[Machine transcription]
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have life eternal.
You may be seated. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Dear Saints, those words from the Gospel are so familiar to us that what I’d like to do is just take a look first at the Gospel and try to notice a few things that we might not have noticed before. And then we’ll try to put it all together by meditating on that word, love.
John chapter 3 is part of the early ministry of Jesus when He’d called probably half of His disciples, and He was still in the south, in Jerusalem, and He had cleansed the temple already. That had caught the notice of the religious rulers, and one of them, Nicodemus, was curious about Jesus. He was a Pharisee, part of the Sanhedrin, the ruling elders. Of course, we know later he became a believer. He helped Joseph of Arimathea lower the body of Jesus and bury the body of Jesus. So he eventually became a believer in Christ, but not yet, not this night. He comes to Jesus asking about his teaching, and Jesus teaches him that you have to be born again if you want to see the kingdom of God. You have to be born of water and the Spirit if you want to enter into the kingdom.
And this teaching here in our Gospel lesson from John 3.14 follows up on that. So Jesus says to Nicodemus at night with the disciples listening in, He says, “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.”
We heard when Moses lifted up the serpent in the Old Testament lesson, and we’ll really spend some time meditating on that on Wednesday night when we’re doing the Old Testament lessons. But here, just to make the point, Jesus is reminding Nicodemus about that incident when all the snakes were attacking the people, and to be rescued from the snake, the Lord instructed Moses to make another snake and to lift it up on a pole so that whoever looked at the snake would be healed. And Jesus says, so it’ll be now. In fact, He uses this word of necessity. It must be, in verse 14, that the Son of Man would be lifted up, so that all who look to Him, all who believe in Him would be saved.
This lifting up that Jesus talks about, He talks about it a number of times. John seemed to really pay attention whenever Jesus said, “lift it up,” and he writes it down a number of times in the Gospels. It’s the same language that would be used for a king who would be exalted on the throne, but Jesus uses it when He’s lifted up from the earth on the cross, because that is His enthronement. His crucifixion is His glorious throne. So Jesus will be lifted up on the cross, so that all who see Him, every sinner who is poisoned by the serpent, would trust in Him and live.
I want you to notice the use of the word “son” in verse 14. Can you see it there? Jesus says, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. And notice that word “son” then in the next verse 16 and 17, “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish.” Whose Son is Jesus? How beautiful. Well, we confess this in the Catechism, that Jesus is both the Son of Man, born of the Virgin Mary, and also the Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds. So we confess the two natures of Christ.
There’s another word in verse 16 that I want to draw your attention to. It’s the word “only.” Sometimes it’s translated, and I think probably better, “only begotten.” The only begotten Son or His only Son. Now let’s just think about that for a little bit. The text says here very clearly that Jesus is an only child. God the Father has no other sons or daughters. He is the only begotten, which is wonderful to think of, this unique existence of Jesus, but it does lead us to a question because the Bible will often talk about the children of God. This beautiful verse in 1 John, “Behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us that we should be called the children of God, and such we are.” Or Paul, who will write about how the Lord has made us sons and heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. Now, how can it be that Jesus is the only Son and that God has many sons and daughters?
I thought about letting you think about it for a week and then coming back and seeing if you figured it out, but I might as well… I think we’ll tell you. That Jesus is the only begotten Son of the Father, but we are all sons and daughters of God, not by begottenness but by adoption, by being reborn. We are all born… we heard this in the epistle lesson from Ephesians 2, and your homework is to read and study Ephesians 2. There’s so many foundational doctrines and teachings in that epistle lesson that it’ll be well worth your time to read over it a couple of times this week. It talks about how we’re born in trespasses and sins, how we’re by nature children of wrath, how we’re saved by grace through faith, and that’s not ourselves, it’s the gift of God, how we’re prepared to do good work. It’s a beautiful text, but the main point here for this is that we are born by nature children, not of grace or glory, but wrath. We’re born children of wrath, or as Jesus says to the Pharisees in John chapter 8, “You are of your father the devil,” so it is with us. We are not born the children of God. We are born the children of the devil. We’re born into condemnation. More on that in a little bit.
We’re born far from God, aliens to the people of God and the commonwealth of God, but we are reborn through baptism into the family of God. That’s why, or it’s one of the reasons why, we’re baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In other words, just as a child who’s adopted into a family no longer has their birth name but receives the name of the family into which they’re adopted, so it is with us. So it is with you. You are now part of the family of God by being clothed in Christ, by being joined to Him, by being baptized. How wonderful.
So Jesus is the only Son, but He shares His Sonship with you. He makes room in the family for you and I to join by His death and His resurrection and by His gift of baptism. God be praised.
Verse 17, if you’ll see it there, is one of my favorite verses. It often gets overlooked, because verse 16 is so powerful, so profound. But verse 17 is really quite wonderful too, 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.
I think one of the reasons why this is my favorite verse is because so often in my pastoring work, I’ll be talking to people who are simply afraid of Jesus, intimidated by Jesus, frightened by Jesus, as if He came to condemn, as if He came to destroy, as if He came to judge. No, listen to what it says. The Son of Man, God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world. That’s not why Jesus came. Jesus came on a rescue mission to set you free. He came with grace and peace and mercy. He came not to kill, but to be killed. He came not to judge, but to be judged. He came not to condemn, but to be condemned—all of that in your place. He comes then with kindness and gentleness and peace.
Now, this is not to say that there is no condemnation. It’s not to say there’s no judgment, as if, you know, we’re all somehow neutral and Jesus comes to bring us from neutral to saved. No. Verse 18 clears this up. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already. Jesus doesn’t come to throw people in jail because we’re already in jail. He doesn’t come to condemn because we were already condemned. He doesn’t come to sentence because we already were on the way to death. We were condemned already, remember? We were born children of wrath. Ever since the fall, in the garden of Adam and Eve, we were dying, and not only dying, we were dying apart from God and apart from His grace. We were dying under our sins. We were being, in our lives, we were marching towards eternal condemnation. We were already there.
