No Greater Love John 3:16
How can a person escape hell and go instead to heaven? The answer is given through the very basic message of Jesus and Christianity: It is not by devoting yourself to religious activities, morality, virtue, philosophy or philanthropy but by faith in the works of Christ. We ended last week with Jesus’ words to the Pharisee, Nicodemus, who taught salvation by morality and religious works in John 3:14-15 “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. (OR that everyone believing in Him may have life eternal.) The work of Christ’s life, death and resurrection are the grounds for salvation and continual, ongoing believing is the instrument of God.
Romans 10:17 says: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” Faith is a gift implanted in the human heart by God, His Spirit and His Word. Faith and the Word brought through the power of God’s Spirit cause spiritual life to be born, not by human will or flesh, but only by God, that’s why Jesus repeatedly tells us that “You must be born from above, from God, from the Spirit, not of the flesh.” Only He is able to give access to sinners to enter the Kingdom of God. This was turning Nicodemus’ world upside down because he’s a legalist: He didn’t buy it. He didn’t believe it. Jesus was telling him that something has to happen TO YOU that you don’t participate in. You need something from God that you cannot offer or accomplish. In other words: God is Sovereign in Salvation! This is the doctrine of divine calling, the effectual call, the efficient call or irresistible grace. This is the calling that identifies the church as the called by God. It’s what Jesus meant in John 6:37 “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” God’s “called” will come.
The Motive and Object of God’s salvation: “God so loved the world…”
Today we look at this most popular verse in the Bible which follows, in John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that He gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
The Son’s mission and God’s motive are tied up in the fact that “God so loved the world:” The love of God toward sinful humanity is a Supreme love toward a totally evil, wicked, sinful humanity that is in total rebellion against The Perfect and Holy God. There is an intensity and supernatural greatness of God’s “agape love” toward a lost human race which is not in the LEAST worthy of His Love and mercy. “Agape” is the highest form of the word “love” in the New Testament; It is a love of the will that chooses and keeps its object. It is unselfish love that desires the best for another at the giver’s own expense. It puts oneself at the disposal of another and is never self-directed or self-centered.
It is a love that seeks to lift up the lowly. It is not normally characteristic of human love but rather of God; that is why it is so foreign to our sensibilities and often we react AGAINST it. It is this love which God imparts to those who have been born by the Holy Spirit, and indwelt by Him. It is the fruit that is produced in such work and not manifested naturally in humankind. It has true moral and Godly character which will put itself against passion and feeling as is necessary. This Christ-like love is described in 1 Cor. 13:4-8, 13. It is the type of love which Paul requests in prayer in Eph. 3:18-19: (That you) “may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
At creation, God pronounced his creatures “Good”, but that goodness was shattered and totally corrupted at the fall of man into sin (“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Rom. 3:23. “Therefore, just as thorough one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” Rom. 5:12) As a result, every creature ever born has been in active rebellion against Almighty God, and all of corrupted creation stands under God’s judgment and is in need of HIS merciful redemption: How could a righteous and Holy God love something so utterly wicked? IT IS a FACT THAT GOD IS INFINITELY separated from that which is human. He alone is God!
Yet God loves the world because all those who will become believers by His Grace alone come from the world and they actually ARE the World until the Good News is received by them and God grants them saving faith. God’s love is so great because the world is so evil and He is so perfectly Holy.
God’s love shows up across the world every day in common grace and gospel invitation to those who are lost; He makes Himself accessible to the human mind and reason so that you can look at the world that exists and determine there’s a God behind it and thereby know something of His power and eternal Godhead as it says in Romans 1 but THERE IS A SPECIAL LOVE FOR THOSE whom He calls “His Own”, and they are dotted throughout the world of humanity and God is drawing them into His Kingdom one by one with the miracle of His love and second birth on account of His Extravagant Gift!
