John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he
gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not
perish but have eternal life. (NIV)
The Gospel passage that we read this
morning contains the three most important verses in the entire Bible. If ever
we wanted to reduce Christianity to three foundational statements or
encapsulate it in three simple verses, John 3:16-18 contains everything that we
will ever need to know, believe, and live by. The words are so fundamental to
our faith that without them, Christianity would just be a charitable philosophy
based on tolerance, kindness, and niceness.
This morning, I’m going to attempt to
convey the importance of these verses. Be aware, too, that these verses
challenge me as much as they may challenge you. They are not easy to receive or
digest, ponder or apply, but please know this from the outset: they are all
about Jesus and God. What we do with these words will not change what is presented.
In the end, and at the end of each of our lives, they will become fundamentally
important.
The first point that these verses
make is this: God loves us and He loves the world that He created. This is a
good start because we are immediately brought into God’s grace. As shameful,
selfish creatures, we need to know that, despite our sinful selves, God does
love us. He does not abandon us to our sinful ways; he does not forsake us to
being separated from Him forever. He loves us and because of this love, He
offers us a way to be restored to His mercy and grace.
He gives us Jesus, His One and Only
Son, the most precious person in God’s eyes, the most perfect gift to an
undeserving world, the most complete sacrifice that any parent can make – He
gives His sweet and precious child to a bitter and worthless world. Jesus is
the One, Great, and Last Hope of humankind. All that we have to do is to
believe in Him, place our hopes in Him, give our heart and mind to Him, put our
lives into His hands – however we want to say and express that we believe in
Him. It’s all that we have to do – a simple act of surrender and submission,
and yet it is one of the hardest things that sinful, self-centered, and
self-assured creatures can actually do.
17 For God did
not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the
world through him.
In
ancient times, when a king sent his son into a region of his sovereign domain,
the purpose of the visit was to give the King’s son time to evaluate that
region. If there was anything wrong or if the local magistrates were corrupt,
or if the people were disloyal and treacherous, the Crown Prince took back his
report to his father. The son’s words were not challenged because the King
usually trusted his son’s ability to see what was going on and to give a true
account of what was happening. The King would then respond accordingly, based
on what the report contained. If there was any corruption, those involved were
condemned and punished. If there was any treachery, it was quickly stamped out.
When
God sent Jesus into the world, He could have given His Son the divine authority
to condemn the entire world for its wickedness, its corruption, and its
treachery. It would have been perfectly just and totally God’s divine right.
But remember, God sent Jesus into the world to show His love, not His power; to
show His grace, not His greatness – unless, of course, we understand that only
the most powerful and greatest of Gods would convey His almightiness through
love and grace.
Jesus,
therefore, did not come as a Divine Inquisitor or Heavenly Magistrate. He came
as the world’s Savior. He came to sacrifice Himself for a world full of
sinners. He came to save us from our wicked choices and sinful decisions. He
came to rescue us from our stubborn and selfish ways. He came to save us
because we were wroth rescuing, redeeming, and restoring. He came, because just
like His Divine Father, and as the old children’s hymn tells us, Jesus loves
us.
Look
at what verse 17 simply states: the world was saved through Him. Through Him –
not by Him or for Him, or to Him or because of Him. It was saved through Him –
not by anything we could do, but through all that Jesus accomplished. We are
creatures of God who are saved through the unique and redeeming blood of Jesus
Christ, our only and holy Savior. There is no other person who can give us
this. There is no other way to procure salvation. There is no other spiritual
process, good action, or deed of love that can restore us eternally to God. We
cannot do anything to save ourselves – it can be only be done and won through
Jesus. Anything else or anyone else is a delusion, wishful thinking, and
entirely a dead end.
When
the great Scottish reformer John Knox was dying, he struggled with his
mortality, conscience, and guilt. He knew that he had made many mistakes, but
at the same time, he had accomplished many great things for God. If anyone
could rely upon his deeds for God, and be rewarded for his unswerving loyalty,
it was John Knox. But as he wrestled with this, he knew it was a temptation –
no matter what he accomplished, no matter what he achieved, no matter what he
built, none of it could ever buy salvation for his soul on his death bed. Only
Jesus could save him – he could only get to heaven through Christ alone. And so
the great reformer stopped struggling with his conscience and wrestling with
the devil; he surrendered himself to Christ, for only the Son of God could
actually save him.
You
know, friends, that’s a moment we will all face in this life. We don’t know
when it will happen, where it will occur, or how it will take place. This is
why I simply stated at the beginning of this sermon that these three verses are
ultimately the most important of all of scripture. Why? Because when we are
dying and cannot hold on to life, we can hold on to these words, and in the
mysterious process, we can also know that Christ is holding on to us.
18 Whoever
believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands
condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only
Son.
At the beginning of this sermon, I
emphasized God’s love for us and the world, and how thankful we all are for His
grace in our lives. This last verse reveals to us how much God loves us – He
loves us enough that if we choose to be independent of Him, we will get exactly
what we choose.
He gives us Jesus, His Only Son, as
the Only Way through whom we can be reconnected and restored to God forever.
However, because God loves us, he does not compel us to do what He wants. We
still have the freedom to make our own choice; if that were not the case, then
God would have imposed upon us His divine will, which is not love: that is
coercion.
Sadly, many people are going to make
this the ultimate choice in their lives. They are going to choose to be
independent of God and to set aside Christ’s accomplishments. They are going to
decide their own priorities, their own mortalities, and their own eternities.
God will offer everyone His Son, but not everyone will take God up on that
remarkable, redeeming, and exceptional offer.
In
what I consider to be his best work, C.S. Lewis wrote about this in his book
called “The Great Divorce.” In it he wrote:
“There are only two kinds of people
in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to
whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell,
choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that
seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find.
Those who knock it is opened.”
We
all choose our own path, we all make our own mistakes. We all decide our own
destinies, and we all make our own lifestyle decisions. God graciously offers
us salvation through His Son Jesus Christ. He gives us that option – He
sacrifices everything that he loves, so that we might experience everything of
His love – but He does not make us or force us, compel us or bully us into
accepting that offer. God proves His complete love for us by permitting us to
make our own ultimate choice. We cannot rescue ourselves, we cannot erase our
sins, and we cannot save ourselves. Only Jesus can do that for us – it can only
be done, made right, and fully completed through Him.
Again,
as C S Lewis wrote in the Great Divorce:
“I do not think that all who choose
wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right
road. A sum can be put right: but only by going back til you find the error and
working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be
undone, but it cannot 'develop' into good. Time does not heal it. The spell
must be unwound, bit by bit, 'with backward mutters of dissevering power' --or
else not.”
My friends, I would urge us all to
re-read these three verses this afternoon and to personally contemplate how we
each value them in our lives. Death comes to us all and hopefully in the far
off future, but salvation can come to us now through Jesus Christ, the Precious
Holy Son that God gave to us because He loves us, and our Perfect Sacred Savior
who can restore us to God eternally, when we freely and humbly choose to
believe in Him.
Prayer and Apostles’ Creed
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