BIBLICAL TRUTH SIMPLY EXPLAINED

E PLAINING
Three texts often taken out of context
Expounding the truth and exposing error

www.davidpawson.org
This booklet is based on a talk. Originating as it does from the spoken
word, its style will be found by many readers to be somewhat different
from my usual written style. It is hoped that this will not detract from
the substance of the biblical teaching found here.
As always, I ask the reader to compare everything I say or write with
what is written in the Bible and, if at any point a conflict is found,
always to rely upon the clear teaching of scripture.
David Pawson

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 Three texts often
taken out of context
Expounding the truth and exposing error
DAVID PAWSON

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 Copyright © 2016 David Pawson

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 Contents

Three texts Often Taken out of context 6

Revelation 3:20 9
John 1:12–13 11
John 3:16 14

The two important responsibilities I have given to you as

a teacher: you are to expound the truth and expose error.
A revelation of God given to David Pawson
August 2013
Three texts often taken out of context
Expounding the truth and exposing error

The Bible in your hand is not the Word of God as he wanted

you to have it. When God gave his Word to us, he gave it
to us in books, not in chapters, and not in verses. For many
centuries, Christians had a Bible without any chapter or verse
numbers in them. Then they had to know their Bible, because
you can’t find your way around a book by chapter and verse
numbers when they are not there. The chapter numbering
was done by Stephen Langton, a 13th-century Archbishop
of Canterbury. He often got the divisions in the wrong place.
Right at the beginning of your Bible we have the week of
creation, but the seventh day is cut off into chapter two. It
is crazy to describe a week with six days in one chapter and
add the seventh day in the next! Then he divided up that
song about the suffering servant in Isaiah 53, putting the
first verses of the song into chapter 52. In Acts 18 and 19,
Paul found some disciples in Ephesus who seemed to be
Christian, but there was something missing. The reason for
that unusual state of affairs you find in chapter 18.
The worst division of all was in the last book in the Bible,
which is full of sevens. There are seven letters to seven
churches at the beginning, and each letter has seven parts to
it. Later there are seven seals broken, seven trumpets blown,
and seven bowls of wrath poured out. Now most people who
read the book know about those sevens, but there is one seven

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that they don’t know about and miss altogether. It is where
there are seven visions for the future, but they have been
divided up between chapters 19, 20 and 21 so they are never
read together as a series of seven visions. If they had been
read together we would have no arguments at all about the
millennium. I am sure you have heard of the premillennials
and the amillennials and the postmillennials. A friend of
mine went to Belfast, and as soon as he got off the plane
some Christians met him and said, “Are you amillennial,
premillennial, or postmillennial?” He said, “That is a pre-
post-erous question,” which I thought was a good response.
Most people today tell me they are pan-millennial. They just
believe everything will pan out all right in the end anyway.
It is a very important debate because only one of those views
represents the belief that Christ is coming back to rule the
world. The others don’t believe that at all. It makes a huge
difference to your hope for the future.
But I am dealing with a different problem now, which
has been summed up in the cliché: a text out of context
becomes a pretext. This simply means that if you take a verse
out of what surrounds it and quote it on its own, you have
probably given it the wrong meaning, because every verse in
scripture takes its meaning from its context – not just from
the verses before or after it, but from the section in which
that verse occurs, from the book in which it occurs and from
the Testament in which it occurs. The meaning of any verse
in the Bible depends on that whole context for its meaning.
A text out of context so often leads to misunderstanding of
the Bible, because God did not intend chapter and verse
numbers.
We have noted that chapter divisions were introduced
first. The verse numbers were introduced by a printer from
Paris. Travelling in a carriage to Lyons, he thought, “I’ll
divide the chapters into verses, give them each a number, and

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everybody can then find their way around.” It was a worthy
cause, but a wrong one because it means that you can take
a text by itself and ignore its context. You invariably get the
wrong meaning.
Let me give you some examples. One of the texts we will
be thinking about here is John 3:16. Many people can recite
that verse, but few can remember what John 3:15 and John
3:17 say. However you cannot understand John 3:16 without
looking at John 3:15. You will get the wrong meaning.
I want to give you three verses that are quoted out of
context and are widely given the wrong meaning. In my book
entitled The Normal Christian Birth I tried to show from
the New Testament how people were born again and how
they were birthed into the kingdom. There are four steps in
the birth: repent toward God, believe in the Lord Jesus, be
baptised in water, and receive the Holy Spirit. I deliberately
went to Christian bookshops and bought every booklet on
how to become a Christian. Most of them quoted only three
texts and used those as the basis for counselling an enquirer
to help them to become a Christian. I am going to deal with
those three texts and show how every one of them was
taken out of context and given a different meaning from the
meaning in the Bible: Revelation 3:20, John 1:12–13 and,
above all, John 3:16.
First, though, let us look at another verse that is widely
misunderstood out of context: “I can do all things through
Christ who strengthens me.” It is a lovely verse, often quoted.
Now I want you to spend just half a minute thinking of
something that you can do through Christ who strengthens
you – something that you could not do without him. Can you
think of anything that comes to your mind from that text?
Did you think about money? The context is about money
and it is about managing on your income, whether large or
small. The meaning of the text is this: whether I have lots

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of money or little money, I am content; I have learned to
be content with what comes in, and to live on that, because
through Christ I can do all things – he strengthens me. I love
preaching on this now because there are many people in
Britain struggling to live within their income and getting
into debt. So it is a most relevant text. At once you can see
how a text out of context may lead people’s thoughts astray
into something quite different.
Now let us come to some texts that are most widely
misquoted out of context. You will have heard sermons using
the false meanings. First of all there is Revelation 3:20, and
that is quickly dealt with.

