For God So Loved the World

John 3:16 On this Trinity Sunday we confess our Christian faith in the words of the Athanasian Creed.  We carefully define and distinguish between the three persons of the Holy Trinity and we maintain their full divinity even while we confess that there is just one God.

We confess that long, theologically precise creed while hearing a sermon on just one verse of Holy Scripture, a verse that the smallest child among us knows by heart: 

For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

While we may be struck by the contrast between the theological precision of the Athanasian Creed and the simplicity of the verse before us for our meditation, what I would have you know, and believe, and understand-- is that there is no conflict, whatsoever, between the two!  They express the same, exact saving truths about the person and work of our gracious God.

Both the Athanasian Creed and John 3:16 deal with the two most basic, fundamental, important questions that any of us will ever ask:  “Who is God”?  And, “How can I have a life with him”?  And the answer to those questions is this:  There is one God in three persons.  A heavenly Father who loves us.  A Son who has given his life for us.  A Holy Spirit who has called us to faith so that we can be saved. 

This one true God is not a theological abstraction, or the academic subject of some dusty philosophical treatise, but is instead the God of our salvation.

Jesus says:  For God so loved the world…  That we are here today; that we have life; that we exist at all-- is only because we have in God a heavenly Father who loves us. 

The Bible says in 1 John that:  God is love.  We are the fruit of the love that exists within the three persons of the Holy Trinity and God created the world and placed mankind at the pinnacle of his creation because he is a God of love.

Not only has he made us, he continues to be involved in our lives, for our good, every step of the way.  He knew us before we took shape in our mother’s womb.  He has provided for every need of our earthly life.  He was watched over every moment of our life and he will bring his children home.

God’s love extends to every person in this world and to the cosmos itself.  Whether men know and confess him as their God, he continues, as the Bible says, to cause rain to fall on the just and the unjust.  In other words, he continues to provide for the needs of all his creatures, sustaining the universe moment by moment and providing even for those who are his enemies and wage war against him.

From the beginning of the Bible to the end, the Bible writers have stood in awe and wonder before this mighty God whose love extends to the smallest creature-- and they have marveled at this goodness that sustains and cares for all people whether they acknowledge him as their Father or not.

But such is the love that God the Father has for this world, and every person in this world, that he is never content for any part of it, or any person in it, to be lost to him.  God has made us and all men for himself and he is never satisfied in only blessing us for this life-- but desires to bless for eternity because his love for us has no end. 

It is that everlasting love for all the world and all the people in it that moved him to bestow a gift of love upon mankind like no other.  or God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…

When God created the world in the very beginning, in very short order, man’s disobedience and rebellion against God destroyed everything that God created.  The world and all people were marred by sin and death including our own lives.

From that moment on, all of the earthly blessings of God would not extend forever like he designed—human life would not go on for eternity like he desired.  Life with God in all its fullness came to an end.  And yet…

Such was God’s love for the world that he did not destroy the world and mankind and begin again.  Instead, he promised that he would make things right-- and he did that in the most amazing, marvelous, unexpected way:  he gave his own Son to be the Savior of the world.

The Bible says:  This is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and gave his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world.  The Second Person of the Holy Trinity, possessing the fullness of God, equal to the Father regarding his divinity, took upon himself our flesh and became one of us. 

He lived our life here on earth in perfect obedience to his heavenly Father.  He took upon himself all of the sins that have been a part of our own broken lives.  He took upon himself the curse of death that God has spoken of each of us because of those sins.  And he died on the cross as our substitute under his Father’s wrath.

But there was even more!  Death was not his end.  He rose again as the new, obedient Adam in whom everlasting blessing and life has been restored.  He did this for us and for our salvation and for the salvation of the world.

The Bible says Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sins and for ours only, but for the sins of the world.  The Bible says that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting men’s sins again them.  The Bible says that

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Salvation for the world—bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus…given to Whoever believes in him.  I want you to understand how unbelievably wide and narrow is the salvation that the Father has accomplished for the world in his Son Jesus Christ. 

The word “whoever” means exactly that:  whoever!  No matter your status in this world, no matter the depth of your sins, no matter how far and long you have wandered, the saving work of the Lord Jesus Christ are sufficient for your salvation, countless thousand times over.

Christ died for you, to make you God’s child.  But that word “whoever” is also necessarily tied to those who believe that Jesus is their Savior from sin and death. 

Christ died for all people, every sin of every sinner was paid for on the cross, but it is ONLY those who believe in him who will not perish but have eternal life.  ONLY those who believe in Jesus will be saved! 

  That is why God sent his Holy Spirit-- so that people could come to faith in Jesus and be saved—so that they could be born again from above.  That is what Jesus was trying to get Nicodemus to understand.  Nicodemus was not going to be saved because he had been born a Jew.  He needed to be born again because flesh can only give birth to flesh.  What was needed for Nicodemus (and what is needed for all people) is spiritual birth.  And as little as Nicodemus caused himself to be born a Jew, just as little would he cause himself to be born again.

The Spirit would do that in his life and in fact did do that in his life!  We learn at the end of the Gospels that Nicodemus did indeed come to faith and n the same way the Holy Spirit continues to do his saving work in the hearts of men who hear the Good News about Jesus and come to faith in him as Lord and Savior. 

The Bible in 1 Peter says that God caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The Bible says in James that God brought us forth by the word of truth.  The Bible says in Romans the faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ and that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to them that believe. 

God the Holy Spirit continues to give spiritual life to those who are born dead in sin and trespass just as he did for Nicodemus:  through the Good News about Jesus and what he has done for us in his death and resurrection.

And so then, the Good News for us on this Trinity Sunday is that we have in the Holy Trinity, revealed in the Bible and confessed in the creeds of the Church, a God who has known us and loved us for eternity, a God who has lived, and died and be raised so that we could regain God’s eternal blessings, and a God who has called us to faith so that we can believe in Jesus and be saved.  One God in three persons:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And it is indeed Good News for us because the difference his presence and work has made in our lives is the difference between perishing in the fires of hell forever and being saved unto eternal life.  The Bible says:  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Over the last two thousand years of the church’s history, men have fought and died for the truth about God revealed in the Bible and confessed in the creeds of the church.  They have sacrificed all that they have, not because of some theological treatise, not because of some confessional hair-splitting. 

They have contended for this faith because it is nothing less than eternal salvation for those who believe and eternal death for those who don’t because it is the answer to the most fundamental questions of our human existence:  who is God and how can I have a life with him.

Today we have heard the answer in God’s Word and we confess the same in the words of the Athanasian Creed.  Amen.