Let’s turn in our Bibles this morning to John chapter three and verse 13. John chapter three and verse 13, I want to speak this morning, this Sunday morning before Christmas on the subject, love came down at Christmas. As we said a week or two ago, the greatest moment in history was not when man stood on the moon, but when God stood on the earth, when the ancient of Dez was born in a moment in time when he who was the fountain of life was found hanging on the breast of a young girl. when he who dwelt in unapproachable light walked among men who loved darkness rather than light. That’s the message that’s the marvel of Christmas.
I was reading about two women who were standing outside a department store, looking in and amidst all the gifts that were in the window on display, there was a nativity scene in one nudged the other and said, “Can you believe it, the church horning in on Christmas?” Something wrong with that picture, right? Some people are missing the true reason for the season and we’re going to come to look at the heartbeat of God’s love for us in Christ this morning as we find it in one of the great verses of the Bible, John 3:16, but we’ll get a wider context. John 3:13, no one has ascended to heaven, but he who came down from heaven, that is the son of man who is in heaven and as Moses lifted up the servant 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. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. Amen. God didn’t come to rub it in, God came to rub it out. And we’re thankful for that reality. So let’s think a little this morning on the subject, love came down at Christmas. In St. Paul’s Cathedral in London you’ll find a life-sized marble statue of Christ, wreathing in anguish on the cross and beneath that statue, you’ll find this inscription, “This is how God loved the world.”
James Danny, the great Scottish theologian, used to say that he would like to go up and down the aisle of every church in his native Scotland, holding up a cross in the air and shouting God loved like this. See, the story of Christmas is a love story. It’s a love story without parallel. It’s a love story without analogy. It’s the story of God’s love for a world had turned its back on him. The real story of Christmas is not a baby being born but that God came in flesh through the baby that was born to die as a man, for the sins of mankind. For God so loved the world like that, that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
God came down to be lifted up upon a cross in a demonstration of his love, not for his friends, but for his enemies. In Romans five verse eight, we read that God commended demonstrated his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That’s the headline that comes out of the Christmas story. I don’t know if you remember back when News Night at 10:00 on CNN was anchored by Aaron Brown and as Larry King Live bumped up to it, there’d always be this kind of lead-in where Larry King would kind of throw it over to Aaron and say, a headline from you, Aaron. Here’s a headline. In fact, the word commended or demonstrated in Romans five, it is a word that’s used of a large kind of billboard to post a message on and to catch everyone’s eye.
And so, I want to come to look at the headline that comes out of the Christmas story and we find it summarized for us here in John 3:16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. God loved like this. I want us to take some time to look at the great truth about the love that came down at Christmas. A message communicated to us in one of the best known verses in the Bible, a verse that Martin Luther called the gospel in a nutshell. John 3:16 is the distillation of every other verse and chapter in the Bible. It’s the Bible boiled down and compressed into one verse and explains and expands upon the rest of God’s revealed truth.
So let’s look at this text. There’s three things I want to say about this love story centered in the coming of Christ to die first sinners. Number one, I want you to see the genesis of this love story. God is the subject of this sentence. This love finds its source in God, for God says, John, so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. God is the author and the genesis of the greatest love story that’s ever been told. And according to John’s gospel, here God is the wellspring of its action. It is God who gives his son. God is the antecedent of the intended love that’s to be indeed directed towards those who will believe in his son.
And I think we just need to pause, lest we leapfrog over the significance of the subject of this sentence that’s not run by this little Greek word Theos, God. Who is this God that loves the world? He is the living and true God from whom all things find their reality and reason. He is the indefatigable and ageless God for whom a thousand years is but a day. He is the stainlessly perfect and holy God who dwells in unapproachable light. He is the infinite and boundless God whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain. He is the heavenly and sovereign God before whom the nations are about a drop in the bucket. He is the infinitely happy and self-sufficient God who needs nothing from us to make him complete.
