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For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.—Joh_3:16.
I suppose it is a common fact of experience that those who live within sound of church bells after awhile do not notice their striking; might I suggest that something similar may be true of the great bell-note that is struck for us in the opening clause of this text? Which of us is sufficiently sensitive or responsive to its vibrations? Which of us realizes sufficiently that these words proclaim a final truth, the culmination of religious thought, something never to be transcended?1 [Note: J. Warschauer.]
2. It is no accident that has given to this statement its unique place in the mind and heart of Christendom. The deepest thinker sees in this verse a summing-up of the Gospel; the humblest believer feels that it expresses the whole substance of his faith. The inspired writer gathers himself up, as it were, to a supreme effort, and presents in one majestic, sweeping, comprehensive sentence the essence of Christian belief. And there stands the declaration still in all its simple grandeur, in all its boundless love, in all its mighty power. Centuries have passed over it, and left no impress. Time has failed to impair its freshness; it is the same to-day as it was yesterday. That which it is to-day it will be for ever. For eighteen hundred years and more it has poured forth its blessings with unceasing flow upon the foolish and the wise, upon the sinner and the saint, upon the martyr and his murderer. Years have thrown no new light upon its meaning. The wisdom and learning of men, the meditations of the holiest and the best, have not added one jot to our comprehension of its mystery. Age upon age of opposition, of scorn, and of derision have as little succeeded in shaking its power. When we accept it in all its fulness, is it not still as much the source of joy as when it supported men, women, and children to a cruel death, gladly offering their lives in its defence? When we reject it, what can we offer in its place to support the weak or encourage the desperate? Is it not still the most sovereign balm to bind up the broken hearts of mourners; the surest stay of the dying? Is it not still the silver clarion, whose peal rises high and clear above the din of strife—stirring wearied soldiers of Christ to renew their struggle with evil, whether within their own hearts or in the world? Is it not still the rock upon which Christianity is founded? Is it not in reality the sum and substance of Christianity itself?
For six nights Mr. Moorhouse had preached on this one text. The seventh night came and he went into the pulpit. Every eye was upon him. He said, “Beloved friends, I have been hunting all day for a new text, but I cannot find anything so good as the old one, so we will go back to Joh_3:16”; and he preached the seventh sermon from those wonderful words: “God so loved the world.” I remember the end of that sermon: “My friends,” he said, “for a whole week I have been trying to tell you how much God loves you, but I cannot do it with this poor stammering tongue. If I could borrow Jacob’s ladder, and climb up into Heaven, and ask Gabriel, who stands in the presence of the Almighty, to tell me how much love the Father has for the world, all he could say would be: ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.’ ”1 [Note: Life of D. L. Moody, 128.]
At the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh in 1910, Dr. Tasaku Harada, President of the Doshisha College, said: “As regards the aspects of the Christian Gospel and Christian life which appeal to the Japanese, in the first place I mention the love of God. Dr. Neesima used to say that he regarded the 16th verse of the third chapter of St. John’s Gospel as the Fujiyama of the New Testament—‘God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.’ If there are two words which have created the greatest transformation since the introduction of Christianity into Japan they are the words ‘God’ and ‘love.’ ”1 [Note: World Missionary Conference, 1910, iv. 305.]
Fuji, it should be said, is not only the sacred mountain of Japan but the ideal of excellence. Its almost perfect cone can be seen from most parts of the main island, and it forms the background of many Japanese landscapes, whether actually visible or not.
3. These words explain to us the relation in which Jesus stands as Son of man, first to God and next to us; and they interpret to our understanding, as well as to our faith and affection, the method by which the Eternal seeks us and finds us, saves us from ourselves and our sins, grants us the quickening sense of pardon, and fills us with the calm and strength of His everlasting life. Selecting the familiar incident from the Hebrew Scriptures in which the brazen serpent is lifted up before the dying people, Jesus says, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth may in him have eternal life”: and then He adds the sublime statement, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
Now, this revelation is inexhaustible in its significance. It is a gospel within a gospel; and though uttered almost as swiftly as a morning salutation, yet it comprehends the contents of all the Gospels. It is as when, beginning our study of the universe, we start with a sea-beach, a stone-quarry, or a flower-garden, and then rise from it to the everlasting hills, thence to the infinite splendours of the midnight sky, and afterwards, through telescopes of ever-increasing power, look into the depths of the immeasurable heavens, adding world to world, and system to system, till we are overwhelmed with the marvel and grandeur of the realms of God; so, beginning with this primal declaration of the only begotten Son who dwelt in the bosom of the Father, and learning some of its contents, we are led on and on in our investigation, charmed by its simplicity, gladdened by its wealth, and awed by its mystery, till, mastered by our effort to comprehend the breadth and length, depth and height of the message, even St. Paul’s language is too poor to express our wonder and our praise: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgements, and his ways past tracing out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and unto him, are all things. To him be the glory for ever.”
