The verse behind everything

If the Christian faith were compressed into one sentence, this would be the sentence — and it was first spoken quietly, at night, to one confused religious scholar who came with questions. Which is to say: it was spoken to a beginner. It belongs to beginners.

Walk through it slowly. God so loved — the engine of everything is love, not disappointment. The world — not the qualified, the tidy, the religious; the world, which includes you on your worst morning. That he gave — love here is not a feeling God has but a cost God paid, His own Son.

And then the widest word in Scripture: whosoever. No entrance exam, no waiting period, no fine print. Whosoever believeth — trusts, leans, comes — does not perish, but has everlasting life. Beginning the life of faith is not climbing toward that sentence. It is standing on it.