Revelation 3:20
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my
voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and sup with
him and he with me.” That is regarded as an evangelistic
text. I have heard many preachers preach from it, and they
say the door is the door of your heart and Christ is knocking
at the door of your heart and asking you to let him come in.
However, if you put it back into the context, it has nothing
to do with conversion.
It has everything to do with churches. It is addressed to the
church of Laodicea, a large church with large congregations
and large offerings – a church that was regarded by
everybody as successful, and yet there was one person who
was not attending its services and nobody missed him. That
person was Jesus. He didn’t attend that church. Isn’t that
astonishing?
The verse is an amazing invitation – teaching us that
it only takes one member of a church to get Christ back
inside the church. What a promise! A church may be large,
successful, wealthy, but in his sight it is desperately poor
and sick. The members don’t realise that, but the words of

9
Jesus mean: I’m standing at the door of the church and I’m
knocking, and if one person inside there invites me back in
I’ll come, and I’ll have a meal with that person. We’ll sit
down together as friends. It is a wonderful invitation. When
I went to Laodicea for the first time I was walking through
the ruins, which had not yet been excavated, and I came
across one door. It wasn’t the door of a church but it could
have been. It was a Gothic door with a pointed top, and the
door and its frame were standing above the grass.
When I went back recently the door had been excavated,
but I took a photograph of it all by itself in the ruins. If it had
been the door of a church it would have been the door that
Jesus was knocking on. Just one person can get Jesus back
into a large, successful church that he would love to be in,
but people are so full of their success and their prosperity
that they have never noticed that Jesus doesn’t attend the
meetings.
That text does get taken out of context, and this is largely
due to the best-known painting depicting Jesus, called “The
Light of the World”, by the famous artist Holman Hunt. You
can see the original in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. It is
a picture of Jesus in semi-darkness, surrounded by trees in
an orchard, and he is knocking on a door. There is no handle
on the outside. The artist said it can only be opened from
the inside. Hunt used three young ladies as models for his
painting of Jesus. He used a ginger-haired young lady for the
hair, another young lady with an angelic face for the face,
and even used another, slim, lady for the form, dressing her
in ecclesiastical robes. When you know the truth of that
painting you somehow lose your taste for it. The artist used
a barn door in an orchard a few miles outside London, where
he took the three young ladies. That picture has interpreted
the verse for everybody since then. It is used in Christian
booklets on how to become a Christian. But the verse does

10
not mean “open the door of your heart to Jesus”. It means
any person inside that church can get Jesus back in. Just
one could invite him in. Therefore I don’t believe that verse
should be used in counselling people in evangelism.
Incidentally, once you find out the true meaning of a verse
you can never use it again in its wrong meaning. Many years
ago I preached an evangelistic sermon from John 3:16. I
cannot remember all the outline, but my first point was
the greatest gift, and my second was the largest love. I got
a nice alliterative outline and I preached the gospel. But I
can never use the verse again that way because now I know
what it really means. The meaning I used to love has gone.
I dare not use it the way I first used it, and I am afraid I am
going to spoil three verses for you now and you won’t be
able to use them again except with the true meaning. Then
you will have a really powerful message. It is a powerful
message to say to a congregation: all it takes is one of you
to get Jesus back in this church. But it is not the door of the
heart, it is the door of a church.

John 1:12 –13

The next text I want to look at was used in almost every
booklet that I bought on how to become a Christian. I bought
thirty-four booklets before writing my book The Normal
Christian Birth to make sure that I was on the right track.
One used John 1. “He came to his own, but his own did not
receive him.” Then v. 12 – “Yet to all who received him, to
those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become
children of God: children born not of natural descent, nor of
human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” The bit
that was taken out and used in nearly all of those booklets I
bought was: “To all who received him, to those who believed
in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”
Some of them had even dropped the “d” at the end of the

11
two verbs and they read it as, “To all who receive him [that
is, who believe in his name], to them he gives the right to
become children of God.” That is a very significant change,
but they were only quoting the verse as many people read it.
Most people overlook the “d”. “Received” and “believed”
are in the past tense. They are not in the present tense. They
don’t apply to people today. It was a historical description
of the time when Jesus was on earth, and he is not on earth
now. Therefore you cannot “receive” him now. You receive
the Holy Spirit, who has taken his place on earth, but in the
days when he was on earth you could invite him in to have
lunch. You could receive him into your home.
Look at the context, “He came to his own place, but his
own people did not receive him. Yet to all who received
him...” [in those days] “to those who believed on his name,”
when he was on earth, “to them he gave the right [or the
authority] to be children of God,” who were born again, “not
of the will of man, but of God.” The two verbs are in the
past tense. So they are talking about what happened when
he came to his own place and to his own people, the Jews.
Some received him. Many did not. Some welcomed him,
many did not – but those who did were born again of the
will of God. That is a description of what happened when
Jesus was on earth, when he came to his own place and his
own people. The context tells you it is a reference to Jesus’
physical time on earth, and to the Jewish people – those who
received him and those who did not. So we have the real
meaning of the verse. Clearly, his physical presence divided
them deeply into two groups—those who didn’t receive
him and those who did, and that was the result then. But
that statement does not apply today. It cannot, because we
cannot receive Jesus today. We can only receive the third
person of the Trinity who has taken his place, and once the
heavens received Jesus out of sight, no longer did anybody