The “comfortable words,” as they are called, in the Order of Holy Communion (Mat_11:28; Joh_3:16; 1Ti_1:15; 1Jn_2:1-2), form an element peculiar to the English rite, being found elsewhere only in those liturgies which derive their inheritance through the channel of the English Reformation. They appeared for the first time in the Prayer-Book of 1549, and their insertion was apparently suggested to our Reformers by the recent issue on the Continent of a manual, based on the work of Luther, Bucer, and Melanchthon, which contained numerous hints for reform in liturgical worship, and has left traces of its influence in other parts of the Book of Common Prayer. All will agree that the step here taken by our Revisers was a distinct enrichment of our Service, and that they have introduced a most beautiful characteristic of our present liturgy. You remember the place at which the words occur. The congregation is invited to kneel and join in a united confession of sin; and then, after the absolution has been pronounced, the four words of comfort are recited to the people, assuring them of the reality and meaning of that spiritual exercise in which they have been engaged. At such a moment each speaks with an eloquence which the heart of the faithful worshipper can readily understand. No comment is added, because none is required, and any paraphrase would be felt to jar upon the ear. The actual language of Holy Writ has been incorporated into the scheme of our liturgy, and the utterances of our Lord and His Apostles are left to make good by themselves the force of their appeal.1 [Note: H. T. Knight. The Cross, the Font, and the Altar, 1.]
4. Let us distribute the text into parts for easier apprehension, and in such a way as seems to us best “for the use of edifying.” Dr. Warschauer proceeds in a direct line, taking the thoughts of the verse as they come—(1) God, (2) a loving God, (3) a great Giver, (4) the Gift of the Son, (5) Belief, (6) Eternal Life. Dr. Eadie makes God’s Love the subject, and begins with the world as the Object of God’s love, takes next the Gift of God’s love, and ends with the Design of God’s love. Dr. Maclaren’s divisions are: (1) The great Lake—“God so loved the world”; (2) the River—“that he gave his only begotten Son”; (3) the Pitcher—“that whosoever believeth on him”; (4) the Draught—“should have eternal life.” If any criticism should be made of so effective and attractive a division of the text, it would be that it misses the prominence due to the world. For it has to be remembered that the revelation to Nicodemus was twofold—first, that he, a Pharisee, had to be born again before he could enter the Kingdom of God; and, next, that the way was open not only to Pharisees, but to sinners, including sinners of the Gentiles, that is to say, to the whole world. And it is this second part of the great revelation that St. John is now giving us. Accordingly the next verse proceeds, “For God sent not the Son into the world to judge the world; but that the world should be saved through him.”
Let us, then, in order to keep the world-wide offer in our mind throughout, adopt this method of exposition—
I. God and the World—“God so loved the world.”
II. Christ and the World—“that he gave his only begotten Son.”
III. The World and Christ—“that whosoever believeth on him.”
IV. The World and God—“should not perish but have eternal life.”
God and the World
“God so loved the world.”
1. There is perhaps no text that speaks so directly to the Christian heart. There is none perhaps that finds a more immediate or more enthusiastic welcome in our breast; because we feel that in it we have the answer to all the devious problems of intellect and the most pressing and urgent needs of our soul. For what after all is the great problem of all problems that come into the quiet of our own hearts? What is it that we most want to have assurance about? Surely in our deepest moments the thought that presses home most upon us is, What kind of a God is it we have to deal with? Is He a God who cares for us and loves us, or is He a God who moves so far away from us that we are, as it were, but the dust of the balance in His sight?
2. What, then, does the word “God” mean to us? There is probably no question that goes deeper to the root than this. We are not specially helped, certainly not in our religious life, when we have admitted that there must be a Supreme Power which has created and sustains the visible world. Granted that is so, such a Power has little to say to us. We might acknowledge its existence as we acknowledge the existence of some far-off fixed star, and with just as much or as little practical result, just as little effect upon our thought and life. Not that God is, but what God is, is what matters to us; nobody can be vitally interested in some far-off, great first cause, and we certainly are no better off—worse, if anything—when we hear or use such empty phrases as the totality of being, instead of speaking of our Father in heaven.
For a loving worm within the clod
Were better far than a loveless God.
He created the world, not in order to escape the boredom of eternity, but from love; He called souls into being, not for the purpose of conducting an endless series of aimless experiments, but in order that His love might have objects on which to bestow itself; He leads them, not through a gnat-like span of existence to the gloom of annihilation, but to the home of everlasting love. That conception—and it alone—gives us anything worth calling a religion; and because Christianity insists upon and emphasizes this conception—God’s love of the world and for the human soul—it is the absolute religion.
If our endeavours, our struggles, our failures, our hopes, our aspirations, were nothing to the Eternal, what could the Eternal be to us? Here is a human document which came into my hands only a couple of days ago. The writer says: “The conception of God that I now have is not the personal one that I had under the old belief.… Instead of living under the daily notice of God’s favour or resentment, I find that … we are but unnoticed units in all the vast millions of the universe. The result is that I am questioning the value of life.” Can you wonder? I do not wonder at all! But if we feel that His eye is upon us, that our little lives mean something to His heart, that we matter to Him, and that His intention is for our good, then that very fact lifts our lives out of insignificance, makes the conflict worth waging, and enables the toiler, the sufferer, the witness for truth and right to say in the midst of seeming defeat and desolation, “And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” God loves the world: all faith which stops short of that lacks the element which makes it faith indeed.1 [Note: J. Warschauer.]