They set against that backdrop that we not come then with a greater understanding to those opening words for God. This God loved us like this. The genesis of this love story is God. It is this God who loves us in Christ. This eternal God, this holy God, this self-sufficient God, which reminds us by the way of something very startling and very significant. God’s love for us finds no cause in us, only him. I want to say that again because you need to ponder that. You need to mull over that. God’s love for us finds no cause in us. The reason we are loved this morning is what? Because he loved us. This God who has no need in and off himself, this God who dwells in unapproachable light comes to dwell among men and love men and women who love darkness rather than light.
This God who has lived and existed from eon to eon, from everlasting to everlasting has come in a moment in time, for God so loved the world. Friends, let’s remind ourselves that God’s love for us finds no cause in us. That’s why in Romans chapter three, we’re told that we are justified freely by grace. The little word there freely is translated in John 15:25 without cause. There is no cause in us. There is reason in him because you see God’s nature is to love, for God so loved. In one sense, that’s startling, but in another sense, it’s understandable because we read in First John chapter four and verse eight and verse 16, God is love.
God can no more stop living than he could stop loving because as we saw in our series in First Corinthians 13, love is not a quality that God possesses, but it’s the essence of God himself. It is not a minor attribute that marks God from time to time. It is the very heart of his being. It is his very essence. God does love because God must love because it’s his essence. Therefore, when God’s loves, it’s an act of self-expression, love is of God. All my friends, we want to get our heads around that. John doesn’t say that love is God. That would be abstract and impersonable, but that God is love, that’s concrete and personal. What is God like? God is love.
Is it the center and core of his very nature? God is love and all other love stories are simply a plagiarization of his love for us. For God so loved the world. Love is the crown of God’s character. Listen to these words from an old writer who wants us to understand the significance of this part of God’s nature. When we study the attributes of God, they are after all only different ways of spelling his love. His omnipotence is but the arm of his love, his omniscience is but the medium through which he contemplates the object of his love. His wisdom is but the scheme of his love, the offers of the gospel are but the invitations of his love, the threatenings of his law are but the warnings of his love.
They are the hoarse voice of his love saying, “Man, do thyself, no harm.” They’re but a fence of love thrown around the pit of hell to prevent rash man from rushing to his ruin. His tears are but that the dew drops of his love. His justice is love dealing righteously. The earth is but the theater for the display of his love. What is heaven but the alps of his love, from whose summits his blessings flow down in a thousand streams to water and refresh the world. No marvel that the disciple who felt the beat of that great heart shouted God is love and love is of God. For God love the world. That’s absolutely mind-numbing when we understand his nature in its totality and yet to some degree we come to understand why he would love because he is love.
I like the story told of the man who stood some years ago before James the first. And the man seemed to be indifferent to his plight. His life hung in the balance. King, the king noticing this said, “Do you not know that it’s within my power to pardon?” He looked at the king. He says, I know it’s in your power but it’s not in your nature. It’s in God’s nature to pardon. It’s in God’s nature to love and we’re so thankful for that this morning. We’re so thankful that he chose to love that he willed his affection towards a rebellious mankind because his love for us finds no cause in us, only in him. Salvation is a gift.
Salvation is underwritten by God’s grace which brings us secondly to the greatness of his love. We not only see the genesis of this love story, God, we see the greatness of this love story as we’ve said at the beginning, this love story is without equal. There is no comparable analogy. There’s never been a greater demonstration of love than that which has been spoken of here in John 3:16 because none is greater than God. And here he displays his great love toward us in the giving of his son, a love that sacrifices itself. Not for its friends but for its enemies. It has no parallel in our world. That’s why Paul says in Romans 5:7 through eight, I’m reading from the message we can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for.
And we can understand how someone good and noble could aspire us to selfless sacrifice, but God put his love on the line for us by the offering of his son in sacrificial death while we were no use whatsoever to him. Isn’t that true? That’s the greatness of this love. That’s why the verb love has to be qualified by the adverb so loved. In fact, if you read the Greek literally, here’s the way this verse reads, so loved God the world. See, John’s kind of numbed by this whole thought, that this God would love us like this. He’s the genesis of this great love. A love that sacrifices itself not for its friends but for its enemies.
