God’s Immeasurable
Love
B. B. Warfield
John 3:16 says, “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.”
To whom we owe this great declaration of the love
of God, it is somewhat difficult to determine: whether to our Lord himself, or
to that disciple who had lain upon his bosom and had imbibed so much of his
spirit that he thenceforth spoke with his Master’s voice and in his Master’s
words. Happily, it is a matter of no substantial importance. For what
difference does it make to you and me whether the Lord speaks to us through his
own lips, or through those of his servant, the apostle, to whom he had
promised, and to whom he had given, his Holy Spirit to teach him all the truth
(John 16:13)?
What concerns us is not the instrumentality through
which the message comes, but the message itself. And what a great message it is
- the message of the greatness of the love of God! Let us see to it that, as
the words sound in our ears, it is this great revelation that fills our hearts,
fills them so full as to flood all their being and wash into all their
recesses. The greatness of the love of God, the immeasurable greatness of the
love of God!
Does “the World” Mean “All without Exception”?
This exhortation is not altogether superfluous.
Strange as it may sound, it is true, that many - perhaps the majority - of
those who feed their souls on this great declaration, seem to have trained
themselves to think, when it falls upon their ears, in the first instance at
least, not so much of how great - how immeasurably great - God’s love
is, but rather of how great the world is. It is the world that
God loves, they say, the world. And forthwith they fall to thinking how great
the world is, and how, nevertheless, God loves it all. Think, they cry, of the
multitudes of men who swarm over the face of the earth, and have swarmed over
it through all the countless generations from the beginning, and will swarm
over it in ever-increasing numbers through perhaps even more countless
generations yet to come, until the end. And God loves them all, each and every
one of them, from the least to the greatest; so loves them that he has given
his only begotten Son to die for them, for each and every one of them. And for
each and every one of them with the same intent - the intent, namely, that he
may be saved. O, how great the love of God must be to embrace in its compass
these uncounted multitudes of men. And so to embrace them that every individual
that enters as a constituent unit into the mass of mankind receives his full
share of it, or rather is inundated by its undivided and undiminished flood!
Certainly this is a great conception. But it is just
as certainly not a great enough conception to meet the requirements of
our text. For, look, will you measure the immeasurable greatness of God’s love
by the measure of man? All these multitudes of men who have lived, do live, or
shall live, from the beginning to the end of the world’s entire span - what is
their finite sum to the infinitude of God? Lo, the world, and all that is in
the world - and all that has ever been in the world or can ever be in the world
- lies as nothing in the sight of the Infinite One, floats as an
evanescent particle in his eternal vision. How can we exalt our conception of
the greatness of the divine love by thinking of it as great enough to embrace
all this? Can we praise the blacksmith’s brawn by declaring him capable of supporting
a mustard seed on his outstretched palm? This standard is too small! We cannot
compute such masses in terms of it. Conceive the world as vastly as you may, it
remains ever incommensurate with the immeasurable love of God.
And what warrant does the text offer for conceiving
so greatly of the world, or indeed for thinking of it at all under the category
of extension, as if it were its size that was oppressing the imagination of the
speaker, and its parts - down to the last analysis - that were engaging his
wondering attention? Evidently the text envisages the world, of which it speaks
in the concrete, as a whole. This world is made up of parts, no doubt, and the
differing destinies that await the individuals which compose it are adverted
to. But the emphasis does not fall upon its component elements, as if their
number, for example, could form the ground of the divine love, or explain the
wonder of its greatness. Distribution of it into its elements and engagement
with the individuals which compose it is merely the result of the false start
made when the mind falls away from contemplating the immensity of the love of
God with which the text is freighted, to absorb itself rather in wonder over
the greatness of the world which is loved.
And having begun with this false step, it is not
surprising if the wandering mind finds itself shortly lost in admiration not
even of the greatness of the world, but rather of the greatness of the
individual soul. These souls of men, each and every one of which God loves so
deeply that he has given his Son to die for it - what great, what noble, what
glorious things they must be! O what value each of us should place upon this
precious soul of ours that God so highly esteemed as to give his Son to die for
it! A great and inspiring thought, again, beyond all doubt; but, again,
obviously not great enough to be the thought of the text. Clearly, what
the text invites us to think of is the greatness of the love of God, not
the greatness of the human soul.
And how can we fancy that we can measure the love
of God by what he has done for each and every human soul? Persist in reading
the text thus distributively, making “the world” mean
each and every man that lives on the earth, and what, after all, does it
declare that the love of God has done for them? Just open a way of salvation
before men, give them an opportunity to save themselves. For, what, in that
contingency, does the text assert? Just this: that “God so loved the world” -
that is, each and every man that has lived, does live, or shall live in this
world - “that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him
should not perish, but have eternal life.” “Whosoever
believeth on him” - those only.
Is this, then, the measure of the immeasurable love
of God - that he barely opens a pathway to salvation before sinful men, and
stops right there; does nothing further for them - leaving it to their own
unassisted initiative whether they will walk in it or not? Surely this cannot
be the teaching of the text; and that, for many reasons. Primary among them is
this: that we all know that the love of God has done much more than this
for multitudes of the children of men, namely, has not merely opened a way of
salvation before them, but has actually saved them.
Nor is our text silent on this point. It is not
in this mere opening of a way of salvation before each and every man that the
love of God for the world is declared by it to issue, but in the actual saving
of the world. We read the next verse and we discover it asserting that God sent
his Son into the world for this specific end - that
the world should be “saved by him.” God did not then only so love the world as
to give it a bare chance of salvation; he so loved the world that he saved
the world. And surely this is something far better. It provides a much higher
standard by which to estimate the greatness of God’s love.