2. “God loves.” Where, outside of Christianity, does anybody dare to say that as a certainty? Men have hoped it; men have feared that it could not be; men have dimly dreamed and strongly doubted; men have had gods cruel, gods lustful, gods capricious, gods good-natured, gods indifferent or apathetic, but a loving God is the discovery of Christianity. Neither the gross deities of heathenism, nor the shadowy god of theism, nor the unknown somewhat which (perhaps) “makes for righteousness” of our modern agnostics, presents anything like this—“God loves.”
It seems to us a simple and purely elementary truth that God is holy love, but how could we have known anything about it without Christ and the revelation made by Him? Nature and history show us clearly the wise and mighty God, but where do they show Him as holy and loving?2 [Note: R. Rothe, Still Hours, 107.]
God is here set forth as a lover; loving men, all men, every man. “God so loved the world.” Let us then at once make an addition to the first avowal of the Apostles’ Creed, and say:—“I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and lover of the whole world.” We sing, “Jesus, lover of my soul.” We have equal right and warrant to sing, “God the Father Almighty, lover of my soul.”1 [Note: H. Johnson, From Love to Praise, 10.]
The first meaning of the Greek word for world (kosmos) is “order.” And as all order is more or less beautiful, the second meaning of the term is “ornament.” The word is found with this meaning in 1Pe_3:3,—“Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.” After the word had for ages been employed by the Greeks in these acceptations, it occurred to one of the greatest thinkers that ever lived that there was no order so wonderful as the order of the universe, no ornament so ornamental, so real, as the great world. Hence he employed the word which signified “order” and “ornament” to designate the “world.” The Holy Spirit, who guided the holy men who wrote the New Testament, approving of his idea, adopted the Greek term in its Pythagorean sense. And thus it is that we read such expressions as the following:—“The invisible things of God from the creation of the (orderly and beautiful) world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.” “Glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
To the eye of most of the ancients, however, the sun and the stars, instead of being orbs greater and more glorious than our earth, were only luminaries or lamps to light us by day and by night. The earth was to them almost all the universe. And it was the earth especially which they called the world. This import of the term became stereotyped; and thus we read in the Bible: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”
But this world—the earth—is the temporary home of a vast multitude of thinking beings, every one of whom seems to be more wonderful and glorious than the vast earth on which he moves and has his being. These thinking beings use the earth; the earth does not use them. They think of the earth; the earth does not think of them. They feel too,—they feel the earth; the earth does not feel them. They live; the earth does not live. They are the lords of the earth, and subdue it and have dominion over it. They are men; and as they rise into the consciousness of what they are, they gradually reach the idea—“We are the world; the earth is beneath our feet.” The men of the earth are a world upon a world. They are a thinking, feeling, will-endowed, moral world. They are “the world.” Hence it is that we read of “all the world being guilty before God.” God shall “judge the world.” And in this Gospel according to Jesus, our Saviour is His own herald, and says that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.” The “world,” then, which is loved by God, is the world of men.
It is, we may add, the world of all men. The word “world,” when not expressly limited in its scope by the mention of the parties to whom it refers, or when not obviously limited by the nature of the case, must be understood in its simple, unrestricted, universal acceptation. It is not expressly limited here by the mention of any mere section of the race. The expression is not “the fashionable world,” “the scientific world,” “the religious world,” “the commercial world,” “the literary world,” “the busy world.” Neither is there anything in the nature of the case referred to,—there is nothing in the nature of God’s love,—that should lead us to suppose that it is confined either to the religious, or to the fashionable, or the scientific, or the commercial, or the busy, or the literary. It must be the whole world—the world of all men—that is referred to.
It is true that the word “world” is sometimes hyperbolically used with a limited reference. Even the expression, “the whole world,” is sometimes thus used. We read that “the whole world lieth in wickedness”; although in that very passage we also read that they who believe in Christ are not lying in wickedness, but are “of God.” Jesus said to His disciples, “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” Here the word “world” obviously means somewhat less than all men. It means “the worldly.” It means those who are characterized by the spirit which actuated men in general all over the world.
But in the text it is not used with limitation. It is the world of all men, without distinction or exception, that is meant. It is the same world which is called “the whole world” in that other precious little gospel which runs thus:—“If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” The true extent of the import of the word may be seen in those other passages which assure us that there “is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all,” and who tasted death for every Man_1:1 [Note: J. Morison, Holiness and Happiness, 14.]
1. But what about election? There is nothing in this text about it. God so loved the world—not a portion of the world—not the elect. The elect are only a part of the world and chosen out of it. But this love of God is world-wide, for everybody, without a hint of election in it. It sweeps away out beyond election, and has no boundaries, no limitations, no reservations.
I believe in election. It is one of the great basal truths of Scripture, and a most blessed doctrine, charged with infinite stay and comfort for God’s believing children. It puts the Father’s everlasting arms about every child of His, and makes it certain he will never perish. But while it clearly and definitely includes somebody, it just as clearly and positively excludes nobody. It makes heaven sure for the chosen, but it keeps no one out of heaven. It is no chain gang bound about the necks of men, dragging some to salvation and some to perdition.1 [Note: H. Johnson, From Love to Praise, 17.]