Martin Niemöller who suffered under Hitler during the Second World War because of his protest against the godless Nazism that was tearing out the heart of a great nation as he was leaving prison at the end of the war. He said, “It took me a long time to realize God is not the enemy of my enemies, for God is not even the enemy of his enemies. For God so loved a world like this with a love like that, that he give his son.” Friends, let’s think about that for a moment. Let’s go through the narrow straights of this little word so and sail out into the great and vast ocean of God’s love.
This is a great love. This is a love that’s greater than a mother’s love. I tried to get my head practically and pastorally around this whole thought, how much does God love me? How much affection does he show towards us? I started thinking about love. Is there any greater love than a mother’s love? I don’t think so. When we think of a mother, we think of tenderheartedness, selflessness, sacrifice and it warms us. In fact, when we got to the airport the other evening, I had my two little nieces in the back of the car and I started poking fun a little and I started poking fun of my sister.
And I said to him, “You know what, your mommy is no good” and one from the back shouted, “Oh yes she is.” She’s the best. And so I replied, how do you know she’s the best? And she looked at us and said, because she’s my mommy. It’s a great answer. My mommy conjures up from within the heart of children and old men thoughts of affection and tenderness and selflessness. And yet, you know what, the amazing thing is this in Isaiah 49 verse 15, here’s what we read God to his people of old and in fact he draws an analogy between his love for them and a mother’s love for her child.
In Isaiah 49 verse 15, what do we read? Can a woman forget her nursing child and not have compassion on the son of her womb? And we would answer that not normally. Normally, when that mother hears the cry of that newborn child and takes it to her breast, there is a bond there, that heaven or hell can hardly pull apart. And the amazing thing is in some situations, mothers will abandon their children. We’ll see many a story I’m sure over this Christmas period of children being found on the doors of the emergency rooms of some local hospitals, where a mother in distress. We would like to believe working against her natural affection. Giving up the child she would normally suck her.
Can a woman forget her nursing child and not have compassion on the son of her womb? We would answer not normally, but in some cases it can happen because here’s what we read. Surely they may forget, but God says, I will not forget, I will not forget. God’s love for us is greater than a mother’s love that in a pinch can sometimes let us down. In fact, it’s interesting if you go back into the Old Testament and read about God’s love, one of the words that’s used is Hesed, often translated goodness or love in kindness. It’s a Hebrew word from which the word stork is based on. Because the stork was a bird that took great care of its young.
And showed great love to its little ones. And God presents himself someone who can put on display a greater love on a mother’s love and that’s great in and of itself. You can count on a mother’s love. God’s love is greater than a father’s love. God’s love is greater than a father’s love. I was thinking about that. I was thinking about a scene in the Bible. You know something of the story where King David wrestled with a rebellious child, Absalom one who was guilty of murdering his half-brother, one who was guilty of turning the hearts of the people against David and leading a coup d’etat against his father’s sovereignty?
A young man who died in rebellion. A rebel with a cause in the news broke of Absalom’s death and David’s heart gushed forth with compassion and a sense of guilt. In Second Samuel 18:33, we read, “O Absalom, O Absalom,” and you see a father’s heart wrenched the thought of a wasted life and spurned love. And yet, I think David’s tears are partly salted by a sense of guilt because he knew he contributed to Absalom’s death. Remember we’re told back in chapter 12 and verse 10 of Second Samuel that the sword would not depart from David’s house because of his sin.
The poignancy and the pathos of this scene of David crying over the body of his son, Absalom, Absalom. High, greater love and yet God’s love is greater because God was the perfect parent. A God who doted on his creation as a loving father, but who saw that creation rebel and thumb its nose that his goodness and grace and God is pictured in Luke 15 as a father waiting for the rebel to come home. Such is God’s love. God’s love is greater than a mother’s love. God’s love is greater than a father’s love. God’s love is greater than romantic love. See, romantic love is based on attraction on a petal.
We find that worked out in Genesis 29, in the love between Jacob and Rachel. Let me turn and read it. Jacob encounters the two daughters of Laban. One, Leah and one, Rachel and he sets his eyes upon Rachel and he’s just taken by her smitten as we would say. It was love at first sight after seeing Rachel, this guy walked into a lamp post, over in Genesis 29. We read about it. Let me turn to it. Genesis 29:17. Now Jacob loved Rachel or blow me back up. Leah’s eyes were delicate or weak, but Rachel was beautiful of farm and appearance. Now, Jacob loved Rachel so he said, I will serve you seven years Laban for Rachel, your younger daughter.
