God So Loved The World...
God is Love • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 31:24
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· 14 viewsThe end result of God’s love is the truth of the Gospel message: an offer of divine mercy to everyone without exception which manifests God’s compassionate love and honest lovingkindness to all humanity.
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Introduction
Introduction
John 3:16–21 (ESV)
For God So Loved the World
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 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. 18 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. 19 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. 21 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.”
What would a serious discussion about God’s love be if we did not spend at least one session deciphering John 3:16?
This may be the most famous verse in all of Scripture, but it is definitely one of the most abused and least understood.
“God so loved the world”, waved like a banner at a sporting event, has become the favorite cheer for many people who take God’s love for granted and do not love Him in return.
This verse is often quoted as evidence that God loves everyone exactly the same and that Hi is infinitely merciful. People try to hold this verse up as if it negates all the biblical warnings of condemnation for the wicked.
However, that is not the point of John 3:16; all we have to do is read through to verse 19, for context, and see there is balance in the truth:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 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. 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. 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.
Does God really love EVERYONE?
Does God really love EVERYONE?
The context of Scripture as a whole supports God’s love for all humanity.
Nevertheless, knowing that many people are prone to abuse a mistaken notion of God’s love, it is equally incorrect to respond by downplaying what the whole of Scripture tells us about the extent of God’s love; of which John 3:16 is a crucial verse.
We are definitely encountering more and more Christians today who want to argue that the only correct interpretation of John 3:16 is one that limits God’s love to believers and eliminates any idea of His love for humanity in general.
However, Scripture does not support such bold, wide-sweeping assertions.
Psalm 145:9
As we have discussed previously in this series, Scripture clearly says:
The Lord is good to all,
and his mercy is over all that he has made.
Matthew 5:45
Christ even commands us to love our enemies and gives us His reasoning in Matthew 5:45:
so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
I believe the indication of these verses is that God, in some sense, loves His enemies. He loves both the evil and the good, both the just and the unjust in precisely the same sense that we are commanded to love our enemies.
Jesus Himself commands us to love everyone.
Mark 12:31
In fact, Jesus tells us the second greatest commandment, next to absolute love for God, is “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” in Mark 12:31.
Luke 10:29
My best understanding is that the scope of this commandment is universal to all humanity because Luke 10:29 records that a lawyer, asks Jesus “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus’ answer is the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
To grasp Jesus’ point, you must understand who Samaritan’s were: they were a pagan people who had utterly corrupted Jewish worship and whom the Jews condemned as enemies of God.
By answering the Jewish lawyer’s question by telling a story about the Samaritan’s, Jesus is saying that even these people are the neighbors He is commanding us to love.
In other words, the command to love your “neighbor” is a command to love everyone, even your enemies and the enemies of God.
This clearly makes the commandment of love a universal one that encompasses all humanity.
It is unthinkable to suggest God does not keep His own commands.
Matthew 5:17-18
Matthew 5:17-18 tells us that Jesus fulfilled the law in every respect, which includes the command for universal love. We can be certain that He loved everyone because He must have loved everyone in order to fulfill the Law.
Galatians 5:14
In fact, the apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 5:14:
For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Therefore, Jesus must have loved His “neighbor” and, since He Himself defined neighbor as a universal term applying to all humanity, we know that, at a minimum, His love for humanity while on earth was universal.
Hebrews 13:8
So then, we must ask the obvious questions:
Would a righteous God command us to love in a way that He does not?
Would a just God demand that our love is more far-reaching than His own?
And did Christ, having loved all humanity during His time on earth, revert to pure hatred for unbelievers after His ascension? Such a thought would be in severe conflict with Scripture:
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Immediate context dictates we must interpret John 3:16 as a sincere offer of mercy to all of sinful humanity.
Let’s return to the context of John 3:16. It is a statement about God’s demeanor toward humanity in general.
John 3:17
It is a declaration of good news, and the point is to tell us that Christ came into the world on a mission of salvation, not a mission of condemnation:
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.
To make this an expression of divine hatred against those whom God does not save is to twist the passage into doctrine unrecognizable in the context of Scripture.
John 3:19
In fact, if the word “world” holds the same meaning throughout the immediate context of our passage, verse 19 clarifies the meaning of the word in verse 16:
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.
We know from our discussion of John 1:9 [Who is Jesus? (Part 2) {The Gospel According to John series}] that “the light has come into the world” is a statement of Jesus coming to all of humanity to bring truth to the darkness of sin; therefore, the “world” cannot refer to “a select set of people in the world”.
So John 3:16 demands that we interpret it as speaking of God’s love to sinful mankind in general and, unless we mean to ascribe unrighteousness to God, we must hold true that the offer of mercy in the Gospel is sincere.
