God So Loved the World | John 3:16-21
Brian Hedges | February 12, 2017
Thank you, Stephani, for the reminder that our hope is in Christ alone. Good morning! Welcome to this morning and we’re so glad to have you here with us. Today we’re going to be studying together the most famous verse in the Bible. Do you know what that verse is? John 3:16. This is the verse that you see plastered on billboards when you’re driving down the interstate. You’ll see people hold this up on signs at sporting events. You even hear this on the radio. Have you ever heard that Keith Urban song, “And I learned everything I need to know from John Cougar, John Deere and John 3:16?” Well, this morning we’re going to look at John 3:16 and we’re going to look at the surrounding context.
Someone has called this verse, “the gospel in a nutshell.” And perhaps that’s one reason why it’s so famous, so well-known, because you really have a summary of the gospel message right here in this passage. So, let’s look at it together. John chapter three, verses 16:21:
“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.”
This is God’s word.
So one technical thing to note as we get started here is just who is speaking in this passage. Some of you have Bibles where this passage is in the red letters. And so it seems as if Jesus is speaking, continuing in his discussion with Nicodemus. But, there is a question about that, as you probably know, in Greek there are no quotations marks to tell us. We have to look at other things in the text to help us to understand who is speaking. And there are some good reasons to believe that Jesus’ words actually ended in verse fifteen. And that now what we have is John the Apostle giving us an extended comment on an application of Jesus’ teaching earlier in this chapter.
In either case, these verses give us a summary of the gospel message. And I think we can break it down into three parts: The problem; the solution; and then our response. So, let’s take each one of those in turn.
I. The problem: condemnation
First of all, the problem. And the problem, of course, is the problem of condemnation or of perishing, in verse sixteen. The reason why God loved the world and sent his only son, is so that whoever would believe in him would not perish. What does it mean to perish? Well, to perish means to be ruined, it means to be lost, to be destroyed. And that gets further defined for us in this language of condemnation. And I think what’s important for you to understand here is that condemnation is a judicial verdict. It’s a judicial verdict. To be condemned is to be condemned by a judge in the eyes of the court. And the reason for the condemnation, as spelled out in this passage, is our love for darkness. Our love for darkness.
Now, I think one of the problems we have when we read a passage like this, is we’ll read it and we immediately think, “Well, sure. A serial killer loves darkness and deserves condemnation. Or a fascist dictator loves darkness and deserves condemnation. But me? I mean, am I really deserving of condemnation?” Now, we have to be careful that we don’t read this in an us/them kind of way, where we think mainly of other people instead of ourselves. We need to understand that you and I, in our own hearts, have all of the potential for the worst forms of evil in the world.
Okay, there’s a tv show that was very popular a few years ago, called Breaking Bad. I don’t know if you’ve seen this show. I’ve only seen a very little bit of it, so I’m not recommending it. I understand it’s pretty dark. But, this show was very fascinating to a lot people and I think the reason it was fascinating, if I understand the plot correctly, is because it’s about a fairly ordinary kind of guy. He was a high-school chemistry teacher, who makes a series of choices that lead him down a very dark path, so that by the end of the show he becomes this drug lord. And it shows the descent, the slow descent and the evil that happens one choice at a time, once step at a time in our lives.
There’s a musician named Sufjan Stevens. Many of you have probably heard of him--very highly, critically acclaimed Indie folk artist. And he has this song on his album, Illinois about a serial killer. A guy named, “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” And it’s a song about how he killed these people and then he buried the bodies under his house. But Stevens is actually a thoughtful, committed Christian and he ends this song with a very revealing stanza. It goes like this:
And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid
You see, we all have stuff hidden in the floorboards of our house. We’re all like this character in Breaking Bad--just a few steps away, just a few choices away from our fairly ordinary, seemingly innocent lives, to willing that which is really evil and going down this really dark path.
Here’s another illustration: Alexander Solzhenitsyn documented his suffering under Communist persecution in his book, The Gulag Archipelago. And he realized when he was suffering all those years in the prison, he realized that good and evil was not something that just divided human beings into classes or parties, it was something that was in his own heart. He said: “Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart...”