After seeing her, he just would do anything to have her, such was the attraction. It’s interesting that Leah was not as appealing to Jacob. In fact, she’s described here. Leah’s eyes were delicate or Leah’s eyes were weak and we believe that that’s and a break, phrase that carries the idea that she had pale eyes, not the dark sparkling, beautiful eyes of the Mid-Eastern woman, but she had pale eyes and therefore she was blemished to some degree physically. She didn’t catch Jacob’s eyes quite as much as Rachel’s did. There was nothing attractive about Leah in Jacob’s eyes, nothing admirable, desirable.
That’s what romantic love is like. It’s based upon attraction, it’s based upon appeal. But God’s love is greater than that because as we said a moment or two earlier, God’s love finds no cause in us, only in him. There’s nothing appealing about us. There’s nothing attractive about us. God’s eyes are purer than to look upon iniquity. And when God looks upon the earth, he sees every imagination of men thinking about sin and their feet are swift to shed blood and none does good. Nothing very attractive about us and yet he loved us. His love is greater than a father’s love, in the face of a rebellious child.
His love is greater than romantic love because it’s not based upon something he has to find in us. It is spurred on and generated by something he finds in himself. God is love and his love is demonstrated not towards his friends but towards his enemies. God should no more be attracted to us than a man would be to a skunk. But God so loved the world. That’s an amazing reality. And that’s why we’ve got to just spend a moment or two coming back to that phrase, “So loved the world” That’s amazing, doesn’t it? And I think sometimes we look at that and we think about it in terms of the breadth of God’s love.
He loves all the world and I really think that’s to miss the point. I don’t think this phrase, “So loved the world,” speaks of the breadth of God’s love as much as it speaks of the depth of God’s love, not its scope but its strength. It was a love like this that love the people and a mankind like that. This verse isn’t focused on that demographics but the character of God’s love. In fact, I was helped to see that this week by something that B.B Warfield had written. Listen to these words, try and think about them. It is not that God’s love is so great that is able to extend over the whole of a big world.
It is rather that it is love is so great that it is able to prevail over his own holy hatred and abhorrence of sin and love the world that lies in the evil one. The world here is not a term of demographic extension, so much as it is a term of ethical intensity. Its primary connotation is ethical and the point of its employment is not to suggest that the world is so big that it takes a great deal of love to embrace it, but that the world is so bad that it takes a great kind of love to love it at all. Isn’t that not a powerful thought and I think he’s onto something.
Of course, it has a dimension to it. The world of people, but I don’t think John is really saying, this is so great. I love because of all the kinds of people it takes in. But actually, the kind of person, all those people are, morally repulsive in the eyes of a holy God. Rebellious, taking what God gives and prostituting it on their own desires. And therefore the idea here is not that it takes a great deal of love to embrace all but that the world is so bad that it takes a great kind of love to love it at all. Sometime ago I was reading a book, this will be a bit raw, but listen to this. It was a book entitled Waiting by Ben Patterson and then, he tells of an autobiography entitled Brother to a Dragonfly.
It’s a story of a man by the name of Will Campbell. And then he recalls his friendship with a profane and brilliant skeptic named P.D East. They’d argued themselves to a standstill about the truth of Christianity and one day as they rode together in a car, East said to him in a surprising angle, just tell me what this Jesus cat is all about. I’m not too bright, but maybe I can get the hang of it. If you can tell me what the Christian faith is about, maybe I won’t make an ask out of myself and I’m talking about it. Keep it simple. In 10 words or less, what’s the Christian message? Let me have it in 10 words.
Campbell thought hard for several minutes as they journeyed along the road and then, he replied, we’re all bastards but God loves us, anyway. The guy was so stunned that he pulled over to the side of the road, he started counting on his fingers and said, “You’ve two left,” but the guy said nothing more because that said it all, God so loved a world like ours. With a love like that, is that not the Christian message boiled down to its very essence? In fact, Ben Patterson speaks of that story. The language in that definition is raw, but is it really any different from the words of the Bible which say Christ died for our sins?