2. This is the vital doctrine of election, the election of some for the benediction of the whole. “I pray for these, that the world may believe.” The elect are called not to a sphere of exclusion, but to a function of transmission. They are elected not to privilege, but to service; not to the secret hoarding of blessing, but to its widespread distribution. The elect are not circles, but centres, heat centres for radiating gracious influence to remote circumferences, that under its warming and softening ministry “the world may believe” in the Son of God. That is the way of the Master. He will work upon the frozen streams and rivers of the world by raising the general temperature. He seeks to increase the fervour of those who are His own, and, through the pure and intense flame of their zeal, to create an atmosphere in which the hard frozen indifference of the world shall be melted into wonder, into tender inquisition, that on the cold altar of the heart may be kindled the fire of spiritual devotion. “I pray not for the world, but for these … that the world may believe.” Through the disciple He seeks the vagrant; through the believer He seeks the unbeliever; through the Church He seeks the world; through the ministry of Christian men and women the world is to be won for Christ.
1. How can it be that God loves such a world? A partial explanation lies in the fact that it is God’s nature to love, that while others are by nature hard and unpitying, and even vengeful, God by nature is tender, sympathetic, and merciful. Yet it is the most tremendous statement that has ever confronted the human mind, the statement of God’s gracious love for the world. It is the most difficult statement for the belief of man to grasp.
2. There are those who are eminently disgusted with God’s world, who claim that we cannot have high moral perceptions and know humanity without feeling that humanity is despicable. There are those who would sweep the whole multitude of mankind into the sea and drown them; they have no patience with them and they have no hope for them. When, then, the theory is propounded that though God did indeed create this world and start humanity, He later cast off all thought of the world, having no further concern for humanity, the theory appeals to such persons, and they say that through such a theory they can understand the meaning of human life.
(1) But any such theory is apart from the supreme fact of revelation. That supreme fact teaches that, the very nature of God being love, His love insistently and persistently goes out to every one of His creatures. If it be asked how can it be possible that a holy God in His omniscience can thus love those who are wrong, incomplete, and unattractive, the answer is that in that omniscience lies largely our explanation of His love. The Eastern shepherd, because he knows each individual sheep of his flock, knows the needs of each individual sheep. Did not Longfellow say that it makes no difference who the man is, provided we know him, know his temptations and trials, we are sure to love him? Is it not also said that no man can hate another if he understands all his failures and distresses? The prejudice of man towards his fellow is based on man’s ignorance of his fellow. Nothing in all this earth so awakens interest in the individual as acquaintance with the individual. The person who is actually hideous as a perfect stranger, as an acquaintance is found to have a past history and a present experience that appeal to pity and even to love. A. C. Benson, in Seen from a College Window, says: “If the dullest person in the world would only put down sincerely what he or she thought about his or her life, about work and love, religion and emotion, it would be a fascinating document.”
(2) Beyond God’s omniscience lies His realization of the possible development of each one of all His world. He never is ashamed of humanity and He never allows that He has made a mistake in creating humanity. He believes that deep down in every human heart there are possibilities of development into beauty and even into power. Throughout history He has been laying His hand upon all sorts of people in sheepfolds or on farms, in obscure villages, in streets of both small and great cities, and He has summoned them to great riches of character, and to great usefulness of service. Where others look in hopelessness, He looks in profound expectation. To Him humanity has expressed itself in the spirit and conduct of Jesus Christ, and He anticipates that man after man from all sections and tribes of the earth will measure up to the likeness of Christ; and He rejoices with abundant joy when the Magdalenes are restored, the lepers are healed, the dumb sing, the blind see, and the dead live again. God is always anticipating glorious transformations of character.
3. Do we realize that, when we say “God loves the world,” that really means, as far as each of us is concerned, God loves me? And just as the whole beams of the sun come pouring down into every eye of the crowd that is looking up to it, so the whole love of God pours down, not upon a multitude, an abstraction, a community, but upon every single soul that makes up that community. He loves us all because He loves each of us. We shall never get all the good of that thought until we translate it, and lay it upon our hearts. It is all very well to say, “Ah yes! God is love,” and it is all very well to say He loves “the world.” But what is a great deal better is to say, as St. Paul said, “Who loved me and gave himself for me.”
When we speak of loving a number of individuals—the broader the stream, the shallower it is, is it not? The most intense patriot in England does not love her one ten-thousandth part as well as he loves his own little girl. When we think or feel anything about a great multitude of people, it is like looking at a forest. We do not see the trees, we see the whole wood. But that is not how God loves the world. Suppose I said that I loved the people in India, I should not mean by that that I had any feeling about any individual soul of all those dusky millions, but only that I massed them all together, or made what people call a generalization of them. But that is not the way in which God loves. He loves all because He loves each. And when we say, “God so loved the world,” we have to break up the mass into its atoms, and to think of each atom as being an object of His love. We all stand out in God’s love just as we should do to one another’s eyes if we were on the top of a mountain-ridge with a clear sunset sky behind us. Each little black dot of the long procession would be separately visible. And we all stand out like that, every man of us isolated, and getting as much of the love of God as if there were not another creature in the whole universe but God and ourselves.1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]
After this he seems to have again paid a flying visit to Bathgate, the residence of his brother-in-law; for to this year belongs a beautiful anecdote told of him in that place. A young man belonging to the Church there was very ill, “dying of consumption.” Mr. Martin had promised to take his distinguished relative to see this youth, and Irving’s time was so limited, that the visit had to be paid about six in the morning, before he started on his further journey. When the two clergymen entered the sick chamber, Irving went up to the bedside, and looking in the face of the patient said softly, but earnestly, “George M——, God loves you; be assured of this—God loves you.” When the hurried visit was over, the young man’s sister, coming in, found her patient in a tearful ecstasy not to be described. “What do you think? Mr. Irving says God loves me,” cried the dying lad, overwhelmed with the confused pathetic joy of that great discovery. The sudden message had brought sunshine and light into the chamber of death.2 [Note: Mrs. Oliphant, The Life of Edward Irving, ii. 87.]