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talk about receiving Jesus. They certainly never talked about
“open the door of your life and let him in”. That is not the
way the apostles preached. They said: believe in Jesus, who
is now at the right hand of God in heaven. That is where he
is. Believe in him and receive the Person he sent to take his
place on earth.
This means that when you bring someone into the
kingdom, you introduce them to the Holy Spirit at the same
time as you introduce them to Jesus. Then they are Trinitarian
from the beginning. If you just introduce them to Jesus, you
have only introduced them to one person of the Trinity – that
is “unitarian” evangelism – or you may have introduced
them to the Father through Jesus, and that is “binitarian”
evangelism. Trinitarian evangelism is to introduce them to
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and then when you baptise
them you baptise them into the single name—Father, Son
and Spirit—because they have been introduced to all three.
They understand the Trinity from the beginning. There are
many Christians still puzzled by the Trinity who have never
been introduced at a practical level to all of the three persons
of the Trinity. If we did our evangelism properly, they would
understand a relationship with three Persons from the outset,
and they would not need to be introduced to them later.
So that is my understanding of John 1:12. It does not
say: to as many as receive Jesus “today”, to them he gives
authority to become children of God. Just dropping that letter
“d” makes all the difference. It is a past tense statement about
a past era when Jesus was here among the Jewish people in
the land of Israel, and it is a true statement of what happened.
The Holy Spirit had not yet been given, so they believed in
Jesus’ name, because that is all they had. They believed in
him by receiving him, like Zacchaeus when Jesus said, “I
want to have lunch with you today in your home.” That was
the day salvation came to Zacchaeus, who never knew the

13
Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit was not given yet, so he
is not mentioned in that connection.
Because the immediate context of John 1:12 is when he
came to his own place and his own people physically here
on earth, we cannot therefore deduce that what happened
then is bound to happen today. We must be careful how we
apply the Word of God. Some verses are very clearly for
today, but others are a description of what happened then. We
must be careful as to how we apply it today. But this verse,
along with Revelation 3:20, was in nearly all the thirty-four
booklets I bought on how to become a Christian, and both
were quoted out of context and given a new meaning.

John 3:16
John 3:16 is probably the most misunderstood and mis­
applied verse in the whole New Testament. Out of interest
I bought a book entitled The Gospel in Four Thousand
Languages. When I opened it, I found that it is simply John
3:16 in four thousand languages. Is it the gospel? I don’t
think so. When you read that text in its context it has a very
different meaning from the popular one.
Most Christians are not sure about the context. They
don’t know what the verses before or after v. 16 say, and if
you take that verse by itself you will misunderstand it. The
word “so” will be the most misunderstood part of it. I will
explain what that word really means. It doesn’t mean “sooo
much”, “so deeply”.
Let us approach it from a different point of view. It
comes at the end of a conversation between Nicodemus and
Jesus. It is a wonderful conversation and a surprising one.
Nicodemus came under cover of darkness to talk to Jesus, to
learn from him. He is described not as “a” teacher in Israel,
but as “the” teacher in Israel, which means the top rabbi,
the greatest scribe, the man whom all Jews thought knew

14
everything. That is the man who came secretly to learn from
Jesus and that is very interesting. The conversation would
have a lasting effect. Nicodemus was one of only two men
in the Sanhedrin (the ruling council of the Jews, which had
seventy members) who voted against Jesus’ death. The other
was Joseph of Arimathea.
So it was a vote of 68-2 that condemned Jesus to death
– illegally from beginning to end. Voting for Jesus cost
Nicodemus quite a lot. It was those two men who arranged
the funeral of Jesus and who anointed the body, burying it in
a tomb hollowed out of the cliff face in Joseph of Arimathea’s
garden. It is an amazing account.
So Nicodemus will appear later as a friend and supporter
of Jesus. The top teacher of the Jews was humble enough
to admit that he needed to learn. A good teacher is always a
good learner, constantly listening to others and learning from
them. But because he was “the” teacher it would have been
bad for his reputation to be seen seeking knowledge from
this new teacher who was very popular with the ordinary
people, but unpopular with the ruling people, especially the
other members of the Sanhedrin. He knew that Jesus had
a different kind of teaching. When Jesus taught, miracles
happened, God did something. But when Nicodemus taught,
he just taught. That is quite an admission for the top teacher
of the nation to open his heart about. He wanted to know
what the secret of Jesus’ teaching was.
We have a summary of the conversation. Jesus confirmed
that Nicodemus was missing something. Was he the teacher
in Israel and didn’t really know the answer? It was obvious
that Nicodemus didn’t, so Jesus explained. He had been
anointed by the Holy Spirit at his baptism. The secret is
water and Spirit, because that is when Jesus’ powerful
ministry began. Until the age of thirty, Jesus did not do a
single miracle. But after he had been baptised in water, and