We have unethetized ourselves to the word sin. It no longer stabs us with grief and the fear of a holy God to say that we are sinners, it’s to say they were all the misbegotten enemies of God. Illegitimate, deserving judgment and death. High true. In fact, if you don’t grasp that my friend, I’ll tell you why. Because you’re so in love with yourself and you have such a minimal concept of God’s greatness and holiness that you actually love yourself so much that you’re not surprised that God loves you so much. You’ve got it wrong my friend. God has no reason to love you at all. You’re an illegitimate child who has spurned his love, prostituted his gifts, profaned his name and rejected his son and broken his law. That’s the marvel of this.
The genesis of this love story is a marvel and the greatness of this love story is a marvel. We’ll move to the third thought. The gift of this love story is a marvel. For God so loved the world that he gave. God loved and God gave. Because God gave, Christ came and in Christ’s coming, Christ died so that he might purchase for us the gift of eternal life. That’s the bold print and the small print of the Christian faith and the Christmas message, the gift of God’s love is the giving of God’s son to the cross to die as our substitute and our savior. This is what we read in First John chapter four. First John chapter four and verse eight. “He who does not love does not know God. For God is love. And in this the love of God was manifested toward us that God has sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him.”
This is love. Not that we loved God. See, God finds no cause in us, only in himself. But that he loved us and sent a son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved of God so loved us, ought we not to love one another? My friend, what a great reality this morning. Like Mary who broke the alabaster bottle of perfume, her most valuable possession and filled the house with its sweet aroma, so God the Father gave the alabaster box of his own beloved son breaking him in death upon the cross that the fragrance of his saving benefits may pervade the entire world. In fact, as we look at the second half of this verse, there are two things I want to say quickly. I want you to notice the cost of providing this gift.
And then, I want you to see secondly, the condition of possessing this gift. For God so loved the world that he gave his son, parenthesis, to the cross in suffering death for us as a substitute for our sin, as an offering for our rebellion. That’s the cost of providing this gift. It’s free to us as we’ll see in a moment, but it cost God everything. In fact, Romans 8:32 tells us that God spurred not his own son. That’s how much he loved us. Of all the things he could give us, he give us himself because God was in Christ and the word who was God became flesh.
God gave himself. He delivered up his son. Delivered him up to what? That’s a sermon in itself. But he delivered him up to the limitations of our humanity. He delivered him up to the experience of our poverty and suffering. He delivered him up to the hatred of our world. He delivered him up to the pressure of temptation. He delivered him up to the agony and grief of the cross. He delivered him up to the estrangement of sin. He delivered him up to the darkness of the grave. For God so loved the world that he give his son, delivered him up. Why? Because God, his love is a holy love. God’s love is not some kind of sentimental his, where he turns a blind eye to sin and indulges us with disregard to his holy character.
For God to love us, he had to remove the impediment of sin that has us estranged from God from the moment we’re born. And he did that through the offering of his son. We read it in First John 4:10. He sent the son to be the propitiation, big theological word. But here’s the idea, it’s the idea of appeasement. It was a word that was used back in the New Testament era of people who would go to the pagan temples and offer up offerings to appease the gods who were always angry with them, who were always petty and boiling over in their dislike for mankind.
And Paul took that word and perfected it, to speak of the just anger of God and how that justice was satisfied in the giving of the one perfect sacrifice. Jesus Christ who did no sin but was made sin for us. That’s the marvel and the message of Christmas that Jesus Christ died on the cross bearing our sin and our suffering and assuaging the righteous anger of God in the giving of himself to death, bloody horrible death upon the cross. That’s the cost of purchasing this gift. For you and I ever to get to heaven, Christ had to come down from heaven, take upon himself the nature of a man and give himself in death as a sacrifice for our sin.
During the reign of Oliver Cromwell in the 17th century in England, a soldier was condemned to death by public execution. It was to be carried out at the ringing of the curfew bell, which was the case every night. He was patrolled to a beautiful young woman who appeared before Cromwell and pled that Cromwell would spur her lover’s life, but it was all in vain. Cromwell believed that justice had to be served. Cromwell believed that he didn’t want to make an example of him in terms of mercy and perhaps ignite anarchy among the ranks of his soldiers. And so sure enough, that night, curfew came and the Saxon went into the old church and began to ring the bell, with Cromwell and the soldiers below.