You see, here’s the verdict. The verdict is that we’re guilty and here’s the evidence: we love darkness. The seeds of sin, the seeds of evil, the seeds of darkness are right there in our heart. In other words, we don’t sin because of some external compulsion. It’s not because someone’s making us sin. We sin because we choose to. We sin because we will to. We sin because we’re confronted with choices everyday between good and evil and we incline towards the evil.
I’m rereading right now, Augustine’s Confessions – Saint Augustine. And I just read this chapter this week, it’s in Book Two, where Augustine talks about when he was a kid, and he and bunch of his buddies stole pears off of this person’s tree. And Augustine is reflecting on this and he says, “It wasn’t because we were hungry.” Because they didn’t even eat the pears. It wasn’t because the pears were particularly attractive or tasty. In fact, Augustine says, “I had better pears at home.” In fact, they just fed the pears to the pigs. It was because it was forbidden. It is because they liked stealing. It is because there is something attractive about the act of evil itself. And you and I are just like this. We love the darkness and sometimes we embrace these small evils, these small sins in our hearts.
So, just ask yourself for a minute, have you ever been confronted with a dark thought? A forbidden desire? Some sinful emotion? Have you ever been confronted with something like this and rather than resisting it, rather than turning away from it, you lean into it? You choose it. Maybe it’s a sexual fantasy. Maybe it’s a revenge fantasy, you start daydreaming about someone getting their due. Someone who hurt you in some kind of way, you’re dreaming about getting even with them. Maybe it’s turning inward in a moment of self-pity, or of envy, or of anger. Maybe it’s really gloating in pride over one of your accomplishments. Maybe it’s harboring bitterness over some injustice.
Regardless of what it is, the telling thing about us is that sometimes we will that which is evil. We embrace it. We pursue it. We let it have its way in our hearts—that’s our problem. We love darkness rather than light. Our deeds are evil and that’s the reason for our condemnation and that’s why we need rescue. That’s why we need salvation. That’s why we need new birth, as we saw last week. We need to be changed.
C.S. Lewis, in one of his essays in God in the Dock, says this: “There is something inside you which, unless it is altered, will put it out of God's power to prevent your being eternally miserable. While that something remains there can be no Heaven for you, just as there can be no sweet smells for a man with a cold in the nose, and no music for a man who is deaf . . . In each of us there is something growing up which will of itself be hell unless it is nipped in the bud. The matter is serious: let us put ourselves in His hands at once - this very day, this hour.”
II. The solution: God’s gift
Have you recognized this problem in your own heart? The love for darkness, the reason for condemnation. If that’s the problem, what then is the solution? We need to be rescued from condemnation and the love of darkness that leads us there and we can’t rescue ourselves, so what’s the solution? The solution is God’s gift. It is God’s gracious provision as it’s described here in this passage.
(1) Notice three things about this gift. First of all, the motive behind God’s gift. You see it in verse sixteen, “For God so loved the world, that he gave.” What is the motive for God’s gift of his son? It is his love for us. Now, get this right. This is so important. Jesus did not die for you so that God would love you. Jesus died for you because God already loves you. Jesus died for you because He loves you and because God sent him to save us. God’s love is behind the gift. God’s love, his gracious love is the fountainhead from which all the streams of salvation, all the rivers of grace flow. His love is behind it all.
Paul tells us (Romans 5:8) that “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Or the passage we read this morning in our assurance of pardon (Ephesians 2) “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, he saved us by his grace.” Or 1 John 4:9-10, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
You know that wonderful old hymn:
The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell.
It goes beyond the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hell.
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled
And pardoned from his sin.
And then there’s this wonderful verse:
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
The love of God, the love of God is behind our salvation. God loved us and therefore he gave us his son.
(2) Now look at the gift itself, secondly. The gift itself. What is the gift? Well, is it his son and when you look at the surrounding context, it’s two things in particular that he sent the Son to do. It is the incarnation of the Son, look at verse 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.” God sent His Son into the world—this is the incarnation. This is the opening of the gospel of John. The Word, the eternal Word, who is at the Father’s side, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have beheld His glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. Jesus, the eternal Son of God, came to be one of us. To live a perfect life in our behalf and then to go all the way to the cross.
