thanks, Daniel
FYI, here's the text of John 3:16 ("New American Standard" version):
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
The premise of the first part of my post - the sacrifice of the first-born - may be a little clearer now.
[My link was to www.bible.com - which is so frame-laden, I'm not surprised I messed it up]
I gather from some of your earlier posts that you're Aussie. You may not be familiar with the phenomenon Tom mentioned that sparked my post: the guy at the football* game wearing a shirt (or holding a sign) inscribed "John 3:16". It's a form of proselytizing - he hopes to not only be seen by the other fans in the stadium but by the television cameras. As proselytizing goes, it's one of the subtler forms.
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This also gives me an opportunity to welcome you to the lion's den, Daniel ;-) I've enjoyed your posts, both topic and tenor. Oz is only slightly less underrepresented here than the rest of the Anglophone world - there's Nick Hoffman, who spends most of his time in Hawaii (he's on the uni faculty there, I believe), and a bloke named Adam, from Brisbane, who occasionally posts on the Space board. I happen to think the Zone is a better place when not every voice in it is from the US of A.
[* - that's American football, of course - nearly a religious institution in itself - not the real thing, a.k.a. soccer, or that anarchy called "Australian rules"]