For God So Loved

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

John 3:16-17

Almost everyone has heard of John 3:16. This verse is one of the most loved and most memorized Bible verses of all time. It is taught in Sunday Schools, seen at sports events, and even on T-shirts. While it may be widely known and quoted by many young and old, let us pause to meditate on the depth of this verse. Here we see the greatest love ever manifested. Of all the gifts ever given, none compares to when God gave His only begotten Son!

It helps to read the verse in the context of where it is found in John 3. The Lord Jesus was conversing about the new birth with a man who had been religious all his life. This man Nicodemus was the teacher in Israel (John 3:10), yet he needed the new birth. This is a spiritual birth that only God can produce; it comes from Him as a gift and is packaged in the Person of His only begotten Son!

To help Nicodemus understand, the Lord uses an illustration from the Old Testament of when serpents came into the camp and bit the people because of their disobedient hearts. God had instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent and place it on a pole where everyone could see it. Everyone who turned and looked at the bronze serpent lifted up on the pole was saved. The Lord Jesus said, “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so, must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

The Lord Jesus used what happened with the children of Israel in Numbers 21 as an illustration of God’s holiness and His grace and love. His holiness sent serpents to the rebellious Israelites who had been disobedient against their God. But His grace and love provided a remedy for their situation. As these poisonous snakes were biting them, they only had to look at the bronze serpent the Lord had Moses make. Whoever looked up at this serpent lived, and whoever did not was condemned already. This was the Lord’s provision to save them.

The Lord Jesus used this story to demonstrate why God sent His Son into the world – not to condemn it, but that we might be saved through Him (Jesus Christ). It was God who was demonstrating His own “toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). In the narrative of John 3, we continue to read on, “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:18-19).  

The greatest love-gift ever given was when God sent His Son, the Lord Jesus, into the world to rescue mankind who had been bitten by the poison of sin and was condemned already. He sent His Son who would suffer in our place on the Cross “once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18).

John 3 ends with another reminder of God’s great gift, which is offered to anyone who believes in the Son who has come. In verse 36, we read, “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life, and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”

God is Holy and has condemned sin in the flesh when He sent “His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin.” At the same time, He demonstrated the greatest act of love and gave the greatest gift anyone could gift! Have you received His gift of salvation?