But no sound echoed from the tower because you see that young woman had gone up and wrapped herself around the tongue of that huge bell and she was smashed again and again and against the sides of the bell absorbing the blows and muffling the sound. It was found out that she was the reason the curfew never rang that night. She was hauled before Cromwell, bloody and battered. Looking at her and understanding what she had done, she said, go … he said, “Go your way. Your lover lives. Curfew will not ring tonight.” And my friend, that’s a beautiful illustration of God’s love for us. True love pays the price.
It is ready to sacrifice at great personal cost. That’s what God did in Christ for us. For God to love us, he had to remove the offense of a broken law and the dead of our sin. And he did that in the sending of his son. And the bells of God’s wrath do not toll for those that put their trust in Christ because Christ absorbed the blows of God’s righteous anger in the darkness of that afternoon when he cried like a derelict child, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And all the billows of God’s wrath poured upon Christ in the real calvary and the real suffering. Beyond his physical trauma, there was the soul’s anguish of being made sin for us. That’s the cost of purchasing it.
And as we close this morning, what about the condition of possessing it, as we look at the gift? Well, there is a condition. Don’t you see it in John 3:16? For God so loved the world … or as we could read it, literally so loved God, the world that he gave his only begotten son to purchase our salvation for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. Parenthesis, perched, purchased in the carnage of Christ’s death for us and whoever believes in him should not perish but have the gift of eternal life that you and I will live as long as God lives and join his love as long as he lives.
What is the condition? It’s belief. It’s trust in God. Notice the extensive nature of the offer, whoever. But that’s contingent upon the exclusive nature of the bestowment, whoever believes in him. The offer of eternal life is contingent upon faith, solely placed in Christ. It’s clear from this verse as from the rest of scripture that we are saved by faith alone. This was the great truth of the Protestant Reformation. That’s why Paul says in his letter to Titus, not by works of righteousness, which we do, but by his mercy he saves us. It’s a simple trusting, it’s a complete resting.
You and I are sea of not by keeping the law, not by putting our faith in Christ and doing works. Now, according to Romans three verse 28, Paul concludes that we are justified by faith apart from the works of the law. According to John five verse 24, we pass from death on the life the moment we put our trust and belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. Listen folks, salvation is strictly exclusively the possession of those who put their faith alone in Christ only. It’s belief in him. There’s no other name given among man under heaven whereby we’re saved. Acts four verse 12. There’s only one mediator between God and man. The man Christ Jesus. We’re told in First John five verse 12, “He who has the son has life and he who has not the son does not have life.”
That’s why I was surprised this week to learn of a Pew forum on religion and public life, a survey that found between the months of July and August in a survey of 3000 American adults that 52% of all American Christians think that at least some non-Christian faiths can lead to eternal life. How’s that? When you read a verse like “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, his only son who’s the only way and the only mediator and the only sacrifice that has satisfied the infinite and perfect judgment and holiness of God.”
Jesus said himself, “I’m the way, the truth and the life and no man comes to the Father, but by me.” God wrote one prescription for the malady of sin and the road to heaven is a one-way street and it points in the direction of Jesus Christ and his cross. That’s why my friends this morning I say lovingly, Muslims will not be saved by their keeping the Koran and their visits to Mecca. Buddhists and Hindus will not go to heaven for their religious devotion. Christ-rejecting Jews who follow the teaching of Judaism will never know Peace with God and professing Christians who look for redemption other than in Christ, but also in the merits of Mary or the expiation of their own sins and purgatory.
They will not see God for they have made Christ an addendum and his cross of known effect on all … this gift has been purchased must be possessed by faith alone in him. And that’s where we’re finishing this morning in that challenge. Steve Brown has said that the Incarnation was the time when the God of the universe served the ball into the world’s court. It is finished. The great work of redemption, complete the path to God paved and signposted. The gate, open. But my friend, you’ve got to take to that road. You’ve got to come to that cross. You’ve got to repent of that sin and you’ve got to alone and only rest your confidence in Christ.