Surely, we cannot impune God as insincere in His pleas for the wicked to turn from their evil ways.
Why doesn’t God save EVERYONE?
Why doesn’t God save EVERYONE?
We cannot deny that Scripture sincerely offers mercy to all humanity.
Of course, those who assert that God’s love is exclusively for believers will usually also acknowledge that God still shows mercy, patience, and compassion to unbelievers.
But they combine this admission with an insistence that this compassion has nothing to do with love or sincere affection.
They intend to profess that God’s acts of benevolence toward unbelievers have no other purpose than to increase the evidence of their condemnation.
It seems to me that this view imputes insincerity to God by suggesting that God’s pleadings with the unrighteous are artificial and His offers of mercy are simply a pretense.
Matthew 11:28-30
This does not reconcile with Scripture, such as Matthew 11:28-30, where God freely offers mercy to all who will come to Christ:
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
There is no sense of discrimination between believers and unbelievers, the righteous and unrighteous, in these verses.
Isaiah 45:22
We find a similar message in Isaiah 45:22:
“Turn to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.
There are some who outright deny that the invitations in these Scriptures do not constitute a sincere offer of mercy to those whom God has not chosen to save.
To them, suggesting that God could have and unfulfilled desire is a direct attack on His divine sovereignty. They state that, because God is sovereign, He does whatever He pleases, so if He desires it, He does it.
Therefore, He cannot sincerely desire to have mercy on those whom He chooses not to save.
We must refrain from viewing God through the perspective of the human condition; where His desire must dictate His actions.
To be completely honest: this argument poses a significant difficulty; one that I myself was on the wrong side of until I deeply studied the entire context of the issue biblically. Thank you, Lord, for revealing the truth of your glory to my eyes!
Isaiah 46:10
The difficulty lies in answering the question: “How can unfulfilled desire be compatible with a wholly sovereign God?” For example, Isaiah 46:10 says:
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
God is utterly sovereign.
Therefore, isn’t it improper to suggest that any of His actual “desires” remain unfulfilled?
Psalm 135:6
Speaking from personal experience, those who take this stance lean too hard on verses like Psalm 135:6:
Whatever the Lord pleases, he does,
in heaven and on earth,
in the seas and all deeps.
However, the key error is one which we discussed last week: viewing God from a human perspective.
We are ascribing to God the human tendency that, if we desire something, and we can achieve it, then we will absolutely do it, without exception.
Psalm 50:21
We desire something and we are consumed by that desire, everything becomes about fulfilling that desire, but we forget the truth of Psalm 50:21, God is not like us.
Scripture testifies that God’s decrees do not always reflect His desires.
Luke 13:34
In fact, Luke 13:34 shows us that, in some cases, God’s desire is not fulfilled:
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!
Since we know that the wicked do indeed receive the punishment of death and this cannot occur outside of the sovereign decree of God, we must conclude that there is a sense in which God’s decrees do not always reflect His desires.
God can decree outside of His desire because He is not a slave to His desires.
Because of our human nature, this logic is difficult for us to get a grasp on.
The best we can do is try to grasp the essence of the idea, then reject any implications that would take us to ideas about God that are unbiblical.
If God’s desire remains unfulfilled, we must not conclude that God is somehow less than sovereign.
Jesus offered Himself as a sincere display of love for all of humanity.
1 John 4:14
Furthermore, 1 John 4:14 calls Jesus “the Savior of the world”:
And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.
However, John’s point is not that Jesus actually saves the whole world; that would be Universalism [which we discussed last week is not biblically supported (Eliminating Wrongs) {God is Love series}].
The point is that Jesus is the only Savior to whom anyone in the world can turn for forgiveness and eternal life and, therefore, all are urged to embrace Him as Savior.
In setting forth His own Son as Savior of the world, God displays a sincere, compassionate love that offers mercy and forgiveness to humanity in general.
Sometimes, the answer is that we must humbly trust in God’s goodness and truth.
We know that God is fully sovereign, however, we do not know why He chooses not to turn the heart of every sinner to salvation.
Nor should we, who do not understand His ways, speculate.
Psalm 139:6
The biblical solution is to rebuke our sinful pride, which dictates God must explain Himself, and humbly agree with the psalmist of Psalm 139:6:
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Now take a fresh look at John 3:16 and try to absorb the real sense of it: “God so loved the world,” wicked though it is, and despite the fact that nothing in the world is worthy of His love; “God so loved the world,”.
He loved the world of humanity so much “that He gave His only Son,” the most precious of sacrifices He could offer on our behalf, so “that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Therefore, the end result of God’s love is the truth of the Gospel message: an offer of divine mercy to everyone without exception which manifests God’s compassionate love and honest lovingkindness to all humanity.
John 3:16 (ESV)
For God So Loved the World
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
PRAYER
PRAYER