God’s Extravagant Gift: “that He gave his only Son”
God’s Extravagant Gift is “that He gave his only Son”. God’s “agape” is an outward directed affection and the fundamental example is demonstrated in God “giving” (Offering) His One and only Unique, one of a Kind Eternal Son Jesus Christ on a cross for sinners. This Eternal Son had existed in perfect unity and love with the Father and Spirit throughout all eternity. Instead of immediately pouring out His eternal wrath upon the world to satisfy the penalty for sin and sending everyone to eternal punishment, in His Sovereign plan, God works methodically and intentionally throughout the Old Testament period, preparing the world for His own appearance in the flesh. God sends His own Son, God veiled in human flesh as the PEACE-OFFERING for sin- the only atonement which could be made to satisfy sin and death.
Ephesians 2:4-5: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved”
1 John 3:1: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God.” He calls those to whom he gives His gift of love, His Children.
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” No prejudice.
Romans 6:5: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” He died for lost humanity.
2 Corinthians 5:21 “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” What Infinite Love! What an Extravagant Gift! What a Glorious God!
God’s Gracious Offer!
Listen to God’s Gracious Offer! "For God so loved the world, that He gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
John uses the reference to eternal life fifteen times in his gospel. The Jews knew eternal life as the life of God, not so much a duration of time as a quality of life: The very life of God, divine life, everlasting life, transcendent life, supernatural life, life in perfect union with the Trinity. God’s offer to those who continue to believe, trust and follow Him is that they will live with Him eternally, possessing life with God, starting now and continuing without end. It is life in the age to come where time is not even measured; it is the life of the Kingdom of God as brought in by Jesus Christ, who IS the Life.
God’s Word is clear not gray, isn’t it? There are NOT many ways to God, but God in Christ has abundantly and graciously provided THE WAY to the Kingdom of God. Religions “invent” ways to God in their own thinking, but Jesus says “whoever believes” will have an everlasting relationship with God through the Son, but those who do not believe and trust the Son for their salvation will perish eternally: Eternity WITH God or eternity without God.
Luke uses the word “perish” more often than anyone in the New Testament. In Luke 13:3&5 Jesus says: I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish." Luke 19:10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost."(perishing)The object of one’s faith must be the Lord Jesus because He is the only one who ever came to save the perishing! If a person chooses another savior rather than Jesus Christ, he states that his savior is the more worthy object of his faith. Church attendance, water baptism, helping the poor, tithing, trying to live a good life, prayer and Bible reading, worship are all responses of gratitude to God for GIVING the offering of His Son Jesus, but not one of them nor all of them together contribute to your salvation, but they are definitely a major part of a believer’s life.
The wealthy, the poor, pastors, volunteers, those struggling with addiction or depression, the struggling single parent or lonely widow, will all enter the Kingdom of God on God’s terms: Whoever truly and continually believes, having been born from above.
1John 5:12 “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” John 3:17-18 says:” 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.”
John 11:25-26 “Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. (and then He said:) Do you believe this?”
If you do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as Redeemer, and Savior, and Lord, you will die in your sins and go to eternal punishment. That is the one unforgivable sin. NO TURNING BACK. God loved the world, he loved you, to the extent that He gave up His unique eternal only Son to the Cross so that in believing in Him by faith, you would have life, and have it without end. Jesus said in John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” There is no greater love than the Love that God has for humanity, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes into Him should not perish, but have eternal life. Who receives the Glory? God alone, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.” Romans 11:36
Intro: John 3:14-15, Romans 10:17, John 6:37
1. God’s Motive and Object of Salvation: “God so loved the world…” (1 Cor. 13:4-8, 13, Eph. 3:18-19, Rom. 3:23, 5:12)
2. God’s Extravagant Gift: “that He gave his only Son” (Ephesians 2:4-5, 1 John 3:1, Romans 5:8, 6:5: 2 Cor 5:21
3. God’s Gracious Offer: “that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life”. (Luke 13:3&5, 19:10, 1John 5:12, John 3:17-18, 11:25-26, 15:13, Romans 11:36)
