Scripture: John 3:16
Date: October 2, 2011
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Last week we began to examine the single most well-known verse in the Bible, John 3:16. It’s well-known for a reason: it’s a succinct statement of the single most glorious news in the world: God loves!
We live in a world created by a loving God. Our existence revolves around the overflow of infinite, eternal, Trinitarian love. The earth rotates in one direction, not another, because God spins it that way. He spins it with love.
Imagine for a moment if everything else was the same except that part about God’s love. Imagine a Triune God who created humans in His image. What if God was power (only or primarily)? Our existence would be a constant struggle for more power. Shared power is divided power, so the more we gave the less we’d have. Life would revolve around protecting our power and taking power from others.
What if God was righteous (primarily)? Our existence would be a constant regard for standards, a constant policing of policies. Our own unrighteousness would require hiding (if we could) and unrighteousness in others would warrant list-making and quick exposure and hard-nose discipline. Life would revolve around rules and consequences.
What if God was anger (primarily)? What if He created us to reflect His own bitter existence among the persons of the Trinity? He and His Son simply could not get along, so how about creating a people with whom to share the frustration? Misery loves (creating) company. Life would revolve around bickering and fights and division.
These are only a few examples of how the world isn’t because our God isn’t like that. Our God loves. Unlike power, given love isn’t divided love. His power serves His love and multiplies it. He is righteous but, because He loves, He’s made a way for forgiveness; He invites the unrighteous to Himself rather than humiliate them. He is angry toward sin but, for those who believe, His Son took the wrath against unrighteousness.
Our God loves, first within the Triune Godhead and then His creation. The world runs on God’s love and it is a love like no other.
That’s part of the reason John 3:16 is so well-known and so often repeated. It’s great news. God loves! God gives! Life (eternal) is possible!
But this is a very important question: Why do so many more people recite John 3:16 than receive it? They know it, they have it memorized, and yet they don’t believe it. Why?
For as great as John 3:16 is, for as fantastic a reality that God loves, John 3:16 reveals that this love of God is like no other, and maybe we don’t like it so much after all. The more one really thinks about the revelation of God’s love, the less appealing it may be. Remember, “God so loved the world”. It’s a particular sort of love. οὕτως is the first word in the Greek text, an adverb translated “so” or “thus” or “in this way.” Love is one way, not another, meaning that this love is like no other, and not everyone wants love if it’s like that.
Again, Why? What is it about God’s love that makes it easier to recite than to receive? John 3:16 reveals at least four disagreeable elements of God’s love to the natural man.
Who loves in John 3:16? “God” loves. God is love, but love is not god. Love radiates from a personal, particular God. His love is like no other because He is a God like no other.
This God can be distinguished. He has a Son (and also Spirit according to verses 5-8). He is eternal. Of course, to John’s readers, they already read about these truths. But all by itself on a billboard, John 3:16 reveals a God in relationship, a Father with His “only begotten” or “one-of-a-kind” Son. We know from context that this Son’s name is Jesus. Jesus is the eternal Word who was God and was with God (John 1:1). Jesus is the Son of Man (3:14). There are arms and legs attached to God’s love; His love can’t be disembodied from Christ. There is no eternal life in any other god because there is no saving love apart from this God.
Not only is He a particular God, He is the God with power to give His Son, the prerogative to grant life, and the authority to punish for eternity all those who do not believe.
Who is in charge in verse 16? In particular, who decides if one lives or perishes eternally? These aren’t spiritual test drives that end in a month, or even a decade or two, but realities for the rest of time. Who has that sort of say? He loves, yes, and He has authority to condemn the world as the rest of the paragraph expands.
To receive the love of God in John 3:16 one must receive the God who loves, the God and Father of the Lord, Jesus Christ, the God of authority over all.
Who is being loved in John 3:16? God loved “the world.” While this may sound like a politically correct sentiment, it is much more disagreeable to the natural man.
No matter our conclusion on the limits or lack of limits on the word “world,” everyone [smile] agrees that “world” at the least refers to all kinds of people in all kinds of places. So wait. That means He loves…them? They don’t look like us. They’re not part of our group, and, I mean, look at us, our group is obviously better. God doesn’t love with prejudice and bias. He is no discriminationalist. His love is liberal (without the liberalism). You really want a God like that, who loves people like them?
Even if we have no hang-ups over skin tone or dialect or hometown, certainly not everyone should be loved; not everyone is even likable.
Forget for a moment the surface arrogance of this concern. The point is true, isn’t it? There are a lot of people in the world who are not lovely or whom only their mother’s love. Spend time people watching or actually walk through a crowd at the fair. It only takes a whiff and a glance to find a group to prove this point.
And wouldn’t God have better taste? Aren’t His expectations higher? If there is a God of love, how could He possibly love that person or those people? We can provide Him with the names a bunch of persons who aren’t likable or lovable let alone the rest of the world.
