Think Wink.

Over the next few posts, I am going to be doing a Greek exegesis of John 3:16. I started to read back through that beloved verse of Jesus last night in my Greek New Testament and began to ponder some issues that I don’t think many people actually think about. So I will attempt to have a fresh translation by the end of the series on John 3:16. The verse is translated by the ESV as, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Let us go word by word and understand what exactly Jesus was saying.

So I want to start with the first two Greek words, houtos gar. Houtos is an adverb that simply means “so, thus, in this manner.” In almost every case the adverb is describing a way or the manner in which the action is being carried out. But what many people do is they miss this meaning of the adverb and go in a different direction. Translations and praphrases like the Ampliphied Bible, Contemporary English Version, Good News Translation, New Century Version, The Message, Easy-To-Read Version all translate it as “So much.” They take houtos to be a quantitative description rather than a manner. While I don’t dispute the truth in what these translations teach, they are missing a serious point. Jesus is describing the manner in which God loved the world, not the quantity of love God has for the world.

The second term is gar. It is a conjunction that simply means “for, since, then; indeed, certainly.” Nearly all of the tranlations I have looked at translate this term as “for.” The NCV and The Message leave gar out of their translation all together, but they are dynamic equivolent and not formal equivolent. But sometimes I think we are missing the nature of gar, especially in John 3:16, as well as other places. It is a word that serves the purpose of connecting the previous idea to the following idea. It sometime can be translated as “because” like Paul uses it sometimes. What Jesus is then wanting us to do in John 3:16 is to understand the idea that preceded it in John 3:14-15 and the Bronze Serpent in Numbers 21. Thus we must understand what Numbers 21 taught and what Jesus taught in John 3:14-15 before we can understand John 3:16. Many people do not make this connection.

So let us put these two words together at the beginning of John 3:16. In my new translation, I will begin the famous verse like this: “Thus in this way God loved the world…” What we now see is that the manner in which God is loving the world in John 3:16 is the same manner God loved the world in Numbers 21. So you must go back to Numbers 21 and read the story of the Bronze Serpent and understand it. Then come back to Jesus in John 3:14-16 and apply what you have learned there.

James White on John 3:16-17

πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων

John 3:16 Part 2