15
the Holy Spirit had descended on him like a dove, he had a
message that produced miracles. So he said, “Nicodemus,
you need to be born again of water and the Spirit.” Most
evangelicals ignore that word ‘water’, but in fact it is there,
and in all the early chapters of John it means “water”. There
is water mentioned later in John chapter 3, and it refers to
baptism. I believe that he is saying: You need to be baptised
in water and baptised in Holy Spirit and then you too can
have a ministry like mine. You need to be born again of water
and Spirit. Jesus puts water and Spirit together – as they
were for him. That is when he began a powerful ministry.
All that is the background, and clearly that night there
was a strong wind blowing in the darkness, and they were
sitting, probably on the top of a house, and the wind was
ruffling their hair. They could feel it and Jesus said that the
Spirit is like the wind – you know when it hits you; you
don’t know where it has come from, you don’t know where
it’s going, but when it hits you, you feel it and you know it.
That is what it is like being born again of “water and Spirit”.
The two baptisms a Christian needs are baptism in water
and baptism in Holy Spirit, and the two go together. Baptism
without the Holy Spirit becomes what we call “baptismal
regeneration” – and there is a belief that water does it. That
is not biblical teaching. It is water and Spirit that do it for
the new birth. Both are needed, and baptism in water and
baptism in Spirit are part of being saved. They are both on
the horizontal line that is the way of salvation, whereas if
you have a vertical line in your mind, crossing from unsaved
to saved, you put both baptisms on the “saved” side of the
line, as if you are saved without them. But in New Testament
thinking they are both on the road of salvation and both
are needed as much as repentance and faith. Certainly for
a powerful ministry you need both. That is what Jesus is
teaching Nicodemus.

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 Neither Jesus nor the apostles told the general public that
you must be born again. He only said that to Nicodemus, not
to anybody else. And yet, people give John’s Gospel to the
unbeliever hoping they will get as far as chapter three and
read there that you must be born again. Then they drop the
water and usually say “born of the Spirit”. But Jesus said
both, and both belong to the full salvation that he is wanting
for us. For a fuller explanation I recommend my book Jesus
Baptises in One Holy Spirit.
That sets the scene. The conversation went on. How far? I
wonder what your Bible says – where the conversation with
Nicodemus finished. Some translations use inverted commas
that stop the conversation well into the chapter at verse 21.
The translators assume that all the rest was spoken by Jesus.
That is a mistake. But there is no infallible translation!
You should write the closing inverted commas at the
end of verse 15. Verse 16 was not spoken by Jesus and was
not spoken to Nicodemus, but is John’s commentary. It is
John’s writing now. I have five reasons for teaching that,
and I will give you only two of them here. In v. 15, if you
read it carefully, you are looking forward to the cross, it is
in the future. But in v. 16 you are looking back to the cross
as something that has already happened. That is the first
big reason why I would stop the conversation at the end
of v. 15, and it is a very important one. In v. 14 Jesus has
said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, just
so the Son of Man must be lifted up.” Then v. 15. “That
everyone who believes may have eternal life in him” – that
was Jesus’ last word to Nicodemus. Looking ahead to the
cross, it is indicating this must yet happen, and Nicodemus
later saw it happen. But v. 16 says, “For God so loved ...
that he gave [past tense] his only begotten Son...” (clearly,
“gave” is not just given in birth, but given in death) “so that
whoever believes on him should have eternal life.” So if v. 15

17
is looking forward to the cross and v. 16 is looking back to
it, then clearly Jesus could not have said it to Nicodemus.
The second reason is this: Jesus always called himself
the Son of Man. There are many reasons for that, some of
which you find in Daniel and others in Ezekiel. Talking
about himself, he said, “The Son of Man came to seek and
to save the lost.” Jesus, talking about himself, says that the
Son of Man will be lifted up, but in v. 16 he isn’t called that,
he is called the only-begotten Son of God, a term which
Jesus never used. John uses it in chapter 1 and here again in
chapter 3. This was John’s title for Jesus, never Jesus’ title
for himself, so once again we have a sound reason for putting
the closing quotation marks at the end of v. 15.
Had Jesus spoken v. 16, that would be the only occasion
in Jesus’ whole life when he talked about the love of God
to an unbeliever, because neither Jesus nor the apostles ever
publicly preached the love of God. It was not their gospel for
the world. This would be the only exception if Jesus had said
this, but from v. 16 onwards you have John’s explanatory
comment. He has taken up what Jesus said to Nicodemus
in v. 15 and carried on with it and explained it more fully.
The words that were in v. 15 are that the Son of Man must
be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal
life. Picking up those words, John now expands the same
words in v. 16 and goes on explaining them and what they
mean to the Christian believer in the rest of the section. So
we are talking in v. 16 about something that John said about
Jesus, not something Jesus said to Nicodemus.
That is so important, because the love of God is not the
gospel to preach to the world. I recommend reading my two
short books Is John 3:16 the Gospel? and The God and the
Gospel of Righteousness. In them I explain why our gospel
for the world is not a gospel about the love of God. Neither
Jesus nor the apostles ever preached publicly about the love

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of God. In the book of Acts, for example, we know how the
church spread and how the gospel spread. We even have a
number of sermons of Peter and Paul there, but not once in
Acts is the love of God mentioned. Have you ever noticed
that? They didn’t talk about it. Yet for the last hundred years
that has been the gospel that has been preached – telling
people God loves them. That is the first major thing to do
according to one big plan of evangelism that originated in
America. The first of the “four spiritual laws”—God loves
you. But that is not what they preached in those days.
So look again at John 3:16. I have given you two major
reasons (of five that I could have given you) that John
3:16 is from John and not Jesus, and is a comment on his
conversation with Nicodemus. It is John who introduces the
word “love” here. Let’s break up this verse and look first at
the nouns in it, which are fairly straightforward. The first
noun is “God”. Here, it means the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy One of Israel. That is the God
who is being talked about in this verse. He is the only God
who exists. When you have the word “God” by itself in the
New Testament it means God the Father, the first person of
the Trinity.
The next noun is “world”. Now that is not just a
geographical term, it is a theological term and it refers to
this world as a fallen, sinful world. It is not just the world.
It is not just the human race. It is the fallen human race, the
sinful human race. That is very important because in John’s
first letter he says to Christians: “Don’t love the world.” The
same writer is saying God loved the world – but don’t you
do that. That is very interesting. He is saying: he loved this
sinful place called the world, but you shouldn’t. Don’t imitate
God or try to imitate him. Don’t love the world.
He uses exactly the same words as are used here in John
3:16. It is safe for God to love a fallen world. It is not safe

