where it runs into difficulty is when we say, start saying that God has to do it.

Interlocutor: Anytime you say that about God, you’re in trouble.

Fr. Stephen: Right. But it’s not always phrased that way. Sometimes it’s phrased as, “Well, how could God be good and condemn someone to eternal damnation?” By saying that, you’re basically saying, well, “If God is really good, then he has to do this”. There are other ways of phrasing it, but that argument is the problem.

And the Fathers saw a real spiritual danger there, if universalism becomes a teaching instead of a hope, because if it becomes a teaching, that tends to promote sort of laxness, a lack of seriousness about our sins and that kind of thing, when it becomes a teaching, “Oh, everyone is going to be…”

Interlocutor: It becomes cheap.

Fr. Stephen: Right. Whereas if we maintain it personally as a hope, that could be a positive thing. We’re told some of the Desert Fathers even pray for the demons. Theologically, that’s probably fruitless, but it shows you where their heart was. And so, the Bible always holds open the possibility for us. And this is another important point. The Bible speaks to us about us. It doesn’t speak to us about other people. When we talk about universalism, we’re usually talking about other people. The Bible doesn’t talk to us about other people. We don’t know where other people stand before God. But what the Scriptures always hold out is the possibility for us of condemnation. And so when it’s talking about condemnation. It’s asking us to look inward, not asking us to look at other people and decide who we think deserves it and who doesn’t.

Interlocutor: Which seems to be the central temptation of religious people. The Pharisees had the problem, and modern-day Christians have the problem of saying, “Well, this, that and the other about those people means those people are condemned.”

Fr Stephen: Right. And that’s why that line is so important in the prayer of Saint Ephrem from the Syrian, “Help me to know my own sins and not to judge my brother.” I need to know, be aware of my sins and not be aware of yours. Yet we tend to do the opposite. We tend to be unaware of our own and aware of everyone else’s, right? When we hear about condemnation, even when we read about Judas, even when we read about Judas I’ve made this point in Holy Week before because a lot of nasty things get said about Judas in Holy Week. The point of that is not for us to all stand around and spit on Judas and say, “Yeah, what a horrible person he was.” The point is for us to look inside our souls and say, “How have I betrayed Christ? He betrayed Christ for money, how many times have I betrayed Christ to get some money or to get something I wanted?” That’s why it’s there. It’s for us to look inward.

And so, the same thing here, what he’s trying to do, the Pharisaic mindset, of course, is we are the righteous. We are not condemned. We are going to be vindicated. All these other people are going to be condemned for the horrible things they do. And so that’s another part that Jesus is here reorienting, that the sign of whether someone is under God’s condemnation or not is not whether they keep your rules or whether they’re part of your group or whether they’re part of your ethnicity. That’s not what makes the distinction here. So verse 19, this gets expanded a little more:

And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

So Christ, the light, the light of God, has come into the world. God has revealed Himself to people. Why? Because he loved them. He loved them. He’s coming to save, to try and save the world, to save his creation. But they rejected him, because they love darkness. Why did they love darkness? Because their deeds were evil. So, again, they have already become wicked. And because they’re wicked now, they love the darkness, and they don’t want God’s salvation. They don’t want to know God.

Interlocutor: That fits with the teaching that I think is even mainstream Orthodox, that I was really struck with when I encountered it, that we all wind up in the presence of God when we die or at the end of the world or whenever… that’s where we wind up. Hell is that some people don’t like that.

Fr. Stephen: Right.

Interlocutor: That they are there, they are in the presence of the light. They’re in with God and they can’t stand it, right? And that’s the next verse, verse 20:

For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.

There’s a reason most crimes are committed at night and when there isn’t one, they’ll talk about “a robbery in broad daylight”. It’s a special occasion, because people do things in darkness, they do them in secret, where they think no one knows. They don’t want those things to be seen and they don’t want those things to be known. Verse 21:

“But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”

So here the metaphor is light, that if you’re actually clean, if you’re actually pure, you could have all the light in the world shine on you and you’re fine. If not, then you’re going to try and stay as far from the light as you can. But this is very similar to a metaphor that’s used in the prophets in the Old Testament that talks about God as a fire and that’s God’s presence, right? And this is in the post-communion prayers. God is a fire consuming the unworthy, consuming what is unclean. And so when judgment is talked about in the prophets in the Old Testament, it’s this fire that comes upon people. And one of two things happened. Either like gold in a fire, it gets purified, and all the impurities get burned away, or if there’s nothing but impurities, it just gets consumed.

Interlocutor: So, included in this idea is the idea that we who are all sinful, to some extent, we will lose our sins. They will be purged out of us, they will be burned out of us.

Fr. Stephen: Right. And St Paul talks about that. He talks about our works. We build on the foundation with either gold and precious jewels or with wood and hay and stubble. Then when the fire comes, the gold and the precious jewels are still there. The wood and the stubble are gone and are purged out. And being purged with fire is not a pleasant process. It isn’t fun. And this is the core of where the idea of asceticism in Christianity comes from. This idea that we try to purify ourselves by stripping away what is unclean and impure in this life, to prepare for that day when we stand before God and face that consuming fire. We strive to get rid of that impurity and then to do good, as he says, to do deeds that have been done in God, to cooperate with God in preparation for it.

Interlocutor: That makes sense, even in teaching history, I have trouble when I get to asceticism. The kids just think, “That’s crazy, why would people do that?” And in our pleasure-loving world, where seeking pleasure is the obvious thing to do and avoiding pain, you don’t even have to think about it. That’s what life’s about. It can be really hard to explain Christian asceticism or any asceticism for that matter.

Fr. Stephen: Right, and St. Paul and the Fathers following him. The main metaphor they use to talk about asceticism is athletics, for that reason. Because that’s one example that people can understand. If you’re going to become physically strong and physically able to perform and do things, you’re going to have to subject yourself to some adversity. You can’t sit at home on your couch eating Cheetos and then go and run a marathon. It’s not going to happen. You’re going to have to do some training. And that training isn’t always fun, and discipline and all these things are involved, but that prepares you, that improves physically. But it contains that idea of sort of as Jesus says, if we judge ourselves, we won’t be judged. We judge ourselves now to try to strive to purify ourselves now, so that when we come to the Day of Judgment, that judgment won’t still be awaiting us at that point.

And now this is where the discussion with Nicodemus leaves off for now. Nicodemus will come back later in the book, but these are the closing words of their discussion. And remember, Nicodemus came to Jesus at night because he didn’t necessarily want anybody to see him associating with Jesus.

But, this metaphor is especially important because remember, Nicodemus comes to see Jesus in the darkness at night, where no one will see him rather than in the light of day. So Jesus again is sort of turning it around and drawing out that point. So now we have a transition here.