God’s Love Is For Giving: A Confessional Sermon On John 3:16

Have you ever wondered why you don’t often hear sermons preached on John 3:16?

I don’t mean references to it.

I don’t mean quoting it in passing.

I mean a full sermon—sitting with it, staying with it, letting it speak.

At first, that sounds strange. Because John 3:16 is everywhere. Many of us learned it before we learned how to read. We can quote it from memory. We see it on signs, banners, and walls. It is familiar, comfortable, almost automatic.

And yet, the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized something unsettling:

we hear John 3:16 constantly, but we rarely linger with it.

I need to make a confession this morning.

I have avoided preaching on John 3:16.

Not because I don’t believe it.

Not because I doubt it.

But because I don’t know what to do with a love that gives before I do anything.

I know how to preach commandments.

I know how to preach warnings.

I even know how to preach grace — when it still leaves us something to manage.

This message isn’t an effort to change how you believe.

It’s an invitation to remember why you believe.

But John 3:16 doesn’t give me leverage.

It doesn’t give me a ladder.

It doesn’t tell me what to fix first.

It tells me what God has already done.

And if I’m honest, that kind of love doesn’t inflate a sermon—it quiets one.

John 3:16 is not a slogan floating in isolation. It comes at the end of a conversation—quiet, personal, and at night.

Jesus is speaking with Nicodemus, a man who has done everything right. He is faithful, educated, respected. He knows Scripture. He teaches Scripture. He manages the system of religion well.

And yet, he comes at night.

In John’s Gospel, night is rarely just about time. It’s about condition. Nicodemus is not rebelling. He is restless. He is accomplished, but thin. He has honored the system, but the system has not given him life.

Jesus does not congratulate him.

He does not assign him improvement.

He tells him that life must be given from above.

And then, into that quiet, unsettled space, Jesus says the words we know so well:

“For God so loved the world…”

Those words were not spoken to convince an atheist.

They were spoken to a faithful man - a man who was tired.

I wonder if that’s why this verse resists preaching.

Because it doesn’t speak first to our doubts. It speaks to our exhaustion.

When Jesus says, “For God so loved the world,” we usually hear the word "so" as intensity—God loved the world "so much". But the word Jesus uses doesn’t describe how much. It describes --HOW--.

It means, “In this way.”

“In this way God loved the world: He gave.”

And that’s where resistance rises in me.

Because I’m comfortable with a God who commands.

I’m comfortable with a God who evaluates.

I’m even comfortable with a God who forgives after I’ve acknowledged my failure.

But a God who gives before I do anything—

before I understand,

before I respond,

before I improve—

that kind of love leaves me with no leverage.

It doesn’t tell me what to fix.

It doesn’t tell me how to qualify.

It doesn’t tell me what to manage.

It simply tells me that something has already been given.

I think that’s why we quote this verse more than we preach it.

A love that gives first doesn’t give us much to do.

And most of us are far more comfortable doing than receiving.

The verse continues, and the discomfort deepens.

“For God so loved the world…”

Not the improved world.

Not the grateful world.

Not the world that finally got its act together.

Just—the world.

In John’s Gospel, “the world” is not a compliment.

It is the place of misunderstanding, resistance, and fear.

It is the place where light shines, but is not always welcomed.

And yet, that is where God’s love moves.

Not toward potential.

Not toward promise.

But toward reality.

Which means this verse is not just about how God loves humanity out there.

It is about how God loves the world in here.

The parts of us that are tired.

The parts that are cynical.

The parts that are unfinished and quietly afraid of being found out.

God’s love does not wait for us to conquer our inner chaos.

It enters it.

And that unsettles systems built on control.

Then comes the phrase that sounds narrow, but isn’t.

“That He gave His only Son,

that whoever believes in Him…”

We tend to hear that as a gate with a lock.

But the word that carries the weight here is not believes first.

It is "whoever".

“Whoever” is deliberately unspecific.

It refuses categories.

It dismantles hierarchies.

It places the disciplined and the distracted, the faithful and the fatigued, on the same ground.