19
for you to do the same, so that tells you that “the world” is
a bad term. It is not just the world, it is the bad world, the
fallen world. That is the grace of God, that he loved a sinful,
bad world like this. It is not just that he loved everybody in
it, but that he loved a fallen, bad world.
The next noun is “Son” and John says to us, “God’s only
begotten Son.” That does not mean that Jesus began at some
point in time, that God had a Son at some point in time. The
Greek word translated “only begotten” has sometimes been
translated “his only natural Son”. He has many others, but
they are adopted. He has only one natural Son, who shared
his nature all along. It does not mean that at some point
before his physical birth Jesus came to be. That is the heresy
of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the heresy of many others
today who have not grasped that the Son of God was the
only human being who ever chose to be born. I didn’t choose
to be born. You didn’t choose to be born. I didn’t choose
my parents. You didn’t. He did, because he existed before
he was conceived. He chose to be conceived. He chose to
become a man. Jesus didn’t say “I was born for this”. He
said, “I came to seek and to save the lost.” Not “I was born
for this calling”. He decided to come. He chose the earthly
family he would be born into. It is an important truth that
we sometimes forget at Christmas time. We think that was
the beginning of the story of Jesus. It wasn’t the beginning
at all. It was a change for him – a change which he chose.
Now notice the word “everyone”. “That whosoever...” is
not the best translation. The word is literally “everyone” or
“all”. It is a simple word. “That all who believe....” It is not
every one, but all of them. “That whoever believes”; “that
everybody who believes....” It is an inclusive word that is
much wider. You will have to take my word for a lot of this
unless you know Greek, but I am telling you the truth.
The last noun here is “life”, but what kind of life? A life

20
that is both quantity and quality, so translators are divided as
to whether to call it everlasting (eternal) or abundant life. It
is both. It is life that goes on forever and it is life of the very
best kind. So that word “life” is a wonderful word. Whoever
believes can have life.
We are moving on from the nouns to the verbs. We’ll look
at these verbs from the point of view of their tenses. Now
here is a little Greek lesson for you. I hope it won’t be too
complicated. Two verb tenses in Greek are the aorist and
the present continuous. The aorist refers to something that
happened once in the past, a single event that came and went.
The present continuous tense is used for something that goes
on happening. I illustrate that by referring to the difference
between saying of someone who has been knocked down in
the road that “he breathed”, which would be like the aorist
tense, signifying that he breathed once. If you say “he is
breathing”, that is the present continuous tense, in English
as well, and means that he is going on breathing.
Now let us look at the verbs, and this is crucial to
understanding John 3:16. The verb “loved” is in the aorist
tense, meaning something that God did once. Now that is
the first shock in this verse. Everybody assumes that it is
telling us that God loves the world always. Now there is
a truth there, but in fact in this verse the truth is that God
once loved the fallen world, on one occasion, and it was the
occasion when he gave his Son.
Almost every mention of the love of God in scripture is
linked to the cross. You find that in Romans. You find that in
the letters of John. That was the one event when God loved
a fallen world. So that is the word “loved”. It is not those
other words of different kinds of love: epithumia (the love
of addiction), eros (the love of attraction) or philia (the love
of affection). The word translated “love” here is agape, the
love of action. So this is about the moment when God acted

21
to help us poor sinners. Love was shown in action. It was
born in emotion, in his compassion for us, but it was shown
in action on the day Christ died. So God loved once when
he gave his Son for us.
However, the word “believe” is in the present continuous
tense in the Greek. It is not who believed but who believes.
It is best translated in English as: everyone who goes on
believing – continuously. This means not believing once, but
a continuous life of faith. That again makes a very important
difference to this verse, doesn’t it? It is not just someone
who believed in Jesus twenty years ago. It is someone who
goes on believing and who keeps trusting and obeying Jesus.
The next verb is “perish” and that is in the aorist tense
so it is a one-off event. It will happen once to some people.
They will perish once, and the word “perish” does not mean
“cease to exist”. It means to be ruined, made useless. Ruined
buildings may be interesting. One wonders what they were
like when they were new. But when a building is in ruins
it is no use at all, and when a person is ruined they are no
use at all.
In English we use the word “perish” for something that has
become useless. We talk about a rubber hot water bottle or a
rubber car tyre that has perished. When a tyre has perished
it still looks like a tyre. It has the shape of a tyre, it still
exists, but because the rubber has perished it is of no use on
your car any more. A big problem is getting rid of perished
tyres, though they can now be recycled and made into road
surfaces. But many human beings face being ruined one day,
and of no use to God again.
When something is perished, what do you do? You might
throw it on the rubbish dump or, if you were in Jerusalem,
you threw it into “hell”. The Valley of Gehenna is just on
the south side of the city. When I first went there it was a
rubbish dump, and the rubbish was burnt. There was blue

