Advent Devotions

Today’s author is Prince of Peace’s Intentional Interim, Rev. Steve Sylvester.

One of my pet peeves is the confusion of number and amount.  For example, I often hear that “a lot of people are annoyed by grammar geeks.”  A lot refers to quantity, and people come in numbers, not quantity.  That would be like saying, “How MANY milk do you have?” which, of course, is incorrect, instead of, “How MUCH milk do you have,” which is correct.  So, in my experience it is absolutely true and also correct that “Many people are annoyed by grammar geeks.”  Another pet peeve is the qualification of an absolute.  How many times have you heard that something is “very unique”?  Nonsense!  Unique literally means one of a kind.  So, while something can indeed be “very rare,” it is either unique or it is not.

Both of these peeves that I daily feed and walk come into play with the word love.  We often quantify love.  “Ooh, I really love you A LOT!”  But love, as I see it, is an absolute.  We love… or we don’t.  And that’s why John 3:16 confuses me.  “God so loved the world…”  “God loved the world SO much!”   “God loved the world to the moon and BACK.”  “God loved the world more than ANYONE ever loved the world” (although this last statement I actually kind of agree with).  What am I to do, then, with this little word “so,” which seems to quantify the love of God which I understand to be an absolute?

The Greek word οὕτως (houtōs) is the word translated as “so” in the King James, RSV, NRSV, etc.  But there are other translations—the Christian Standard Bible, New English Translation, and the New Living Translation among them—that translate οὕτως as “in this way.”  “For God so loved the world…” then becomes, “For God loved the world in this way…”  And the way in which God loved the world was by sending Jesus to us.

And now I need to say something about the world that God loved by sending Jesus.  We often think of the world as the earth, the planet.  But in John’s Gospel, the world typically refers to people who oppose God or who refuse to listen to or believe in Jesus.  So, God loved that world, those people, us people by sending Jesus.  But after that comes the part of the verse that many hold up as the “limiting factor” with respect to God’s love, that it’s only “everyone who believes in him” who will not perish and have eternal life.  I see it differently.  In the end, God’s love, which is an absolute, cannot be resisted.  As long as there is breath in our lungs, even those who believe most fervently can and do oppose God in many ways.  But because God’s love is all-encompassing and irresistible, in the end I believe we will all be folded into that love.

A love that can be less or more is a love that could choose to leave some out.  But love, especially God’s love, is not quantified.  Sometimes we choose to opt out, but God’s love never leaves us out.  I am thankful for that, for myself and for all of God’s good creation, and I hope you are as well.