And that’s the second thing—the crucifixion of the Son. You see that in Jesus’ words, verses 14 and 15, which we looked at last week, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” The crucifixion of the Son—He’s lifted up. He’s lifted up on the cross. He’s nailed there on the cross, crucified for our sins, as the sacrifice, the substitute, the representative bearing our sin so that we could be saved. He took the condemnation. He took the judgement so that we could have justification and life in its place.
(3) And that leads, of course, to the purpose of God’s gift. Why did God do this? Now there’s more than one answer to that question. We could say on one hand that God did it for His glory. He did it to glorify His Name. That was in our call to worship this morning. He’s chosen us and He has redeemed us and He has sealed us with His Spirit to the praise of His glorious grace. But you see, God’s glory is not at odds with our good. He did it for us as well. He did it for our salvation. He did it because of the love He had for us and in order that we would not be lost. That we would not be condemned, but that we would be saved.
Look again at verses 16 and 17, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” And then verse 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.”
So God’s purpose in this gift was our salvation. To save us, that is, to rescue us. To deliver us from our sins and to deliver us from the condemnation that our sins deserved and then that we would receive eternal life. What is this? It is life in the age to come. It is resurrection life in the eternal kingdom of Christ. But it is also life that begins right now. It’s the life of God in the soul of man, as we saw last week. It’s the gift of new birth, a new heart, a new spirit--God’s very Spirit within us, making us alive; cleansing our hearts and giving us spiritual life and vitality.
This is God’s gracious provision--the gift of salvation, the gift of His Son, all motivated by His love. To use the words of John Calvin, “The true looking of faith . . . is placing Christ before one’s eyes and beholding in Him the heart of God poured out in love.” That’s what we see in Christ—the heart of God poured out in love. This is the solution to our problem. Our problem is sin and condemnation. The provision, the solution is God’s gift of salvation.
III. Our response: believe
Now, what is our response? Well, our response of course is to believe. It is to believe and you see this throughout the text. Just notice how many times the passage speaks of believing. Verse 16, “Whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” Verse 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.”
So, what does it mean to believe? I think sometimes when the way we use the language of faith in our world today, can be confusing. Sometimes people talk about having faith and what they mean is some kind of nebulous, hard to define feeling or sense that everything is gonna be okay. “Just have faith. Just have faith in something. It doesn’t really matter what you believe in, just believe in something.” You hear that all the time. That’s not a biblical idea of faith.
What does it mean to have faith? What does it mean to believe? I know of one guy, one theologian who actually argues that we should get rid of the word faith altogether and we should translate this in words that more accurately convey the idea of the Greek word here, pisteuo. And it would be something like this—to believe means to trust in or to entrust yourself to, or to rely on or depend upon someone else. That’s what it means to believe.
To believe is to entrust yourself to Christ; it is to trust Christ with your life, with your case, with your condition. It is to depend on Christ; it is to rely upon Christ. In the words of Dutch theologian, Hermon Bavinck, faith is “not a work, but a relinquishment of all work, an unqualified trust in God who gives life to the dead and raised Christ from the dead, who in Christ gave ‘a righteousness from God.’”
One of my favorite missionary stories is the story of John Paton, a Scottish missionary in the nineteenth century to the New Hebrides islands. We named our oldest son, Stephen Paton Hedges, after John Paton. When John decided he wanted to go to these New Hebrides Islands, one of the older men at his church said, “You’re gonna be eaten by cannibals.” And he replied, “Well, you’re gonna die before too long and you’re gonna be eaten by worms. So whether you’re eaten by worms or I’m eaten by cannibals, it doesn’t really matter. I’m going!” And so he goes to the New Hebrides. He suffered incredibly while he was there but he stayed most of his life, translated the New Testament into the language of the people, and saw virtually an entire island of cannibals utterly transformed and come to Christ.
