Sermon Idea: God’s love is why He sent the Son to save the world.
Introduction: John 3:16 is the most recognizable verse in the entire Bible. It is the first verse young children memorize; you can see it on billboards along the highway and in the stands at sporting events. In 2009, Tim Tebow even etched “John 3:16” into his eye paint for the BCS National Championship game as the University of Florida quarterback.
It is simply familiar. This familiarity, of course, is not bad, but it can become problematic when we take these familiar truths for granted. Here is one scholar describing the potential problem.
Familiar verses can seem like the ABCs of the Christian faith—things to move beyond in order to drink from deeper wells. But if we have this attitude, we may forget key elements of the Christian gospel and miss the deeper, varied truths that are right there. – Jarvis Williams
This evening I want to put this familiar verse before you one more time, not as the ABC’s of the Christian faith, but as the very life-giving message of the gospel and the only hope for sinners. I want us to see the deeper, varied truths that are right here.
This Spirit has used this single verse to convict sinners, bring repentance, and bring faith in the Lord Jesus. For that reason, I decided to begin this week with this familiar verse. My simple prayer is that God will use this evening to draw people to Himself through this familiar but crystal-clear Word.
As we look at John 3:16, I hope to show you the greatness of God’s love, the giving of the Son, and the gift of eternal life.
I.) The greatness of God’s love
It is hard to think of a more famous use of the word “so.” If you listen closely, you can probably even hear the stress people put on the so, when they say, “For God so loved the world…”
This word captures the greatness of God’s love because it directs our attention to both the action and the object of God’s love.
The word “so” captures the greatness of God’s love because it shows how God’s love is made manifest. It might he helpful to read John 3:16 in the CSB, which makes this crystal clear.
16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son (Jn 3:16)
Giving His Son makes God’s love great and glorious. This act manifests His love and makes it known! This is why 1 John says that God sending His Son is love.
9 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. 10 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. 1 Jn 4:9–10.
All that we have in the gospel: the sending of the Son incarnate in Jesus Christ, his perfect sacrifice on the cross in the place of sinners, his glorious resurrection from the dead, and the grace of salvation begins with God’s great love.
As part of discipleship, I’ll often encourage people to ask several questions about Scripture. The first one I teach them to ask is, “What do these verses teach us about God?”
We learn that God has demonstrated his love for the world in a visible, historical, and sacrificial way. God is love, and his love is great, so he manifests it by sending the Son.
God’s love is also great because of the object of God’s love: “For God so loved the world…”
Two important points stand out here. The world is very big, and the world is very bad.
We need to remember that Jesus is having a conversation with Nicodemus, who is described as “a ruler of the Jews.” Nicodemus expected God to send a Messiah to save Israel and to judge Israel’s enemies. He expected that Israel would be with God in his Kingdom. God’s love for Israel was little in doubt.
John 3:16 does not say, “For God so loved Israel…” No, the Gospel of John is teaching us the greatness of God’s love and the extent to which the gospel will reach. God’s salvation through the Messiah will not be for Israel alone, but for both Jew and Gentile. In other words, it will be for the world. God loves the world: every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. There is not a people group on planet earth that we should not labor, strive, and give to get the gospel to. God loves the world.
Something more needs to be said here. It is not just that the world is big. It is also bad. Here, the greatness of God’s love is amazing. God’s love for the world is not a love for an obedient, righteous, and holy world. It is love for the world that is wicked, rebellious, and sinful.
In fact, this is why John tells Christians not to love the world: “world,” in John’s gospel, refers to fallen, sinful humanity. Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. (1 Jn 2:15)
God loved the world when the world did not love God.
8 But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Ro 5:8)
This brings up an important practical point. The gospel will not be good news to you, and God’s love will not be great in your eyes, unless you are convicted that you are part of a wicked, rebellious world in need of salvation.
Scripture is clear that every person in the world is in need of salvation, because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Ro 3:23)
In 1 John, we are told that denying that we have sinned makes God a liar and means his word is not in us. All of us, without exception, are members of the world God loved by sending his Son, which means we all need a Savior.
The gospel will not be sweet to you until you realize how necessary it is.
The gospel is the good news that God loved the world that sinned against God. The manifestation of that is the giving of the Son. Let’s look at verse 16 again.
II.) The giving of God’s Son
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 phrase “only Son” carries great weight in the ESV, or “only-begotten Son” in other translations. “Son” is a royal title in the Bible, but when it refers to Jesus, it means more. It speaks to Jesus’ shared divine nature with the Father. He is the eternally-begotten Son of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (Jn 1:14)
We see the greatness of God’s love in giving the Son at two levels. The first is the incarnation. The eternal Son of God is sent into the world by becoming flesh and dwelling among us.
The second giving is Jesus’ offering as a sacrifice on the cross in the place of sinners. We know both are in view because John 3:16 is sandwiched between John 3:14-15 and John 3:17.
In John 3:14-15, Jesus told Nicodemus that just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so also must the Son of Man be lifted up. This clearly references the cross. Jesus will be lifted up by his substitutionary death on the cross, so that all who look to him in faith will be saved.
John 3:17, we are told that God sent the Son into the world. 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. (Jn 3:17)
The “giving” mentioned in 3:16 includes both sending the Son and sacrificing the Son. God’s love results in the mission of the Son of God, who leaves the glories of heaven, humbles himself by becoming human, and is sacrificed on the cross, dying in the place of sinners.
Great love and a great cost. These two themes led Isaac Watts to pen When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.
See from His head His hands His feet
Sorrow and love flow mingled down
Did ever such love and sorrow meet
Or thorns compose so rich a crown
Were the whole realm of nature mine
That were an offering far too small
Love so amazing so divine
Demands my soul, my life, my all
Since Jesus is the one whom God sent to accomplish the mission of salvation, belief in Him brings salvation. Let’s consider the final point—eternal life.
III.) The gift of eternal life
The purpose of giving His only Son is that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. Notice that although not all will respond to the gospel, the gospel is offered to everyone. Many will hear—“whoever believes in him” — but will not believe.
The Bible places the blame for that unbelief squarely on the unbeliever. They sin because they love the darkness, and in their sin they hate Christ’s light.
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. (Jn 3:19–20)
The end for those who do not believe is perishing. It is to be eternally separated from God, so that eternity is defined as death or perishing rather than life.
That doesn’t have to be your story. Hear the call of the gospel. For all who believe in Jesus, there is eternal life.
Eternal life is sharing in God’s life through faith in Jesus Christ. It is a life of quality and quantity. It includes the future resurrection and eternity with God in heaven, but also includes real, spiritual resurrection life the moment someone is saved.
Those who place their faith in Jesus Christ can live content in the present while also hoping for the future. Listen to Jesus’ words to Martha in John 11.
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. (Jn 11:25–26)
The comfort that these truths can bring to the Christian is many, and if taken seriously, will anchor your heart in the midst of the most difficult moments.
The hope of eternal life transforms a fear of death, so that we can say with Paul, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
Eternal life means we can say, “To live is Christ and to die is gain.”
When I was in North Carolina, one of my members had a heart attack. While talking to the doctor, he said, “To live is Christ and to die is gain,” to which the doctor responded, “Do you have a death wish?”
The answer, of course, is no! The hope of eternal life means we don’t live like the world, grieve like the world, or even die like the world.
Hope in eternal life means that we can answer the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism with confidence in every word.
Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?
- That I am not my own,1 but belong—body and soul, in life and in death2—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ….Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life9 and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.
Hear the familiar words one more time.
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. (Jn 3:16)
Amen.
