This is How God Loved The World

For God SO loved the world

God loved the world like THIS.

Let me remind you the context of this famous Scripture.

Jesus is talking to an individual. He’s a religious man. A curious man. A man named Nicodemus who wanted to know more about Jesus.

Jesus had been disrupting the status quo of Israel.

The Pharisees, like Nicodemus, had the corner of the market on how life in Israel should be lived…a life of laws and rules to be kept and followed in order to earn righteousness.

So, when Jesus came along and started preaching about this upside down Kingdom where the poor, and mournful, and meek, and merciful obtain the citizenship of heaven, and could do so through belief in Him, the Pharisees were losing their power.

When a person is finding that the world they created or want for themselves is being disrupted and turned upside down, the best thing that person can do is go to Jesus and investigate his claims. If it’s truth you’re truly interested in, that road MUST lead you to an encounter with Christ, the Son of God, the Creator of the world.

That’s the context of this verse...a private encounter, at night, between Jesus and Nicodemus.

An individual

Christianity is certainly not just about the individual. It’s about Christ, and his church, making a family of sons and daughters through gracious adoption, but let’s not allow this to drown out the love that Christ DOES has for the individual.

He called disciples to himself one man at a time. He does the same today.

The incarnate Son is able to do with each one of us what he did here with Nicodemus because of His Spirit whom he sent into the world. He confront us with his love, tells us what that love is like, and how to find it.

in v9, Nicodemus responded to Jesus’s words, “you must be born again”, with...”How can these things be?”

How is this possible that a man can be born twice? And of course Jesus words were about two completely different types of beginnings. To inhabit this earth a person must be born physically, a work that you and I had no influence over in order to begin life here, fully dependent on parents.

To inherit Heaven one must be born of the Spirit. Born from above. The Spirit of God working within the earthly person, giving new life and faith where there was once none.

How is this possible?

The how of the process is far less important than the who in the process..

Who is going to make this happen?

Jesus told a mystery to Nicodemus, and it’s a mystery to us. But what He makes clear, is very clear and knowable.

God sent His Son into the World, a world full of people so lost that the only remedy is to make a new person from the old, to be born again, to become a new creation by the holy Spirit of God...

This makes sense only in a Christian worldview in which...

God made the world perfect, people rebelled and became sinful at their core, and the consequence of sin is eternal condemnation.

But Here’s a TRUE statement you need to remember - God sent His Son into the world in order the world might be saved through Him.

God did NOT send His Son into the world to condemn the world.

Condemnation was not the mission of Christ. His mission was to rescue a world that was already broken and lost.

see it in v18? “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

Again in v19 the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

Church, I’m happy to remind you this morning of the love that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.

1 John 4:13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.

1 John 4:9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

This is the Christian message…want to truly live? Then live THROUGH Jesus, who was sent by the Father because the Father loved a sinful world.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave is only begotten Son. Nicodemus’s ears were the first to ever hear these words.

For the Jews, it was the world out there that was the condemned people. The nation of Israel was the chosen and safe. But Christ is saying that the object of His love is a chosen people for his own possession, and He would purchase them out of a whole world in darkness and upheaval.

We begin to get a picture of God’s love...A love that gives life to the lifeless. Makes beautiful the ugly. Makes rich the poor. Empties himself to rescue a people who had no strength to rescue themselves.

This is how God loved the world...

So let me give you 4 points to remember when thinking about the way God loved the world.

He loved the world selflessly

That’s true love isn’t it? A love that looks not to a persons own interests, but to others. God looked upon a world in need, but not just any need, a need so deep that the recipient of that love could do nothing to help themselves.

For God so loved the world that He GAVE. He’s a good Father who gives selflessly.

This Christmas, think about the selfless love of God.

2. He loved the world sacrificially

The Father gave what was dearest…His eternally begotten Son, the Son who proceeds from the Father, not created but begotten, and eternally loved.

I love my children, but I have not loved them eternally, nor have I loved them perfectly, and to sacrifice them for another would be a cost I could not bear…and yet the eternal Father gave the Son whom he loved, a sacrifice and offering for His people. It cost him everything to save you.

This Christmas, think about the sacrificial love of God.

Romans 8:32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

3. He loved the world Sovereignly

I’m speaking of His sovereign power.

Not one of us who has been saved by Christ were saved on account of our own strength or will. We were determined to rebel…determined to love our sin…determined in our pride, and then God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ.

Consider the work of the Spirit that Christ shared with Nicodemus. “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Dear saints, that is Sovereign power. If not for His Sovereign grace, there would be no one saved. By His sovereignty, He calls his lost sheep by name, His sheep hear His voice, and like watching the leaves in the trees after a wind, we see the rustling of faith and repentance when the Spirit of God saves a person.

This Christmas, think about the Sovereign love of God.

And let’s not forget what a saves us from...

4. He loved the world savingly

To believe upon Christ comes with a promise. whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

This is the epic story of Scripture. A story only God could write and bring to pass.

We have formidable enemies. Sin, death, Satan, the World of evil and sickness and pain... But God wrote a story in which He and His people win. History is all moving toward a victorious end. Many will perish, but not one of God’s children will perish. All who did receive Him he gave the right to become sons and daughters of God.

Christ died to save you

Christ died to save you

If your young child falls into a puddle, you run out with very little equipment and you draw them up to safety.

If your young child is kidnapped and held captive by an evil force, you stop at nothing to deploy all the resources you can muster to bring your child to safety. The cost and magnitude of the mission explains the seriousness of the situation.

When you see a fleet of SWAT, local police, and Rangers speeding down the street you don’t imaging a kitten caught in a tree.

So, for God to send His sinless Son, HIS ONLY SON into the world to rescue us from perishing, we know that this is serious.

There was, and is for many still, something substantial we need to be saved from.

Thanks be to God that, though it cost him His life, the grave could not keep him. Christ was risen from death after making payment for sin, so that we who believe in Him, would not perish, but join Him in His eternal life.

This is how God loved the world.

Selflessly, sacrificially, sovereignly, and savingly...

And as we close this Christmas eve service, we all need to look to Christ again and remember that this love is not like the world’s love. This love came down to us, and this love will not fail us.

And what is the right response to this?

Thankfulness

Appreciation

Loving worship to the only one who is worthy.

Let’s remember to get out of our own way this Christmas, and think about the greatest love the world has ever known, and will every know.

Greater love has no man than this, than he lay his life down for His friends.