22
smoke rising from it. It is a very deep valley – so deep that
the sun doesn’t reach the bottom. It is just outside the south
gate, significantly called the Dung Gate, because before there
were flush toilets and sewers they carried all their human
waste in buckets out of the Dung Gate and tipped it over the
cliff edge into the Valley of Hinnom or Gehenna.
It was kept burning so as to keep the rubbish down, but
as well as fire there was rotten food there, with maggots and
worms eating it. It was then a horrible, dirty, smelly place.
It is not now. They have “redeemed” it, making it into a
beautiful landscaped garden. The young people of Jerusalem
can now go there to walk in the twilight and be in love.
I have preached in the bottom of that valley and I have
preached therefore in “hell” – in Gehenna. Jesus taught
that if you want to know what hell is like, go and look in
the valley. He told us that hell is where the fires never stop
burning, where all the rubbish is thrown. The Valley of
Hinnom is where the body of Judas Iscariot finished up.
He hung himself from a tree at the top of the cliff. He put a
rope around his neck and threw himself off the cliff and the
rope broke. He fell to the bottom and his bowels gushed out,
his guts spilled over. To this day, that patch of the valley is
called “Akeldama”, the Field of Blood.
That is also where they threw the bodies of all crucified
victims. The body of the Lord Jesus himself would have been
thrown there had Joseph and Nicodemus not found a tomb,
because every crucified victim was regarded as rubbish. No
use, throw them away!
So Jesus himself taught that hell is where useless human
beings are thrown. He never said that God sends people
to hell. He always said that God throws them into hell.
You don’t place rubbish. You throw it. You throw it away,
and God will throw useless, perished people into hell. The
best picture of that which we can have is to look down the

23
cliff into that valley and think about how it used to be. So
I underline the truth that the word “perish” doesn’t mean
they cease to be, it means they go on existing as useless
to God. That is the most terrible thing you can say about
a human being: that they are no more use to God. That is
awful. Imagine a person who has reached the stage where
God says: I can’t ever use you again – you’re rubbish.
That is how Jesus talked about hell, and incidentally Jesus
gave many warnings about hell. All but two of them were
given to born-again believers. Two were given to Pharisees,
and all the rest were to people who had been born again,
not of the will of man, but of God by believing in Jesus’
name. That is a very important point to those who believe
“once saved, always saved”. It is a very solemn thought. It
is Christians who need to fear hell as well as unbelievers.
I fear going to hell. I fear perishing. I will go on believing,
and then I won’t perish.
The verb “have” is again in the present continuous. It is
not: you now have eternal life. It is that you will go on having
it if you go on believing. Those two verbs link together. I
hope you are beginning to see that this verse, written by John,
was written to believers, not unbelievers, urging them to go
on believing and to go on having life by going on believing.
That indeed is what John says at the end of his Gospel. He
said: I have written all these things so that you may go on
believing that he is the Son of God and, going on believing,
you may go on having eternal life. John is concerned about
Christians who stop believing, who lose their faith, or, as
Paul says, who make shipwreck of faith.
It is so easy for that to happen, and this is why Jesus
warned born-again believers to fear hell and to press on in
faith, to go on believing to the end. He who endures to the
end shall be saved – that is what Jesus was teaching. That
is a promise. Not he who once began to believe, but he who

24
endures to the end will be saved. There is a future salvation,
waiting for us ahead.
We have looked again at the nouns and the verbs, but some
of the smallest words that I have not mentioned are among
the most important. The word “in” is very important: those
who believe in him – not only that Jesus died. I am constantly
telling people the difference between believing “that” Jesus
died for our sins and believing “in” him. Someone may
believe that a person exists, but do they believe in them?
I once asked a congregation in Germany, “How many of
you believe in me?” Five people put their hands up, including
a well-dressed lady in the front row. I looked at her and said,
“You believe in me?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“How do I know? I don’t. You’ve professed belief in
me, but I don’t know if you really do.” I continued, “If you
will give me all your money to look after I’ll know that you
believe in me.”
The whole church froze! I could feel the temperature drop
and thought, “What have I said?” They told me afterwards
that she was the richest lady in the city. Her late husband
had owned property all over the town centre and had left it
all to her. She was now a multi-millionaire. I think she had
given the money to construct the church building we were
in. I am more careful now what I say from the pulpit! There
is a huge difference in believing “that” Jesus died for you,
and believing “in” the Jesus who died for you. He will only
know you believe “in” him when you show him that you do,
when you act in such a way that you are trusting him. That
is why James, in his epistle, was teaching that faith without
works – faith that doesn’t express itself in action – is dead.
You can say what you like, but faith is not words. It is not just
naming it and claiming it. Faith is action, doing something
to show Jesus that you trust him.

25
 Acting in faith proves that you trust him, showing him
you trust him. It was when Abraham offered Isaac that God
said this amazing thing to him, and the implications of it
are huge: “Now I know that you fear the Lord.” He did not
know until then. Now God was sure. He wants all of us to
prove our faith to show him that we really trust him in some
way or another. It means taking a risk of some kind. It means
trusting him in a crisis. It means showing him you believe
in him. That’s the little word “in”.
Now I want to tackle two other words. This verse begins
with the word “for”. That is very important. Whenever you
see the word “for” you must ask what it’s there for. There is a
reason, and the reason for a “for” is that it follows from what
has just been said, that the sentence is based on the previous
sentences. “For”, “because” – and so you have to go back
to the context to find out why he is saying this. The final
word, and the most misunderstood, is the little word “so”.
Unfortunately, in English it has come in the wrong place. The
Greek says: “For so God loved the world.” It comes before
the word “God”, and that is what has misled so many of us.
We think it means God so deeply and so wonderfully and
so profoundly loved the world, but it doesn’t mean that at
all. The word “so” actually occurs in the previous sentence
and there we understand its meaning. It is exactly the same
word. “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the
Son of Man must be lifted up.” It is the same Greek word
houtos, which means: in exactly the same way; just so; even
so. So as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, even so,
just so, in the same way, the Son of Man must be lifted up.
Here is that word again. For God in this same way loved the
world. For God just so loved the world. The best translation
I suppose in English is “just so...” – in the same way.
There is a comparison being made between two events
of the same kind and that is why you don’t understand John