4. “God so loved the world.” The pearl of this wonderful statement is the measure it supplies of that eternal love which redeems sinful man. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.” It is the earthly way of describing the sacrifice God makes of God, of His true and real self for man. Language could not more clearly or strongly declare the fact that God gives Himself, His essential self, to the temptation and toil, the suffering and anguish, of our limited and burdened life, that He may carry out His world-loving purpose.
The marvel of God’s love for mankind grows as we learn the degree of that love. It is the degree of it that is apocalyptic. The Old Testament had attempted to disclose the graciousness of God, telling men that like as a father pities, so God pities. Exterior nature too had tried to make known God’s healing and comforting power; abundant harvests telling of His affection, zephyrs breathing His soothing kindness, health-giving air and the recuperative tendencies within every normal body indicating that love is over mankind. But the degree of that love was never known to any man, however scholarly, until it was revealed when God out of desire to secure to man the highest possible good actually gave His Son for Man_1:1 [Note: J. G. K. McClure, Supreme Things, 19.]
Winds weary with the old sea tune
Slide inland with some cloud, and soon
From woods that whisper summer noon
Weigh their wight wings with odour boon.
So I, long salted in our ocean drear
Of disbelief that Essence can be won
By any form of thought invented here,
Felt such a gush of joy about
My heart-roots, as if in and out
’Twas life-blood billowed; and as stout
As once we sent the battle-shout
Pitching clear notes against barbaric din,—
Oh, brother, my soul’s voice against the rout
Of unbeliefs a man doth muse within,
Arising and protesting wild,
Spake, speaking out untruth defiled;
Spake, speaking in the truth exiled;
Spake, Little head and weary child,
Come home, God loves, God loves through sin and shame,—
Come home, God loves His world.2 [Note: Richard Watson Dixon.]
Christ and the World
“He gave his only begotten Son.”
Here, then, in the life of Jesus are the only unerring measures of the love of God. He spared not Himself from the suffering and agony and sacrifice necessary to save them, but in love of them bore it for them, to rescue them from the stupor and death of sin, and lift them to a share in His life. He who sees Jesus in Bethlehem as a babe, in Galilee as a working healer and wise teacher, in Gethsemane and on Calvary as the Just One dying for the unjust, sees the Father, and knows and understands a little of the way in which He mediates the redemption of a lost world.
1. Let us seek, first of all, to get rid of misconceptions in this vital matter.
(1) One of the most prevalent notions of God is this: that God is a hard, inexorable Being, who has been made mild and forgiving only by the death of Jesus Christ. This great Gospel text teaches just the contrary. It represents God as in love with men already before Christ came—with all men—with every man. “God so loved the world.” And this is not any elect or select portion of the world, but the whole world of human beings that ever have lived, that live now or that ever will live on the face of the earth: not the world of the elect, but the world of sinners.
How can you appease love? How can a loving God propitiate Himself? Read this text with this thought of a propitiation of God injected into it, and see how it sounds. “God so loved the world that he gave his beloved Son to abate his own wrath and to placate himself!” Or, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that he might stop hating it.” This is simply suicide by self-contradiction! What folly to talk of bribing to mercy One who is bent by every instinct and prompting of His heart to the exhibition of mercy! Will you bribe a mother to love her child?1 [Note: H. Johnson, From Love to Praise, 5.]
(2) But there is another false notion of God quite as prevalent in our day as the one just named, and probably quite as mischievous. It arises from the swing of the human heart to the opposite extreme of thought. God is conceived of as a Being whose love is so vast and sweeping as to make punishment at last impossible. Instead of being thought of now as a stern judge who will by no means clear the guilty, He is thought of as a Father too loving to punish, and so full of mercy that it will not be in His heart to deal with men according to any rigid standard of justice. But this notion is as false and unscriptural as the other, and to this notion as well as to the other the great Gospel text we have before us stands opposed. In the bosom of this heavenly message we not only find the beat of an infinite heart, but the imperial majesty of a holy will.
There is no more warrant for the dear God of sentimentalism than for the hard malignant God of railing unbelief, and there is no warrant whatever for either. Let us carefully read the text again. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish.” Whosoever believes. But suppose men do not believe and will not believe. Do you not see the inevitable, irresistible next step? If men still will not believe, then they still will perish. God’s love does not save everybody, although it goes out to everybody. Some men will not take its great gift. And if the sacrifice is rejected, how can it help the sinner it is made for?
