God’s Love

John 3:16

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For you football people, who is the GOAT? Messi? Or Ronaldo? John 3:16 without doubt is the most common and perhaps favourite Scripture for many Christians and even unbelievers. I will call it the GOAT of all Scriptures and I am sure if I ask all of us to close our bibles and recite John 3:16, we would be able to. And I suspect that for many of us, our recitation will be in the King James Version.

Again, I believe John 3:16 is the heart of the Christian message. It is the most beautiful summary of what Christians believe. Martin Luther the Reformer calls this “the gospel in miniature.” And today, we come to this text to hear a sermon I have entitled The Love Of God. Let me supply the roadmap by which we will travel. We will look at The Greatest Love, then The Greatest Enemies, The Greatest Sacrifice, The Greatest Promise and The Greatest Danger

The Greatest Love

“For God so loved…”

Love, without any statistics, would perhaps be the most discussed topic. It’s the theme of many songs and poems. Two people who don’t know themselves from Adam meet and they fall in love. And settle down together as husband and wife. Parents love their children, siblings express love towards one another, neighbours love themselves  and human beings indeed have the capacity to love one another.

The Scripture commands it: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”

However, every form of human expression of love pales in comparison to God’s love. God’s Love is The Greatest love above all human love. Human love is fleeting and conditional, God’s  love is everlasting: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you (Jeremiah 31:3).  It’s amazing for example in a marriage, two people who love themselves so much will become the worst of enemies. And we hear all these love stories gone sour all around us. The Bible even tells us mothers can forget their babies. 

See, the greatest expression of human love we can know is between a nursing mother and her baby…. Yet, the Bible clearly tells us even nursing mothers can forget their baby.. Haven’t we heard some of these stories? An infant found abandoned in the forest. 

Can a woman forget her nursing child,that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you (Isaiah 49:15).

This is the nature of human love. It’s fleeting and driven by circumstances. But not so with God’s love. Now the opening  words of John 3:16 introduces us to  this Greatest Love: God’s love: “For God so loved…” The love of God is a deep subject we cannot exhaust. It is vast. It has breadth, it has height, it has depth. And it surpasses all knowledge (Ephesians 3:18-19). The apostle John describes love as the very essence of God. Love is God’s nature. “God is love” Whatever we know God to be, his love is. So God’s love is holy because God is Holy. God’s love is perfect, because God is perfect. So we cannot separate the love of God from any of his attributes. This means that if you and I will know about love, we need to look at the love of God. 

I don’t know if it’s still done but there was a time when if any preacher will talk about love, they will give you all the Greek use of the word love—Agape, Phila, Eros and Storge. But the New Testament in reality only uses two of these words to describe love; that is Agape and Philia. Agape in it’s strictest sense describes God’s love and Philia describes brotherly love—love shared among one another. Agape is God’s unconditional love he expresses. God’s love is not earned, God’s love cannot be bought. God’s love is exercised freely on whom he chooses. 

The Greatest Enemies

“For God so loved the world”

Now love has to be expressed. We don’t only say it, but we show it. And Love has an object.  Often we love people who love us back. It’s human nature to be nice to only those who are nice to us. We smile only to those who smile at us. But God’s love is unlike ours. The Bible clearly teaches us that God first loved us (1 John 4:19). If we will ever think about God’s love, he is the one who first loved us. And this is the amazing thought of the text. The ones to whom God expressed his love, naturally do not love God. You and I naturally don’t love God.  In fact, the ones God expressed his love to are rebels who have trampled God’s law.. They  are God’s enemies: And for those of us who have come to faith in Christ Jesus, I hope that we know something about the love of God that has been lavished on us. Paul, writing on the great work of grace, said 

In love he predestined us  for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will (Ephesians 1:5).

Your salvation, my salvation was bought and purchased long before we were born. It was nothing you did. Notice how God’s love is captured in the Past Tense: “Loved”. This means God’s love was displayed, long before we were born. There is nothing in us that God should love us. But he did.

For God so loved the world: The World:  It is not the world of trees, vegetation or the natural environment. Though there is a sense God loves the natural world and will redeem it one day. But the world in view here is the inhabitants. It is the sinful people who live in the world. And this world is a world  of darkness, evil and wickedness. 

Let’s have a look at Verses 19-20 of our text.

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.

This is a clear picture of the world. Sinners hate light and love darkness. And do wicked things. You will notice that in the verse 16, there is an analogy drawn with vv.14-15  from when the Israelites sinned against God in the wilderness and God brought judgement upon them (Numbers 21:4-9)

They rejected God. They murmured; complained and rejected God. And were bitten by serpents representing sin and judgement. Now in reality all human beings have been bitten by sin and have rejected God. Who is without sin? The word of God knows no such person. In fact real human experience tells us there is nobody in existence who has never sinned. All humans are rebels who have rebelled against God and thus have become enemies of God. Every human being who walks this earth, is a sinner. We were conceived in sin. We were born into sin. And sin is our very nature. We live our lives in sin. And this sin has affected our whole lives. This is called Total Depravity. 

Total Depravity means that our whole nature has been affected by sin due to the fall of Adam in Eden. So when Adam disobeyed God, we inherited a sinful nature from him. And this sinful nature has affected our whole being and separated us from God (Romans 3:23). I know some people dwell on the little word “so” in the text to describe the magnitude of God’s love. But looking at the text, I have a different opinion. I don’t think the word so describes the intensity or magnitude of God’s love; though the whole text does. The word “so” I believe links verse 15 & 16. We can therefore paraphrase John 3:16 like “In the same manner,God loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” And here is where the greatness of God’s love is seen. Not in the word “so” but in the fact that  He loved sinners. He loved those who rejected him. He loved those who rebelled against him. He loved his enemies. That is the Greatness of God’s love. That he loved his enemies. The hymn “To God Be The Glory” calls them “The vilest offender.”