Now, when he got there, he started working with these people, he was trying to translate into their language, he discovered they didn’t have a word for faith. They didn’t have a word for believe. And he struggled with this. How could he get this idea, this concept across to them? And one day, after a long hunt--he was on a hunt with some of these men from the island--on a hunt with them and a long trek back to the veranda and they were on the porch and one of the men collapsed into a chair and said, “It’s so good to stretch yourself out here and rest.” And a light went off in John Paton’s mind and he used that phrase to translate this word in the New Testament. “For God so loved that He gave His only Son that whoever stretches himself out on Christ will not perish but have eternal life.” That’s the idea. It’s resting in Christ. Believing in Him. Trusting in Him. In the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith, “the principal acts of saving faith are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life.”
Let me give you one more story, one more illustration. Have you ever heard of Blondin? Charles Blondin? He’s history’s most famous tight-rope walker. He was called the daredevil of Niagara Falls and he would walk on this tight rope over Niagara Falls from the U.S. to Canada or vice versa on this thirteen hundred foot rope. That’s almost a quarter of a mile. A quarter of a mile, walking across Niagara Falls on this two inch diameter cable. And not only would he walk, he would do all of these other kinds of feats as well. He would push a wheelbarrow across, or he’d carry this large camera and get half-way across and he’d take a picture of the crowd.
One time, he did back-flips and somersaults across. I’m not kidding. I mean, this is on the Smithsonian’s website, where they tell this whole story. This is all documented with pictures and everything. Somersaults and backflips across this cable. Now, imagine yourself in the crowd and Blondin, Charles Blondin, offers to carry someone across. “Do you believe I can do it?” Everybody raises their hand. “Do you believe I could do it for you? Climb on my back!” Do you climb on his back? You see, that’s the difference between believing about and believing in. Believing in, means entrusting yourself to. Entrusting yourself. It’s climbing on the person’s back. And someone actually did this--Blondin’s manager, Harry Colcord. Listen to what Blondid said to Harry. He said, “Look up, Harry.…you are no longer Harry Colcord, you are Blondin. Until I clear this place be a part of me, mind, body, and soul. If I sway, sway with me. Do not attempt to do any balancing yourself.”
Well, that’s the idea of faith. It’s clinging to Christ. It’s resting all of our weight upon Him. It’s depending on Him entirely. It’s entrusting ourselves to Him, uniting ourselves to Him so that we are one with Him. We don’t try to save ourselves. We don’t try to carry ourselves across the chasm of God’s judgement. We don’t try to rescue ourselves from the condemnation. Instead, we trust in the one who was condemned in our place. We depend on Him. We rely upon Him. And in doing so, we are saved.
Our problem is, we’re condemned because of our love for darkness. The solution to the problem is God’s gracious love-gift to the world. The gift of His Son, in His incarnation, in His crucifixion and the only appropriate response is to entrust ourselves to Christ. Have you done that? Have you done that this morning? Have you trusted in Christ and Christ alone for your salvation? Have you trusted in Him to rescue you from perishing? To take the condemnation you deserve and to give you eternal life. If you haven’t done so, I invite you to do so now as we pray.
Gracious Father in heaven, we thank you for this love that amazes us. Love so amazing, so divine that demands our life, our soul, our all. We really can’t fathom that you would love us so much that you would send your one and only Son to take the punishment we deserve. But, we gratefully acknowledge your gift and right now we gratefully entrust ourselves to Christ and all of His saving work. Thank you for this gift. I pray this morning for anyone who does not know Christ, that you would give the gift of saving faith. I pray that where there are doubts in someone’s heart, they would be able to say at least, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.” I pray that you would help us, each one of us, to resist the inclinations towards darkness. And that rather than being people who love darkness and hide from the light, we would be glad to come into the light, to confess our sins before you, to acknowledge our need as sinners and to trust in Christ entirely.
Gracious Father, as we come now to the Lord’s table, we come to express our faith. We come to express our trust in Christ for giving life through His broken body. Through His poured out blood. As we take the bread, as we take the juice, may we do so in faith, taking Christ Himself to be our all in all. So draw near to us now as we continue in worship. We pray it in Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Brian G. Hedges