26
3:16 without John 3:14 and 15. They all belong together. “For
just so God loved the world,” and it goes back to a horrible
incident in which many thousands of God’s people died at
the hand of God. It goes back to the days in the wilderness.
Numbers 21 is what is being referred to. The children of
Israel were still in the wilderness in the middle of forty years’
punishment for not having the faith to go into the Promised
Land after two weeks.
They could have been into the land of Canaan in less than
a fortnight, but they didn’t have the faith. They sent the spies
in, and of the twelve spies ten came back and said, “We’ll
never get in there. The people are bigger than we are. They’re
giants, and the walls of the city reach the skies!” But two of
them, Joshua and Caleb, believed that the people would get in
because they would be going in on God’s shoulders, and that
would make them taller than the tallest people there. I like
that—it’s a very neat argument. “And on God’s shoulders
we’ll look over the walls of their cities.” Of course, with
Jericho, the first town they took forty years later, the walls
fell down. But they had to spend forty years in the wilderness
until everyone was dead except Joshua and Caleb.
Everybody else perished in the wilderness, but while
they were still alive and wandering through the wilderness
something happened. They were desperately short of food
and they remembered the diet of Egypt when they had onions
and garlic and interesting spicy food. They grumbled, and
God gave them something they called “what is it” in Hebrew
– manna (“what is it”). Every morning, there it lay on the
desert floor and all they had to do was go and pick it up. It
had all the carbohydrates, protein and vitamins they needed.
They called it bread from heaven.
For the first day or two they enjoyed it, but imagine you
have had “what is it” for breakfast, lunch, tea and supper for
years on end, and the children bother you and say, “What’s

27
for lunch?” “What is it!” Having eaten “what is it” for
every meal for a year or two, they got very sick of it and
they grumbled. It was enabling them to survive in the desert
where there was no food, but they grumbled. “We’re sick of
manna.” They grumbled against God because he had sent it.
To punish them, God sent poisonous snakes by the dozen
that came into the camp, and everybody who was bitten
died. It was a plague of snakes, and now they realised they
had done wrong in grumbling against God. They asked
Moses to go and tell God they were sorry and shouldn’t
have grumbled. Moses went back to God and said, “God,
they’re very sorry now. Will you please take the snakes
away?” God said, “No, I won’t. I will leave the snakes, but
I’ll give people a cure for snakebite. The cure is you take a
wooden pole and you put it up on the top of the nearest hill.
Then you make a metal snake and you attach that to the pole.
When you lift that up, anybody who is bitten by a poisonous
snake, all they have to do is climb that hill and look at that
snake on the pole, and the poison will be neutralised. But
they have got to do that. I am going to leave the threat of
death, but I’ll give you a cure for it.”
So John is saying: Even so, God loved the world that
he gave his only begotten Son. “Even so,” says Jesus to
Nicodemus, “the Son of Man will be lifted up” – on a wooden
pole. Anybody who goes and gazes at that, the poison will
leave them. You can see the connection and the obvious
lesson. That is why the cross is so important. Anybody who
is facing death for their sin, just go and look at the cross,
gaze at it—God’s provision for your sin. It is amazing!
Now do you see the reason for “for” and “so” in John
3:16? He is drawing the parallel with that incident in
Numbers 21. Isn’t it amazing that next door to John 3:16 is
a verse talking about the death of thousands of God’s people
at God’s hand, and his cure for that? That is the context. If

28
you don’t know Numbers 21, you won’t understand John
3:16. The context goes right back to the early books of the
Old Testament if we are to understand v. 16.
John is giving this 3:16 to believers who are in danger of
being poisoned – and that will lead to the second death, the
death that means perishing. He is saying: you can be cured
by going back to the cross and looking at it and thinking
about it. It is the gospel for believers to go on believing and
to go on having life. You see, you can’t go on having eternal
life if you don’t look to Jesus and go on looking. You don’t
have life in yourself. You are a branch in the true vine, and
he said, “Abide in me. Stay in me and then you’ll have my
life in you.” That’s what John’s Gospel is all about, and that
is what this passage at the heart of it is all about.
So go and teach other people what John 3:16 is really
saying. Though these three texts I have taken are all used in
counselling unbelievers, one of them is not about believers
today or unbelievers today, and two of them are for believers,
not unbelievers. The tragedy is that if you introduce John
3:16 and say that’s the gospel, there is nothing in it about
repenting, and nothing in it about baptism. There is actually
nothing about repenting in the whole of John’s Gospel and
that is one of the arguments that the free grace people use.
They say we don’t need repentance, that there is forgiveness
available without repentance because John’s Gospel doesn’t
mention repentance. But it doesn’t mention it because it
is written for believers who are assumed to have repented
already. It is written to keep people believing – to go on
believing and thus go on having life and never once perish.
What an amazing verse!
Is a lot of what I have explained new to you? Well, think
about it, study it in Greek if you can, or go to someone who
knows Greek and check out whether what I have taught
here is true. Always check a preacher out. Please don’t

29
accept anything David Pawson explains to you without
checking it out in your Bible. I don’t want you to believe
anything I have written if you can’t find it there for yourself.
So don’t say, “Do you know what David Pawson believes?”
Go and check me out, and then you go and tell people: this
is what the Bible says. That is a much surer foundation for
your faith. I do not want to develop a fan club. I want to tell
you the truth as far as I know it, and ask you to search the
scriptures for yourself and find the whole truth of what God
has said to us in his Word.