God is all Love, and nothing but Love and Goodness can come from Him. He is as far from Anger in Himself, as from Pain and Darkness. But when the fallen Soul of Man had awakened in itself a wrathful, self-tormenting Fire, which could never be put out by itself, which could never be relieved by the natural Power of any Creature whatsoever, then the Son of God, by a Love greater than that which created the World, became Man, and gave His own Blood and Life into the fallen Soul, that it might, through His Life in it, be raised, quickened, and born again into its first state of inward Peace and Delight, Glory and Perfection, never to be lost any more.1 [Note: William Law.]
2. “God so loved the world that he gave.” This is always and everywhere the sign and token of love, this generous need to give itself forth. Love is prodigal—a reaching out, an overflowing beyond the borders and boundaries of self; an imperious desire to make some sacrifice, to do something for the sake of the beloved. Wherever you meet this passion of affection, you will meet that same splendid impetus of self-giving. The one great passion of a poet like W. E. Henley is a love of his country—not always wise but always genuine—and it bursts forth into those exultant lines—
What have I done for you,
England, my England?
What is there I would not do,
England, my own?
The story is told by Luther that when his translation of the Bible was being printed in Germany, pieces of the printer’s work were allowed to fall carelessly upon the floor of his shop. One day the printer’s little daughter coming in picked up a piece of paper on which she found just the words, “God so loved the world that he gave”—the rest of the sentence not having yet been printed. It was a veritable revelation to her, for up to that time she had always been told that the Almighty was to be dreaded, and could be approached only through penance. The new light thrown upon God’s nature by the scrap that had fallen into her hands seemed to flood her whole being with its radiance, so that her mother asked her the reason of her joyfulness. Putting her hand in her pocket, Luther tells us, the girl handed, out the little crumpled piece of paper with the unfinished sentence. Her mother read it, and was perplexed: “He gave—what was it He gave?” For a moment the child was puzzled, but only for a moment; then, with a quick intuition, “I don’t know; but if He loved us well enough to give us anything, we need not be afraid of Him.” Truly there are things hidden from the wise and prudent that are revealed to babes. How impossible is Spinoza’s demand that although God is not so much as interested in us, we ought to feel towards Him an overmastering love of the mind! And how absolutely true, on the other hand, is the insight which declares, “We love him because he first loved us!”1 [Note: J. Warschauer]
In the next verse, where the same subject is dealt with, a different expression is employed. There we read, “God sent his Son.” But here, where the matter in hand is the love of God, sent is far too cold a word, and gave is used as congruous with loved. It must needs be that the Divine love manifest itself even as the human does by an infinite delight in bestowing. The very property and life of love, as we know it even in its tainted and semi-selfish forms as it prevails amongst us, is to give, and the life of the Divine love is the same. He loves, and therefore He gives. His love is a longing to bestow Himself, and the proof and sign that He loves is that “He gave his only begotten Son.”2 [Note: A. Maclaren.]
3. “He gave his only begotten Son.” We cannot reach the bottom of this saying. The shallow sounding lines of men that are cast into that deep water do not touch the bottom, though some imagine that they do. What does it mean?—“His only begotten Son.” There are some that would seek to minimize the force of that wonderful designation “only begotten.” They tell us that it does not always signify soleness, or even uniqueness; and they point us to the fact that Isaac is called Abraham’s only begotten son although Ishmael was equally his child. But such an argument is not good enough even to be called sophistical. It has no point and no relevancy. “Only begotten” must of necessity mean both uniqueness and soleness. Isaac was Abraham’s only begotten son from the standpoint from which the term was applied. He was so with reference to the promise and the seed of Abraham. He was the promised only begotten son of the sacred line, and that of course is the meaning which no sophistry, no amount of quibbling, can ever get rid of. As applied to Christ it means a relation to God, which is not, and can not, be shared by any other man or by any other creature in the whole universe of God.
The true test, as it seems to me, between a view of Christ’s nature which can be regarded as a legitimate development of historical Christianity and one which can only be looked upon as a new and different creed, is this, “Does it admit the Divine Sonship of Christ in some unique, some solitary sense, or does it make Christ merely one of many sons of God?”1 [Note: H. Rashdall, Doctrine and Development, 79.]
It is hardly denied that Browning’s whole being was penetrated with this idea of Christ as the supreme revealer, the one paramount representative of God to man. And yet we have been told by his biographer that, though he uses the language of Christian Theology, his declarations cannot of course be understood in the sense of orthodox Christianity. Why “of course”? If we tried to get to the bottom of the old phrases in which orthodox Christianity has become stereotyped, we should find perhaps sometimes that the burning words of a nineteenth-century poet are after all only the present-day equivalent of the thoughts and words of a St. John in the first century, and of an Athanasius in the fourth. If there be any truth in the way in which I have attempted to explain this tremendous phrase, “the only begotten Son of God,” the thought which they contain is one of which Robert Browning’s poetry is simply full.2 [Note: Ibid. 81.]