It is a distinctively Christian idea that God’s love is wide enough to embrace all people. His love is not confined to any national group or spiritual elite. It is a love that proceeds from the fact that he is love (1 John 4:8, 16). It is his nature to love. He loves people because he is the kind of God he is. (Morris, 203)
To receive the love in John 3:16, one must receive the truth that God loves the world, and the objects of His affection may not meet our standards.
What is the result of love in John 3:16? Or, what does love do? God loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son. We know those words, but a couple things make them hard to believe.
The love in John 3:16 is a love that offers up what it values most; it pays the highest possible cost. What god would do that, really? Certainly, a god would take; god gets others to give. God wouldn’t put himself forward, or especially His one-and-only child. That doesn’t make any sense. That’s “cosmic child abuse.” Who would believe that?
The love in John 3:16 is covered in blood; the verse could be colored red, but not with ink because Jesus said it. The “gave” includes the Son taking on flesh but it also includes the Son lifted up, the Son murdered, the Son crucified as an offering. There is no way to receive the love in this verse disconnected from the cross.
Who wants that? That’s part of the reason John 3:16 is easier to recite than to receive. This is the blood-dark side of the verse. And to receive this truth, to acknowledge this God who loves like this, is also to obligate ourselves to agree with why the giving was necessary in the first place.
Why is love so climactic in John 3:16? The reason is that love moved God to give His Son so that all those believing would share eternal life. That’ll work; nothing too objectionable as long as we don’t think about it. But what does the promise of life assume? It assumes death. The premise, the reality under God’s love for the world that caused Him to give His Son, is a world that is perishing.
This rubs the flesh the wrong way. To receive John 3:16 means to receive God’s assessment on ourselves: we are perishing without Him and without Him we will perish eternally. The rest of the paragraph presses home the point: unbelievers love the dark and do evil under condemnation. Those in darkness do’t want the light because it exposes the darkness. They don’t receive John 3:16 because shines the light too brightly.
Love might sound good until you read the big print. Love comes from a particular God (Father, Son, and Spirit) who must be received, the God who loves the kind of people we don’t, the God who sacrifices, the God who pronounces guilt and determines punishment on the eternal scale. This is love like no other.
The world is not interested in this love. They do not want to die. They do not want to be told that their condition required death. They don’t want to deal with perishing, perishing isn’t very Disney princess like.
Why don’t more people receive it? Because it’s hard to receive. Actually, it’s impossible to receive without the new birth.
That’s the context, right? The apostle John is commenting on Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. The “For” in verse 16 begins an explanation of verses 1-15. Nicodemus did not receive the kingdom of God. Why? He did not receive because he had not been born again (v.3); he had not been born of the Spirit (v.8). His heritage, his religious position, his knowledge of Scripture wasn’t enough. No one receives Him without being born of Him, and no one is born of Him by blood, by the will of the flesh or the will of man (see John 1:12-13). God must sovereignly transfer someone out of darkness into light.
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Okay, big stuff here. John 3:1-15 is about the need for regeneration. Unless one is born again (regenerated) he cannot believe and being born again is outside one’s own ability. God’s Spirit must do the work.
So how can John 3:16ff be an explanation of 3:1-15? Why put forward the promise of eternal life for all those who believe when they can’t believe? Because the Spirit loves to use the good news of God’s love to cause men to be born again!
God’s love is amazing. His love is like no other. But it’s too amazing and, as we’ve considered, it’s disagreeable to those in darkness. How can you get someone to want it? How can you make it agreeable? On one hand, you can’t. Only God’s Spirit can. But the Spirit may use you as a new birth midwife.
Isn’t this Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians 1:18, 22-24?
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (v.18) …we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Isn’t this Paul’s point in 2 Corinthians 4:3-6
even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:3–6)
Isn’t this Peter’s point in 1 Peter 1:3, 23 and 25?
According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Peter 1:3)… you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God…And this word is the good news that was preached to you. (1 Peter 1:23, 25)
Jesus told Nicodemus that he needed to believe by new birth, and all of John’s readers were in the same position. So John lifts up God’s love in John 3:16 that the Spirit might regenerate men into believing for eternal life.
You might not believe. You might have good reasons.
Some can’t believe that God loves them. Others can’t believe that God wouldn’t love them. Only those who believe truly know His love.
To those who believe that God cannot love them: did God send His Son? If you reject the Son’s incarnation or His historical crucifixion, you may make the argument. But the coming of only-begotten in flesh and His being lifted up on the cross prove the love of God for sinners such as you. In proportion to the degree that the Father loves the Son, the giving of the Son demonstrates the Father’s love for the world.
To those who believe that God loves them because they are lovely: why did God send His Son? What required His Son to be lifted up? It was your sin. You are perishing without Him.
If you do believe, you can’t get tired of hearing about His love and you also can’t see enough what kind of love you need to reflect and recite to the world. It’s a love like no other.