Think Wink.

Yesterday I began to retranslate John 3:16. What started with “For God so loved the world…” became “Thus in this way God loved the world…” Today I want to look at the rest of this first phrase in John 3:16. The words examined will be ho theos, egapesen, ton kosmon. Ho theos is the Greek for “the God” or “the god.” Both the article, ho, and the noun, theos, are masculine singluar nominative. Theos is a second declension noun. Now what this tells us for translation purposes is that God is the subject of the sentence because it is nominative. Nominative is nearly always the case for the subject of a sentence. Because theos has the article ho with it, in the Bible, it is meant to be understood as God; he is the God. But we don’t refer to him as the God, we refer to him just as God. Now there is the famous and highly debated John 1:1 where theos does not have an article. Some people, like Jehovah’s Witnesses and Watchtower, take this to mean “god” rather than “God.” There is more going on in John 1:1 that shows that theos is not “god” but rather “God” but it is not pertinate to this post. Mainly, we need to understand that we are talking about God, the God of the Old Testament, the who created the heavens and the earth. He is The God of gods, Lord of lords, King of kings.

Next is the verb egapesen. This verb comes from the verb agapao which means for people: to welcome, to entertain, to be fond of, to love dearly; for objects or things: to be well pleased, to be contented at or with a thing. Nearly all translations that I have read translate this verb simply as “love.” The noun form is “agape” which is that unconditional love that God shows to his people and we show to God and man. It is that love that does not ask for anything in return. One paraphrase, the Ampliphied Bible, takes it to mean “loved and dearly prized.” I like this way of understanding apagao. The verb itself is third-person, singular, aorist, active, indicative. What I love about this is that the verb is aorist. Aorist is a completed verb. God’s love is not incomplete. It never lacks. This is why the verb is translated in the English past tense, it is done. But I think that this verb’s aspect is not complete but I think continuous. That is to say, and feel free to disagree with me on this, God keeps on loving us forever and all through eternity. It is indeed a great love like so many of the paraphrases and translations I mentioned on the previous post stated. It is a complete love that is lacking nothing. It is a continuous love that never stops.

The final part of the verse that I will examine is ton kosmon. This is one of may be two words that really draws a lot of fire in the Calvinim vs. Arminianism debate. Ton kosmon is the Masculine, singluar acusative form of ho kosmos. In Greek, the acusative is usually the direct object of a sentence. It receives the action or the action is performed on the acusative case. So in this verse, ton kosmon receives the egapesen from ho theos. “God loved the world.” Now, ton kosmon literally means the world. But the question is: in what sense of the world is God loving? Is it the whole creation, the whole planet and everything in it, the whole universe? Or is it more focused to be the whole world of animals or the whole world of men? Ho kosmos is certainly used in all of these senses, with all of these meanings. So which is it for John 3:16, what did Jesus mean? Well, I looked at several translations and praphrases, and most just say “the world” and leave it up to the reader to understand. One translation, the Contemporary English Version (CEV), translates ton kosmon as “the people of this world.” Now I personally think that the world does not refer to an elect group, like so many scholars do, nor do I believe that it is referring to the entire created order. I think the CEV has understood it right in thinking that it means “the people of this world.” However, this is not lost when we just translate ton kosmon as “the world.” This is easily understood to mean everyone.

So now I am going to put the whole translation of the opening statement of John 3:16 together. I would translate it like this, “Thus in this manner God loved the world…” Now what I find most significant in this verse thus far is that ton kosmon has rejected God and his love. God has cursed ton kosmon and it is under his wrath (cf. John 3:18; John 3:36). Inspite of his judgment, God loved the world. Just like in Numbers 21, Israel rebelled against God in the wilderness and he judged them with the poisonous serpents. But in the midst of the judgment, he loved them enough to provide the bronze serpent. How great a love God must have that it can triumph over our sin and condemnation to save us. I think this is where the sufficiency of God’s love is taken from in the Bible. I hope that you have experienced God’s love today, he is wating for you.

James White on John 3:16-17

πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων

With All His Warts