Sometimes Christians become confused over the language John uses in this verse. If Jesus died for the world, does this imply that the world (that is every single individual will be saved? John is not here talking about the world on its totality but in its diversity and sinfulness. In other words, the world should be taken to mean people from every tribe and  nation, not just Jews (Let’s Study John, Mark Johnston)

The Greatest Sacrifice

This is the love of God: it is shown to the vilest offender. Think about Paul: he was a murderer of God’s people, yet God took him in. What is your sin? What sins have you committed?  Perhaps you are among those who think your sin is great and cannot be forgiven. No, there is no sin greater than the love of God. The same John talking about the love of God says in 1 John 3:1: “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us”. Behold: think about it, consider it, turn it around in your mind.  God’s love is great because he loved the unlovable: Sinners, liars, fornicators, idolaters, complainers, ungrateful people, wicked people, murderers, drug peddlers, thieves, the sexually immoral, hypocrites…think about all these and more. God showed his love to such.

And how did he do it? He gave The Greatest Sacrifice in human history: “that he gave his only Son” When the Bible says God gave his only Son, it’s talking about the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus for the sins of his people. That is the point of the comparison in the verse 14: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.” This is anticipating Jesus’ death on the cross. We have just come from Easter celebrations and we saw how our sins were put on Christ: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:6). 

See, the narrative of the Bible is the narrative of a Holy God on a rescue mission. A rescue mission to rescue sinners. God gave his son to pay for the sins of his people. To bring reconciliation between God and humanity. Love gives: therefore God gave us a great sacrifice to pay for the sins of his greatest enemies, sinners. We don’t see the nature of our sin until we appreciate the attitude of God towards our sin: “God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.” (Psalm 7:11). The expression his only son reveals to us the depth of God’s sacrifice. It tells us how precious the gift of God for sin is. I will want you to turn to Genesis 22:2

He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” This is a picture painted for us of Christ. “Jesus is God’s Son. His only Son. Whom he loves.” Look also at Matthew 3:16-17

And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Love is not cheap talk. Love is expressed. Love is shown by what we do for one another. How we care for one another. Imagine someone says they love you. But they don’t care about your well being, they don’t show it, they only keep talking with their mouth. They show nothing to prove they love you. Would you believe they do? 

The Greatest Promise

God, the Greatest Lover showed his love by giving us his Greatest Sacrifice: Jesus. In the love of God there is forgiveness of sin, there is pardon from sin. There is reconciliation to God. In Jesus Christ, God has made to sinners The Greatest Promise. That’s promise of eternal life: “that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. The same thing is said in verse 14: “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” In Jesus Christ, God is merciful towards sinners. They are pardoned of their sins.In his first advent, that is his first coming, he came to offer salvation to sinners. 

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him (v.17)

What we just read means Jesus didn’t first come into the world to condemn it but offer salvation. 

The primary purpose of Christ’s coming in the incarnation was to bring redemption to a fallen race. Though it is true that Jesus, at the end of the age, will be Judge of all the world…yet the main purpose of his coming was to be the supreme expression of God’s saving grace..Here is the gospel in all its simplicity—the good news that there is forgiveness from God for all who put their faith in his Son. There is nothing a person can hear more precious than this (Let’s Study John, Mark Johnston).

Dear friends, God has given us his Son Jesus, that whoever believes in him will not perish. All what is required of us is to believe in the great promise of salvation in him. Nothing good from God will happen to us outside of Jesus. All the promises of God in Christ are yes and amen. 

Whoever believes: This is a free offer of the Gospel. This is a universal offer of the gospel.This is the gospel offered far and wide. Salvation was not offered to only Nicodemus. Salvation was not offered to only the Jews: “Whoever believes” The door is opened for people of all race, background, gender, ethnicity, colour etc. There is no Greek, no Jew, no Gentile, no male, no female. No American, no European, No African. Sinners are called to repentance. 

Now let me be careful to say that The free offer of The Gospel, the Universal Offer of the Gospel is not Universalism, which means that every single individual on this earth will be saved. I am a Calvinist, and I believe in the doctrine of election. And as a Reformed church, that is our position. We believe Jesus died for his elect. He died for his people (Matthew 1:21). He laid his life for his sheep (John 10).

However, you and I do not know who God’s elect are until they have come to faith. There is no mark on anybody’s forehead that identifies them as God’s elect. So in preaching the gospel, we don’t go out looking for God’s elect to preach to them, because we don’t know them. Ours  is to preach and God through the preaching will save his elect. And this is what gives confidence in our preaching and evangelism. That those who belong to God will be saved by the means of faith through the preached word. And so that gives the confidence to say “whoever believes” will have eternal life. 

The Greatest Danger

But if one doesn’t believe, The Greatest Danger awaits them. They will perish. They will die in their sins and be condemned to eternal damnation. That point is made right from v.16 throughout the other verses. When the Scripture says “that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”, it means also that whoever doesn’t believe will perish. In verse 18, we are told that “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

If you don’t believe in God’s sacrifice for your sins, you are condemned already. I doubt any of us here will reject a precious gift from someone who loves us. But that is what those who will not believe are doing. They are rejecting God’s love. That’s the point in verses 19-20. Light has come, but people will want to remain in the dark. That’s a blatant rejection of God. And anyone who finds themselves in this  category is heading to hell unless they repent. So this morning, if you don’t know Jesus, if you have never believed in him, I call upon you to settle that matter today. Don’t harden your heart.

And to everyone who has truly come to faith in Christ, look at v.21 and I hope it is truly your life:

But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

How is your life as a believer? Are you living in sin? Are you repenting of your sins? Are you living a life worthy of your salvation?

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