That’s why Paul says, “I put no, no, nah, no confidence in the flesh.” Trust has mental and emotional and volitional components to it. What do we mean by trusting, believing, resting? Well we mean that our mind grasps the essential truths of the gospel. We then are persuaded in our emotions and passions by the certainty of those facts as the spirit of God takes the scales from our eyes and then, with our will in tow, we commit our souls and our sins unreservedly to Jesus Christ to see of us alone. Is that true of you this morning? For God so loved you like this, that he give his son, to death on a cross, so that our sins would be propitiated and expiated.
That our debt would be removed, that his wrath would be appeased, that his law would be vindicated. And that’s all to be known in the fact that he raised his son from the dead. And if you’ll put your faith where God put your sin this morning, you will be saved no doubt about it. For whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Whoever believes in him shall not, hallelujah, perish but have everlasting life. Spurgeon said on John 3:16, “Do not allow a ghost of a shade, of a shadow, of a confidence in anything that you can do or can be, but look alone to him whom God has set forth to be the propitiation for sin.”
That’s what it means to trust, to reject your baptism as a child because it means absolutely nothing. To put no trust in the indulgences of a church or the promises of a man for the forgiveness of sin. It means that loving your neighbor does not equate to going to heaven. It also means that you do not simply admire Christ as a great teacher and a philosopher, but you love him for what he did for you in the ugliness and mayhem of the cross, where he poured out his soul unto death. To prove, to demonstrate. This is the headline that God so loved the world like this. And Calvary is the ground of salvation in the hope of heaven.
Let me tell you what it means and we’re done. You may be heard of the great Blondin who was a tightrope walker, who crossed the Niagara Falls many times. In fact, when we were at the Niagara Falls this summer, I recounted this story. This man expressed death defined feats again and again. He crossed for the first time the Niagara Falls on a tightrope. On June the 30th, 1859. The next year he walked across in a pair of stilts. Sometime later he crossed with his hands and feet chained and even carried a stove across on it and cooked an omelet at the halfway point.
According to one story, he was about to cross the tightrope of the Niagara Falls with a wheelbarrow. And he went up and down the line of sightseers that had come to watch him, he says, “Do you think we can do it? Do you think I can do it?” And everybody was nodding, “Yeah, you can do it.” And he goes up to one guy and he says, “Well, get in. Get in.” The guy disappeared like mist on a sunny morning, like snow on the noonday sun. But that’s the difference. There are many people that believe that Jesus died, that believe that God loves them. But they don’t believe in the sense of giving up all hope and self, of realizing that it’s not works of righteousness, which we do, but by his mercy, he saves us.
My friend, you need to put all your hope of heaven into the wheelbarrow of Christ’s saving work. You need to rest with complete confidence. You need to be able to say from your heart, there is therefore nigh no condemnation to those that are in Christ. And I’m in Christ because it was a time in my life, maybe for someone this morning, it’s this morning. This time in your life, when you marvel that God would love you like this, inspiring not his own son, but delivering up for us all, that whoever believes on him should not perish, but have eternal life.
As the band comes up, can I offer to talk to you at the end of the service I’ll, be at the front. If you’ve got questions, that this sermon has sparked, we’d love to engage you in a persuasive conversation about the merits and the historicity of the Christmas message and its implications. If you’d like to receive Jesus Christ as your own and personal Savior, it can be done here. It can be done nigh. Whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. You can be saved in a moment, in a flash. You can be born again from above. The God who came from above will bring new life to you from above. Do it today.
If you know Christ revel in the fact that he so loved us. This living in true God, this stainlessly, perfect God, this eternal God loved us like this. Therefore, we ought to love one another like him. And we ought to share this love this week with our friends. God, we do pray that this word will find an abiding place in our lives this morning. And that the gospel in a nutshell, as expressed in John 3:16, will fire up our worship, will lead to deeds of selfless Christ-like service and love towards others, and bring those who are trying to please God, to give up on themselves.
And to throw their whole confidence and hope of heaven in the one perfect son who offered the one perfect sacrifice to purchase a perfect salvation. For we pray and ask these things in Jesus’ name, amen.