Dionysus on a Bike

John 3:31-36 – 5/20/2026

John is the most concerned of all the Gospels with belief versus unbelief and being persuaded to belief by the testimony and evidence of witnesses to Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection. In today’s reading from part of Jesus’s words to Nicodemus, Jesus opposes those who believe in him to those who are not persuaded by him or toward him. Those who believe Jesus will be newly connected to life itself, whereas those who are not persuaded to believe in Jesus will not be so connected to life but instead will remain under God’s wrath.

The two main oppositions in this text are between belief and not being persuaded and between life and the wrath of God. The first opposition does not primarily concern holding particular beliefs to be true. The Greek word translated as “belief” concerns a total life orientation toward a significant Truth rather than the association “belief” has in English with cognitive assent to a proposition about how the world is. Belief in the sense that Jesus uses the term here is conceptually similar to repentance. Believing in the Son in this sense means re-orienting one’s life toward Jesus. This re-orientation may involve certain propositional attitudes, but these beliefs about particular truths are not the belief in the Truth, namely Jesus, in a way that changes the whole person and the direction they take in life. If orienting one’s life toward Jesus is belief, “not being persuaded” by the Son means to hear the Gospel and feel its call but to not be changed, to have one’s life go on completely as before.

Thus we can see that the primary distinction here is not between theism and atheism or believe that Jesus died and rose again or not. The primary distinction is how one lives one life in light of Jesus’s call. Are we persuaded to change to put our trust in something that is not us and beyond us but also one of us? Or are we to go on just as before? Here it is important to remember that this speech is directed at the questioning Pharisee Nicodemus whose issue was not one of correct belief. As a Pharisee his doctrinal commitments were impeccable. It was a changed life toward Christ that he was missing and that Jesus was directing him toward. This changed, reoriented life is “believing in the Son.”

Passages like the one quoted in today’s reflection are often used as evidence that non-believers face eternal condemnation. Jesus tells Nicodemus that those who believe in the Son will have eternal life, whereas those who are not persuaded will remain in God’s wrath. Notice the verb “remain.” The implication is that each person starts out under the wrath of God, lacking eternal life. The change in life, the reorientation of belief persuaded by Christ, removes God’s wrath and replaces it with life. All that is in Christ or moving toward Christ is life; everything that is oriented away from Christ lacks such life and as such remains under the wrath of God.

If wrath is associated with our time before Christ and only remains with us until the reorientation toward Christ, then the idea that this wrath is eternal condemnation looks implausible. Wrath is death, the consequences of living in a fallen world. Once one turns from death to Christ, life comes as a matter of course, by necessity, naturally, as it were. Wrath here is a consequence of living, not the choice by God to cause harm so that we “get what we deserve.” Rather, orientation toward Christ simply is the way of life. Oriented toward life, we are no longer in the state of death we were in before.

The path from death to life is a reorientation that is not predicated on particular propositional beliefs, even beliefs about the deity. What constitutes, specifically, this reorientation of life, if not specific beliefs? Answering this question goes beyond the scope of this reflection on a small snippet of scripture. Indeed, understanding and being able to articulate in detail the way of life which is trust in following Christ’s direction is the work of entire lifetime and perhaps beyond. While we are promised eternal life for turning toward Jesus, we are not given specific, detailed instructions about what this looks like for each of us in our particular situations and contexts. It’s an act of discovery and uncovering. It’s struggling through the Gospels and through life trying to find where the good is, where flourishing is possible, and where sites of resistance to oppression might be located.

Reflections of a Dionysian Lutheran, comments on the daily readings of the Revised Common Lectionary.