Attack on John 3.16

The book Love Wins by Rob Bell reads as an attack on John 3.16. Bell says you don’t necessarily need to believe and in the end (probably) no one will perish. He calls the gospel, as traditionally understood, ‘misguided and toxic’.

We must ask first why Bell has become so uncomfortable with (perhaps ‘ashamed of’) what Christianity stands for.

Therapy culture

During the last century, with secularism and Freud, Western society has moved from a moral culture to a therapy culture. Good is no longer defined in moral terms. Good is now generally what ‘feels good’. Whereas 50 years ago ordinary people aimed to be ‘decent’ people, now the goal is ‘to enjoy myself’. So people now see things differently. ‘O poor old Bin Laden’, says the liberal / therapy outlook, ‘shot dead without the chance of phoning a lawyer!’ That he gloried in the fact that he was behind the deaths of 3,000 people on 9/11, and therefore morally deserved to die, doesn’t register. That moral way of seeing things is very unfashionable.

But the moral view of the world, answerable to a holy God, is Jesus’s view of the world (John 3.19,20) and the view of the world upon which the gospel is predicated. Mankind’s central problem is a moral one — the problem of our sin. ‘Feel good’ has rubbed off on Bell. The gospel does not make a ‘good story’ for him. Hence he attacks it and rewrites it.

Emergent church

Bell’s background is in ‘the emergent church’ (EMC), which is difficult to define. Its promoters say it’s not a movement with cut and dried ideas, but a ‘conversation’. Uncomfortable with the ‘arrogant certainty’ of evangelicalism, EMC has bought into postmodernism. Religious experience takes priority. ‘Truth’ is more about the journey than coming to any conclusions. And EMC uses many ideas to move Christians away from propositional truth.

In Love Wins, Bell uses the classic posing of false dilemmas. ‘What happened on the cross? Is it the end of the sacrificial system or a broken relationship that has been reconciled or a guilty defendant who’s been set free or a battle that’s been won or redeeming of something that’s been lost? Which is it? Which perspective is the right one? Which metaphor is correct? Which explanation is true?’ Actually they are all true and more. These are false dichotomies. But what is going on is that the idea is being subtly suggested to the reader that what went on at the cross is so big that we can never grasp it, and therefore we had better not think that we have the truth about it.

This is false logic. You don’t have to know everything about something to know what is true about it. I don’t know the attendance figures at the cup final this year. But I know Manchester City beat Stoke 1-0. That’s the truth. Jesus spoke of truth. He said, for example: ‘I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again’ (John 3.3). There is truth that is real and applies to everyone.

Love Wins reads like a sustained attack on John 3.16. Let’s pick out the key words.

The world

Much of what Bell says caricatures evangelicalism. The root of this is in a basically secular / unbiblical understanding of the world.

Bell’s world is a bit lost, but not much. It doesn’t have eternal life. But actually people aren’t too bad. There’s plenty of good out there. So he comes out with statements like, ‘No hope for non-Christians? Is that what Jesus offers the world?’ and ‘Jesus is bigger than any one religion’. But that is not how Jesus sees the world. Yes, people may do relative good, but our ‘good’ is little more than making people comfortable on the Titanic. Jesus sees the world as in direst need. People are so lost that they require, not simply to turn over a new leaf, but to be thoroughly reborn (John 3.3,5,6). We are dying like those suffering from venomous snake bites and need a miracle similar to the one which occurred for rebellious Israel in the desert (John 3.14,15). The reason for our terrible lost-ness is that we are sinners, as is highlighted by our refusal to believe in God’s Son (John 3.18). Now think. What does that say of unbelievers and other religions? Without Christ we are already condemned (v.18) and under God’s wrath (v.36). That is the situation the gospel addresses.

God so loved

Bell pictures a ‘God’ who loves you, but if you refuse to believe, when you die, he suddenly changes character. ‘Loving one moment, vicious the next. Kind and compassionate, only to become cruel and relentless in the blink of an eye’. But that is not the God of the Bible. He does not change. He is both unspeakably holy and excessively gracious, both at the same time. Because he is holy he hates all sin. But because he is incredibly loving he offers forgiveness and salvation. That is the dynamic of John 3.16. God so loved. The ‘so’ expresses the unparalleled lengths to which God’s love has gone. The real state of mankind was exposed by what we did to God’s Son; we crucified him. But though such a world deserves nothing but God’s total rejection and wrath, God so loved that he gave his beloved Son to save us from that. God does not change. He does not delight in the death of a sinner. He so loved.

Whoever believes

Once more Bell caricatures the necessity for faith. ‘So is it true’, he asks, ‘that the kind of person you are doesn’t ultimately matter, as long as you’ve said or prayed or believed the right things?’ His words are slanted to make the gospel look nasty. But it’s a deceit. First, no one says that faith which doesn’t lead to a changed life saves you. So the bit about, it doesn’t matter what kind of person you are, is a straw man. Second, Bell’s analogy is set up to look as though people are being kept out of heaven simply for not knowing the right password. But that’s not it at all. Rather we need to ask, ‘Who would blame the lifeboat man if the drowning man refused to grab the lifeline?’ Evidently Bell would.

His one and only Son

The cross, blood and sacrifice do not go down well in the warm/fuzzy world of therapy culture. ‘Just the thought of such practices is repulsive. So primitive and barbaric. Not to mention unnecessary’, writes Bell. So he dismisses the New Testament version of the cross as atoning sacrifice as just the way the apostles had of describing it in their cultural context where sacrifice was prevalent. We must change metaphors to suit our culture. He comes up with a view of the cross which is not about atonement, but about the supposed universal truth that death brings life. You eat food, the plant has to die, but that gives you life. That’s how the universe is. That’s God’s way. Jesus was showing us that at the cross. Actually that is nonsense. Life does not come out of death. The only reason we can digest the plant is because we’re alive already. No. Instead Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1.29). That’s why those who believe do not perish.

Not perish

The therapy culture thesis of Love Wins is that it cannot possibly be loving to punish sinners in hell forever. So Bell comes up with a kind of universalism. (Evidently he now denies that he is teaching universalism but the book sure does read like it) But just suppose the love that really matters is not, first of all, God’s love for us, but God’s love for his Son, Jesus*. This is brought to the fore in John’s Gospel. The Father intends that all should honour the Son. And consequently, ‘Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son’ (John 3.18). God’s wrath is an expression of an outraged love: it is the love of the Father for the Son that will not allow his Son’s name to be belittled or ignored. What Bell is saying is, ‘God has no right to love his Son that much!’ But he does love him that much. And, indeed, loves you and me so much that he has given his Son so that we may be forgiven and reconciled and included within that love.

(See also an article by Kiprotich Chelashaw, 'Whose love wins?')