Among people who like to compare texts in the Bible there seems to be little debate as to which verse in the Bible is the most important of all. John 3:16 wins hands down. If people know only one verse of the Bible by memory, this is it: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

But what is the next greatest verse? I would suggest that the second greatest verse in the Bible is the very next verse in the Gospel of John: John 3:17, where Jesus spells out the meaning of God’s greatest gift. "God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world through him might be saved."

No condemnation—that is the theme of the second greatest verse. God did not send his Son to bring us a message of judgment. The purpose of his mission was not to underscore the terrible things that humans have done. The purpose was to tell us that, in spite of everything, God still loves us.

There are those who feel that God just doesn’t accept them. He knows everything about them—he’s God, after all—and he doesn’t like what he sees. In fact, that idea is central to the vision of God that many people have. For them, God is in the condemning business. His job is to keep track of the mistakes people make, and sooner or later to make them pay up.

Some of the most famous members of this group lived during Jesus’ day. On one occasion, they brought to Jesus a woman who had been caught in adultery and made her stand right there in front of everyone. "They said to him, ’Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery.’ Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say’" (John 8:5).

According to God’s law, she had to pay for her crime with her life, and they were determined to test Jesus’ commitment to the law. Well, we can only imagine how this poor woman felt, forced to stand in front of a leering, hostile crowd, happy to see her shame exposed and eager to witness a brutal execution. This was condemnation in technicolor.

John 3:17 is for you—as it was for this woman—whatever the source of condemnation that’s plaguing you—whether you have done something you’re ashamed of, or you’re afraid you will, or you feel like a failure, or you don’t deserve the success you’ve enjoyed, or you’re sure that all your accomplishments are just setting you up for some future disaster.

However, God has no interest in condemning us. He’s not looking for ways to keep us out of heaven. He’s busy finding ways to get us in. God’s way of dealing with condemnation is sweeping, effective, and final. When God removes your condemnation, it’s gone forever.

I was a junior in college when I had my closest brush with the law. I hardly ever talk about it. For years the memory was too painful and I was afraid of what it might do to my reputation. But now, some forty years later, I suppose enough time has gone by.

Late one night, I was driving home from a party at the beach in Oceanside when a California Highway Patrol officer pulled me over. I’m not sure what aroused his suspicions. I wasn’t driving erratically, speeding, or going through stop signs. But he had me step out of the car while he and his partner inspected the vehicle. He was looking for alcohol, I’m sure. He didn’t find any because I never drink. But he found something else under the front seat on the driver’s side.

My dad loves wordworking. He’s always had a shop, a big shop. It is filled with power tools—saws, drill presses, lathes—it’s a major investment. The walls are lined with hand tools. The drawers are filled with nuts and bolts and screws. Dad’s a dentist, but carpentry was his second career choice, and it’s easy to see how much he would have enjoyed it.

Well, Dad never saw a piece of wood he didn’t love. One day while working on something or other he broke the handle off a sledgehammer. Instead of throwing the piece away, he took it into his shop, rounded off the broken end, put it into the lathe, and turned some grooves into the other end. When he was done, he had a dandy club about two feet long. Thinking such a device might come in hand some time, he put it under the seat of our Plymouth station wagon, where it stayed until the officer found it.

I learned something about the law that night. If there had been a gun under that seat the charge would have been a misdemeanor. But possessing a club is a felony. So they put me in handcuffs, called a towing company to pick up the car, and hauled me off to the county jail. I was booked, photographed, fingerprinted, put in an orange jumpsuit, and locked up in a cell.

That night was the longest, most miserable night of my life. The disbelief and humiliation I felt were excruciating. The next morning my parents bailed me out. The day after I went back to school, and I never said a word to anyone. After a visit to the CHP office, the captain decided not to press the case. My mother’s tears convinced him that I was no threat to society.

There was just one problem: that arrest was on my record. And I was worried about its potential effect when I tried to get a job or applied to graduate school. I heard there were ways to get an arrest record expunged and we hired a lawyer to work on it. Sometime later, I received a copy of the judge’s order in my case.

I’ve kept it all these years. It’s written in legalese, but for me the most important part is this statement: The Court orders "that the records of the arrest herein, and all other official records in the case be sealed, and that such arrest and proceeding be deemed not to have occurred, and that the petitioner may answer accordingly any question relating to their occurrence."

You see, in the eyes of the law that arrest never happened. I was never handcuffed or booked. I never spent a night in jail. And if anyone asks me about it, I have a perfect legal right to say I don’t know what you are talking about. My condemnation was lifted, erased, vaporized. It never happened. Someone made it all disappear.

That’s exactly what God wants to do with everything that condemns us. Whatever is weighing you down, whether you call them sins, mistakes, failures, shortcomings, inadequacies—we’ve got lots of words for these things—God can make them disappear, and when that happens you’re free. After, as Paul says, "It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?"

The greatest text in the Bible tells us how much God loves us. The second greatest text tells us what that love means. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn us. There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:33–34).

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