Why have we only one Christ? We have had many philosophers, and neither to Socrates, nor Plato, nor Aristotle among the ancients; neither to Bacon, nor Descartes, nor Spinoza, nor Kant, nor Schelling, nor Hegel among the moderns, could the palm of solitary, indisputable superiority be given. We have had many poets, and neither to Homer, nor Dante, nor Shakespeare, nor Milton, nor Goethe could the praise of unique and unapproachable excellence be awarded. We have had many soldiers, and neither to Alexander, nor Hannibal, nor Cæsar, nor Charlemagne, nor to any of the mediaeval and modern commanders could absolutely unequalled military genius be attributed. And so in every other department of human thought and action. No man is entirely unique. Every man has many compeers; Christ, and Christ alone, and that in the highest department, the religious, is unique, solitary, incomparable; and our question is, Why? Why has the Creator of men created only one Christ, while He has created myriads of all other kinds of men? That Creator is infinitely benevolent; He loves His creatures, He seeks their highest well-being. That well-being Christ has promoted not only more than any other man, but more than all other men that have ever lived. If one Christ has been so mighty for good, what would a multitude have accomplished? Yet God has given to our poor humanity only one, and if we persist in asking, Why? can we find a fitter answer than the answer that stands written in the history of the Word made flesh? God in giving one gave His all: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.”1 [Note: A. M. Fairbairn, The City of God, 251.]
This has always been the Christian religion. There has never been any other Christian religion except this—never. St. Paul believed this. This was his religion. “God sent forth his Son made of a woman, made under the law.” “God sent forth his Son.” How can you reconcile that with Jesus Christ being only a very good man? “Declared to be the Son of God with power.” Does that sound like a very good man? “Through whom are all things.” Is that the sort of thing you would say about a man? “Who, though he was rich, yet for our sakes became poor.” When was He ever rich as man? Never. From those four undisputed Epistles of St. Paul—the two to the Corinthians, Romans, and Galatians—it can be proved to demonstration that St. Paul believed that the Incarnation was the centre of the Christian religion. Take St. Peter and read what he says about “the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls,” to see what he believed. Take St. John. This is St. John: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.” Take the old Christian liturgies—take a hymn like the Gloria in Excelsis, which has come down to us from the beginning, and you find the same thing: “Thou art the Everlasting Son.” Take the Nicene Creed, which the early Church fought about with those who did not believe, and its final shape states that the Son was of the very substance with the Father, the same, identically the same substance with the Father.2 [Note: Bishop Winnington Ingram, The Love of the Trinity, 117.]
One of the most notable events of my freshman’s term was the death of the Rev. Charles Simeon. He was persuaded, though much advanced in years and diffident concerning his own physical strength, to accept the office of Select Preacher for the month of November. He had prepared his four sermons; but when November came, he was lying on a sick-bed; and when St. Mary’s bell tolled for him, it announced, not his sermons, but his death. I heard those four sermons delivered by Mr. Simeon’s successor in his own pulpit. So far as I can remember, the first three were introductory to the fourth, and the fourth gathered up the whole course and showed how type and shadow and prophecy and all the preparatory portion of God’s dispensation found their fulfilment and explanation in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Whether my recollection of those particular sermons be correct or not, certain it is that the supreme position of Christ, as the Alpha and Omega of the revelation of God, as “the way, the truth, and the life,” as the true link between earth and heaven, as the one sufficient sacrifice for sin, “the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world,” as the one foundation of human hope laid by the love of God Himself—certain it is, I say, that this supreme position of Christ was the point to which all Mr. Simeon’s teaching turned, the basis upon which his ministry was built. What was the difference between that teaching and the teaching which it strove to supersede? It professed no new discovery, it did not consciously embody any doctrine which was not already embodied in the Book of Common Prayer. The difference would seem to be expressible by the phrase, the preaching of a living Christ. The teaching purported to reproduce the words of the text, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,” and to reassert the words of St. Paul, “we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.”
A criticism of a similar kind may be made upon the teaching of a still more remarkable man, to some extent contemporary with Mr. Simeon; I mean John Wesley. What was the secret of the marvellous power of John Wesley’s preaching? It owed much, I have no doubt, to his great natural endowments; much to his zeal and the strength of his convictions; but I believe that the ultimate analysis of the subject would show that, fundamentally, the secret of his power was his own clear hold upon, and his living exposition of, the doctrine of the Incarnation of the Son of God. I say the living exposition because this is just what is necessary to infuse life into the souls of others. Vivum ex vivo, say the physiologists: vivum ex vivo, ought to echo the theologians; and a man who has a living apprehension of the love of God, as manifested to mankind in the mission of Him who is called “the only begotten Son,” possesses in that apprehension a spiritual power, which it is more easy to regard with wonder than to measure or to restrain. The preaching of John Wesley can scarcely be reproduced; but the hymns composed by him and by his brother, who in this respect was even more remarkable than himself, will go far towards substantiating what I have now been saying.
