John 3:19 - Forerunner Commentary

John 3:19

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Articles, Bible studies, and sermons that contain The Gospel According to John 3:19:

John 3:17-21
Excerpted from: John 3:16 in Context

Now what about this section after, verses 17 through 21, I think we can get this fairly quickly. This is an explanation of the difference between those who believe in Christ and those who do not.

It is kind of telling to me that nominal Christians do not mention these verses with the same breathless amazement as verse 16. Here, Jesus makes a very precise distinction between those who believe in Him and those who do not.

God sent His Son as a human being to make salvation possible for human beings. His sacrificial death, as well as His teachings and His example, provide what a person needs once God calls him to Jesus Christ. So you have the calling and you have Jesus' instruction; you have His example, and you have the commentary by the apostles that help us to put it all together. And combining this with Jesus Christ's sacrificial death, these are all things that we could not do for ourselves. We could not supply Jesus' example. We could not supply Jesus' teaching. We could not supply His death. And then God's forgiveness and grace and gift of the Holy Spirit. All those things had to be provided for us.

So, what He is saying here in verse 17 is God prepares the way of salvation for us and He is calling these various ones out of the world to have these advantages that He supplies and then work with them.

Verse 18 tells us that because he has believed in Jesus Christ and he has accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Savior. He is no longer under the condemnation of sin. That has been wiped away. Sin has been forgiven. So once a person believes and repents, Christ's sacrifice and God's grace lift the penalty. Now he is living freely for the first time in his life with the help of God's Spirit in him, plus all the instruction plus Jesus' example to live the right way, to be like Christ.

But the unbeliever, on the other hand, remains condemned. He does not have access to the forgiveness of God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ because he does not believe in the Son. He has not been called. He has not been regenerated through God's calling and the gift of the Holy Spirit and so he is exactly what he once was. Under condemnation.

Verses 19 and 20 are the crux of the matter in terms of the difference between the two groups. The unbeliever keeps on practicing evil. That is, he lives a life of habitual sin.

Verse 21, then, gives the other side of this. The believer, on the other hand, practices, does, He says, or accomplishes or observes the truth in his life because he wants to please God. This is the change that takes place that people can see later on because before he did not want to do anything that God wanted him to do.

Articles

Focus on the Father
Joseph of Arimathea
Unity and Division: The Blessing and the Curse (Part Five)

Essays

Has Humanity Reached Total Depravity? (Part Two)
Past the Tipping Point
The World's Moral Resentment

Sermons

Are We Redeeming the Time?
The Judgments
Christians in the Spotlight
I Know Your Works
John (Part 2)
Our Walk Out of Darkness Into the Light
The Great Flood (Part 6)
Judging in the Church
The Danger of Trusting in Oneself
Behold Your King!
The Epistles of II and III John (Part One)
Many Are Called, But Few Are Chosen (Part One)
Learning to Live in the Light
Letters to Seven Churches (Part Four): Pergamos

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