Jesus doesn’t need to condemn the world because the world stands condemned in its own sin. Jesus doesn’t need to throw anyone in prison because we’re already there. He comes then to set us free, to deliver us from the death that we had already, to forgive the sins that we had already, to free us from the condemnation that we had already.
And this verse 19, a couple more points I want to get to. This verse 19 here, this is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light. A couple of things about verse 19. Number one, I want you to notice this—that the judgment is here listed in the past tense. The judgment is this: the light has come into the world. Not the light is coming.
Jesus is the judgment day. Whenever He comes, He brings division, separating believer from unbeliever, light from dark, life from death, holiness from uncleanness and sin. So the judgment is wherever Jesus is, and the judgment is that the light has come into the world, and the people love the darkness rather than the light.
The word “loved” showed up twice in our reading. Did you notice it? It first talks about what God loves, verse 16, “God loves the world,” and then it talks about what we love. People love the darkness rather than the light, for everyone who does wicked things hates the light and doesn’t come into the light. That’s Jesus calling us, according to our flesh, according to our sinful nature. According to the course of this world, Jesus is calling us cockroaches.
You know how it is with cockroaches? You turn on the light and they love the dark. They hate the light. They run for the darkness. They flee from the light. And so it is with us, according to our flesh. It’s not very nice. But it’s true, everyone who does wicked things hates the light, does not come into the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his deeds are carried out in God.
We are, you are, now listen to this, you are, according to Holy Scripture, the children of the light, not of the darkness. Children of the light. The day has dawned. And that light is frightful because it exposes our sin, but so be it. Better to have our sin exposed, confessed, and forgiven than hidden, festering, and leading us to hell. The light exposes our sin, but we endure the pain, knowing that the Lord wants it, that He uses it to bless us. But then we rejoice in the light of the glory of Christ, His mercy, His forgiveness, and His joy, and His peace. God be praised.
Now, how can we put this all together? I’d like to think about that word love for a little bit. And I remember I told the story this morning, and the congregation, at least they looked at me like they hadn’t heard it before because I think I told you the story, but since I got sick this summer, I can’t remember what stories I’ve told you and what I’ve forgotten, so just, you have to endure me.
I remember at seminary, I was with my friend Pastor Ketchemeyer, and we were trying to learn the distinction between law and gospel. What that meant. We know the law is God’s ten commandments. The law tells us what we’re to do. It tells the whole world what to do. It tells the Christian what shape our love is supposed to take. Most importantly, the law shows us our sin. Remember the mirror of the law? It shows us our sin in the light of God’s holiness so that we know that we can’t save ourselves, that we need a Savior. And the gospel is the good news that Christ has died for sinners. The law condemns but the gospel forgives. The law exposes sin, the gospel forgives sin. The law tells us what we’re supposed to do, the gospel tells us what Christ has done for us already to save us. So the law damns but the gospel rescues and delivers and brings mercy and peace. The law terrifies, but the gospel comforts. Beautiful. Comfort.
We’re learning this law and gospel distinction, and we were realizing, and we were testing a thesis, and it is this: that you cannot call a single word either law or gospel. If you just have one word, it’s not enough. And so we were testing it out. I remember we tested it out with the word “wrath.” You hear the word “wrath,” and you think, surely that’s a word of law, right? God’s wrath is exposed against every ungodliness known among mankind. That’s law. But what about this sentence? The Lord spilled out His wrath on Christ instead of you. Oh, that’s sweet gospel, right?
It turns out the same thing is true with the word “love.” I still remember we were walking up the stairs to the chapel when this dawned on us. The word “love” sounds so nice. You think the word “love” is surely a gospel word, but when the Lord takes up that word and says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and you should love your neighbor as yourself,” you realize that that word is not so nice. In fact, that word is pretty dangerous because which of us has done it? Which of us, laying in bed at the end of the day, can think, “I did that, I took out the trash and I did the dishes and I love the Lord with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and I love my neighbors, myself”?
Love, it turns out, is the fulfilling of the law. It’s the law in its fullness, which means that word love condemns us, even as it does here. The people love the darkness more than the light. We are not holy. We are not perfect. We are in desperate need of the Lord’s mercy. Love exposes our failure, our weakness, our enmity with God, and our sin. In fact, can you believe it? That word love, if that word were to stand as only the word from Moses and the Ten Commandments, then we would be condemned eternally because of our lack of love.
But the Lord takes up that word and gives it to us a different way: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shouldn’t die, but have life that never ends.” It’s the love of God that saves us. It’s the love of Christ that redeems us. It’s the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that is our hope and our peace, because that love is not what’s required of us but what the Lord gives to us.
And we shouldn’t think of this verse this way: “For God loved the world so much that one of the things He did was giving His Son to die on the cross.” No, it is the love of God, the death of Jesus on the cross. That is His love for you. His saving, bleeding, dying, forgiving, redeeming, rescuing love so that you can know, listen, wondering that God loves you. It is as sure as the death and resurrection of Jesus, and it cannot be undone.
I know you haven’t loved God. I know you haven’t loved your neighbor. I know you haven’t kept the law. I know you were born children of wrath just like I am, and Jesus knows it too, and still He loved you, and still He sent His Son, and still He died, and still He rose, and still He adopted you into His family by His gift of baptism. God loves you, and it cannot be undone. And this love gives us hope, and this love gives us peace. This love is the forgiveness of sins. This love is salvation. This love means that you will not die, but live forever.
For God so loved the world, that’s you, that He gave His only Son. God be praised. Amen.
And the peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and your minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