30
 ABOUT
DAVID
PAWSON
A speaker and author with uncompromising faithfulness to the
Holy Scriptures, David brings clarity and a message of urgency to
Christians to uncover hidden treasures in God’s Word.
Born in England in 1930, David began his career with a degree in
Agriculture from Durham University. When God intervened and
called him to become a Minister, he completed an MA in Theology at
Cambridge University and served as a Chaplain in the Royal Air Force
for three years. He moved on to pastor several churches, including
the Millmead Centre in Guildford, which became a model for many
UK church leaders. In 1979, the Lord led him into an international
ministry. His current itinerant ministry is predominantly to church
leaders. David and his wife Enid currently reside in the county of
Hampshire in the UK.
Over the years, he has written a large number of books, booklets, and
daily reading notes. His extensive and very accessible overviews of
the books of the Bible have been published and recorded in Unlocking
the Bible. Millions of copies of his teachings have been distributed
in more than 120 countries, providing a solid biblical foundation.
He is reputed to be the “most influential Western preacher in China”
through the broadcast of his best-selling Unlocking the Bible series
into every Chinese province by Good TV. In the UK, David’s teachings
are often broadcast on Revelation TV.
Countless believers worldwide have also benefited from his
generous decision in 2011 to make available his extensive audio
video teaching library free of charge at www.davidpawson.org
and we have recently uploaded all of David’s video to a dedicated
channel on www.youtube.com

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 UNLOCKING
THE BIBLE

A unique overview of both the Old and New Testaments, from

internationally acclaimed evangelical speaker and author David
Pawson. Unlocking the Bible opens up the Word of God in a fresh and
powerful way. Avoiding the small detail of verse by verse studies, it
sets out the epic story of God and his people in Israel. The culture,
historical background and people are introduced and the teaching
applied to the modern world. Eight volumes have been brought into
one compact and easy to use guide to cover both the Old and New
Testaments in one massive omnibus edition. The Old Testament: The
Maker’s Instructions (The five books of law); A Land and A Kingdom
(Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1&2 Samuel, 1&2 Kings); Poems of Worship
and Wisdom (Psalms, Song of Solomon, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job);
Decline and Fall of an Empire (Isaiah, Jeremiah and other prophets);
The Struggle to Survive (Chronicles and prophets of exile); The
New Testament: The Hinge of History (Mathew, Mark, Luke, John
and Acts); The Thirteenth Apostle (Paul and his letters); Through
Suffering to Glory (Hebrews, the letters of James, Peter and Jude,
the Book of Revelation). Already an international bestseller.
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 JESUS:
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WONDERS
OF HISTORY

This book is the result of a lifetime of telling ‘the greatest story

ever told’ around the world. David re-told it to many hundreds of
young people in Kansas City, USA, who heard it with uninhibited
enthusiasm, ‘tweeting’ on the internet about ‘this cute old English
gentleman’ even while he was speaking.
Taking the middle section of the Apostles’ Creed as a framework,
David explains the fundamental facts about Jesus on which the
Christian faith is based in a fresh and stimulating way. Both old and
new Christians will benefit from this ‘back to basics’ call and find
themselves falling in love with their Lord all over again.
 JESUS: THE SEVEN WONDERS OF HISTORY
1. His Birth
2. His Death
3. His Burial
4. His Resurrection
5. His Ascension
6. His Return
7. His Judgement

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 OTHER TEACHINGS
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 THE EXPLAINING SERIES
BIBLICAL TRUTH SIMPLY EXPLAINED

If you have been blessed reading/watching or listening

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Please register to download more free booklets by
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The Amazing Story of Jesus
The Resurrection: The Heart of Christianity
Studying the Bible
Being Anointed and Filled with the Holy Spirit
New Testament Baptism
How to study a book of the Bible: Jude
The Key Steps to Becoming a Christian
What the Bible says about Money
What the Bible says about Work
Grace – Undeserved Favour, Irresistible Force
or Unconditional Forgiveness?
Eternally secure? – What the Bible says about being saved
De-Greecing the Church – The impact of Greek thinking
on Christian beliefs
Three texts often taken out of context:
Expounding the truth and exposing error
The Trinity
The Truth about Christmas

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 SUPPORTING THE DAVID PAWSON TEACHING TRUST
The David Pawson Teaching Trust was set up and established by David
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The aim of the Trust is to provide free Bible teaching to the global church.
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the Trustees support the work on a voluntary basis whilst performing
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 THE
EXPLAINING
SERIES

David Pawson has a worldwide

teaching ministry, particularly
for church leaders. He is known
to many through Christian
broadcasting and is the author
of numerous books.

Each book in the Explaining series

examines an important aspect of
the Christian faith and is written in
a way that presents the message
of the Bible clearly and simply.
In this book David Pawson teaches
on Revelation 3:20, John 1:12–13
and John 3:16.

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