Nor is it to be believed that the great movement of the Church of England which has taken place in the last half-century would have been the real and living thing which it has proved to be, if it had not rested upon Christ as the Incarnate Son of God. A superficial criticism may identify this movement with questions of forms, of vestments, of architecture, of chanting the Church’s offices; or, perhaps, with higher questions, such as the power of the Priesthood, the grace of the Sacraments, and other doctrines or practices, which, more or less, divide opinion. And, doubtless, it is true that as the movement described as the Evangelical was a reaction from the preceding condition of the Church, and contained a reassertion of doctrines which had been allowed to fall too much into abeyance, so the next great movement gained strength from the fact that in the fervour of the evangelical effort the symmetry of Catholic teaching had been to some extent lost sight of and injured. But allowing for all this, it may still be maintained that the real foundation of what is sometimes called the Catholic movement, equally with the Evangelical, was Christ, the Incarnate Son of God. Who can doubt this who has studied and loved Keble’s “Christian Year”? Foolish things may have been said, foolish things may have been done; but these foolish things have not helped the movement; they have tended to mar and hinder it. The wisest and best teachers, whether they be called High Church or Low Church, Catholic or Evangelical, so far as their teaching is wise, earnest, and true, can adopt the words of him who hated divisions, and simply styled himself “the servant of the Lord Jesus Christ,” when he wrote to one of the Churches, “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”
The same thing may be said if we go back to the greatest movement of all which can be found in our English Church history, namely, the Reformation of the sixteenth century. A variety of causes, as we all know, conspired at that time to bring about a great religious change; a variety of smaller causes conspired to determine the precise form which the change should assume in this country: general dissatisfaction with the then condition of things, long-standing jealousy of the Pope of Rome, the increase of learning, the translation of the Scriptures, the growth of the seed which John Wyclif had sown, combined with political and local causes to overthrow the Church as it then was. The traces of destruction are clear enough; but what were the forces of conservation and growth? Surely these were to be found in the fact that the wisest and best amongst the Reformers held fast to the doctrine of Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Truly the Church needed a strong foundation in those terrible days; the storms raged and the winds beat upon the house; and it fell not, because it was founded upon a rock, and “that rock was Christ.” In this supreme crisis of the Church’s history she needed no new doctrine, no new faith, no new machinery, but only a clearing away of all that tended to obscure the visage of her Lord and towards substituting the legends and inventions of man for the faith once delivered to the saints.
And if I wished for another illustration of the point which I am now pressing, I would seek it in a very different quarter, namely, in that wonderful book known by the title De Imitatione Christi. The title, as we know, is taken from one particular portion of the volume; but did you ever observe what an absolute misnomer it is as applied to the whole? To speak of imitating another implies that imitation is possible; a child imitates its father or its mother, or a man sees his neighbour do a charitable act and he follows his example, or the pupil imitates his tutor, hoping to become like him; and so when you read the history of Christ being kind and gentle, holy and devout and good; when you read of His being constant in prayer, or of His indignation against hypocrisy, and His compassion for the ignorant and fallen, or when you are told that when He was reviled He reviled not again, when He suffered He threatened not, and so forth throughout the whole human side of His history, you feel not only that you can try at least to follow His example, but that you ought and would like to do it; and if this were all, still more if Jesus Christ were such as Renan and others would represent Him to have been, you feel that there is at least nothing impossible in an imitation of Christ; but the Christ of Thomas à Kempis is very different from our modern pictures of Jesus of Nazareth; it is not only Christ the man, to be followed as an example, as all good men should be, but Christ the Son of God, who in the plenitude of His love and condescension holds converse with the human soul. And because this is so, the title of the book may be called a misnomer; but also because this is so, therefore the book has its marvellous and unequalled power of influence and magical fascination; it is the record of the possible communion of the soul with God through Christ, which is unspeakably precious, just because Christ is infinitely higher than humanity, and is worthy of worship, but incapable of imitation.1 [Note: Bishop Harvey Goodwin, in The Cambridge Review, Nov. 24, 1886.]
4. Must we not say more and go further than this? Must we not say that in giving us Jesus Christ, God gave us Himself, just so far as we could receive this culminating gift? Is it not the fact that in Him we have the Way to God, the Truth about God, and the Life of God lived out among men? Is it not He who has made God real for us, by interpreting Godhead in terms of Fatherhood, so that henceforth we know God and have seen Him? He brings men to God as Teacher and Leader; but, even more wonderful, He brings God to men by visibly manifesting the Divine within Himself. In the face of so great a proof we can no longer doubt the love which prompted it. Men had thought of the Eternal as of some mighty Potentate, irresponsible in power, jealous of His own dignity, exacting obedience and praise and sacrifices; but in Christ they saw God willing to seek and to save, ready even, incredible though it might seem, to suffer and agonize for their sakes, loving men even in their disobedience and wilfulness, and giving Himself for them. “God so loved the world that he gave” Himself to us in His own dear Son.
Men readily concede that God gave us Jesus, but they do not seem to see with equal clearness that God gave Himself in Jesus, and that He still continues to give Himself in everything worthy of Jesus that is making the world better, nobler, kinder. I remember reading during the South African war that the greatest deaths were those of the mothers who died in their sons, the greatest gifts were those of the mothers who gave their sons, the keenest anguish was that of the mothers who suffered in their sons for the sake of England. Here is a figure of the word of God for the world.1 [Note: R. J. Campbell.]
(1) Here we come upon the doctrine of the Atonement, properly s