John 3:17

“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

                The last verse was the main reason Jesus was there, and the reason people can see and enter into the kingdom of God. God loved the world and so He sent His son, Jesus, into the world so everyone who believes in the Son will not die spiritually but have eternal life. This next verse is a continuation of God’s motivation.

                This verse shows another aspect to God’s reasoning for sending Jesus into the world—for salvation, not condemnation. Jesus says that God did not send Him into the world to condemn the world but instead to save the world. This salvation is the main aspect that John, the author, was trying to get across about Jesus: He is here to save the world. However, we cannot forget the qualifier that Jesus gives multiple times before that this salvation is for those who believe in His name. This completely contradicts what the religious leaders of the day thought. They expected their messiah to come into the world and destroy all their enemies, but Jesus is saying the opposite—He came to save. People in the world are often looking for their side to be justified and the other side to be condemned. This was the same back in Jesus’s time. Jews thought of their enemies—those who they thought were wrong such as the Romans or the Samaritans—and were looking for someone to justify that idea, but Jesus was saying He was not here to do that but instead save the world.

                For Christians, we must take this to heart. Even as I wrote this, I wanted to think of ways to qualify it with my own ideas, yet it is straight-forward. Jesus came to save not condemn. We are not the arbiters of what is right or wrong, God is. Jesus has called us to be His disciples, and He came to save those in the world. We must aim to do likewise and then help them to follow Jesus by obeying Him, but we can never lose the fact that we must understand and absorb into our hearts Jesus came to save and not condemn. We must make sure our prayer time reflects this and pray for a lost world to be saved, pray that evil people might see Jesus and change their ways.

                For Non-Christians, Jesus did not come to condemn. He did not come to declare judgement over you, but to save you from judgement. He does not call you to clean yourself up before you come to Him but to come as you are so that you might be renewed and born again because that is what you need to be saved. That is all—Jesus.