We discover, then, that the distribution of the
term “world” in our text into “each and every man in the world” not only begins
with the obvious misstep of directing our attention at once rather to the
greatness of the world than to the greatness of God’s love and only infers the
latter from the former. It ends by positively belittling the love of God, as if
it could content itself with half-measures - nay, in numerous instances, with
what is practically no measure at all. For if it is satisfied with merely
opening a way of salvation and leaving men to walk in this way or not as they
will, the hard facts of life force us to add that it is satisfied with merely
opening a way of salvation for multitudes to whom it should never be made known
that a way of salvation lay open before them, although their sole hope is in
their walking in it.
And why dwell on special cases? Shall we not
recognize frankly that so meager a provision would be operative in no case? For
even when it is made known to men that a way of salvation is opened before
them, can they - being sinners - walk in it? Let our passage itself tell us.
Does it not explicitly declare that every one that doeth ill hateth the light and cometh not to the light? And who of us
does not know that he, at least - if not every man - doeth ill? Does the love
of God expend itself then in inoperative manifestations?
Surely not so can be measured the love of God, of
which the Scriptures tell us that its height and depth and length and breadth
pass knowledge; of which Paul declares that nothing can separate us from it -
not death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor
things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature; of
which he openly asserts that if it avails to reconcile us with God, through the
death of his Son, much more shall it avail to bring us into the fruition of
salvation by his life.
Does “the World” Mean “the Elect”?
Obviously, then, the distribution of the notion “world”
in our text into “each and every man” in the world, does less than justice to
the infinitude of the love of God which it is plainly the object of the text to
exalt in our thought. Reacting from the ineptitudes of this interpretation, and
determined at all costs to take the conception of the love of God at the height
of its idea, men of deeper insight have therefore suggested that it is not the
world at large that is in question in the text, but God’s people, the chosen of
God in the world.
Surely, it is God’s seeking, nay, God’s finding
love that is celebrated here, they argue - the love which goes out to its
object with a vigor which no obstacle can withstand, and, despite every
difficulty, brings it safely into the shelter of its arms. The “world” that God
so loved that he gave his Son for it - surely that is not the “world” that he
loved so little as to leave it to take or leave the Son so given, as its own
wayward heart might dictate; but the “world” that he loved enough, after giving
his Son for it, powerfully to move upon with his quickening Spirit and
graciously to lead into the offered salvation. This is the “world” of
believers, in a word, as they are called in the following clause, or, as they
are called elsewhere in Scripture, the “world” of God’s elect. It was these
whom God loved before the foundation of the world with a love beyond all
expression great and strong, constant and prevailing, a love which was not and could
not be defeated, just because it was love, the very characteristic of which,
Paul tells us, is that it suffereth long, is not
provoked, taketh no account of evil, beareth all things, endureth all
things, yea, never faileth: and therefore was not and
could not be satisfied until it had brought its objects home.
It is very clear that this interpretation has the
inestimable advantage over the one formerly suggested, that it penetrates into
the heart of the matter and refuses to evacuate the text of its manifest
purport. The text is given to enhance in our hearts the conception of the love
of God to sinners: to make us to know somewhat of the height and depth and
length and breadth of it, though truly it passes knowledge. It will not do,
then, as we read it, to throw limitations around this love, as if it could not
accomplish that whereto it is set.
Beyond all question, the love which is celebrated
is the saving love of God; and the “world” which is declared to be the object
of this love is a “world” that is not merely given an opportunity of salvation,
but actually saved. As none but believers - or, if you choose to look at them sub
specie aeternitatis, none but the elect - attain
salvation, so it seems but an identical proposition to say that it is just the
world of believers, or the world of the elect, that is embraced in the love of
God here celebrated. When the text declares, therefore, that God so loved the
world that he gave his only begotten Son for it, is not what is meant, and what
must be meant, just the elect scattered throughout the world?
It may seem strange to us, indeed, to speak of the
elect as “the world.” But is not that largely because, in the changed times in
which we live, we do not sufficiently poignantly
appreciate or deal seriously enough with the universalism of Christianity in
contrast with the nationalism of the old dispensation? In this universalistic
and new covenant gospel of John, especially, what is more natural than to find
the “world” brought into contrast with Jewish exclusivism?
In short, is not the meaning of our text just this: that Jesus Christ came to
make propitiation for the sins not of Jews only, but of the whole world, that
is to say, not of course to reach each and every man who lives in the world,
but in any event for men living throughout the world, heirs of the world’s
fortunes?
Certainly it is difficult for us to appreciate the
greatness of the revolution wrought in the religious consciousness of men like
John, bred in the exclusivism of Judaism and
accustomed to think of the Messiah as the peculiar property of Israel, when the
worldwide mission of Christianity was brought home to their minds and hearts.
To John and men like John, its universalism was no doubt well-nigh the most
astonishing fact about Christianity. And the declaration that God so loved the
world - not Israel exclusively, but the world - that he gave his only begotten
Son, that whosoever - from every nation, not from the Jews merely - should
believe on him should have eternal life. This great declaration must have
struck upon their hearts with a revelation of the wideness of God’s mercy and
the unfathomable profundities of his love such as we can scarcely appreciate in
our days of age-long familiarity with the great fact. Is not this, then, the real
meaning of the immense declaration of the text: that Jesus Christ is the
worldwide Savior, that now the middle wall of partition has been broken down
and God has called to himself a people out of all the nations of the earth, and
has so loved this his people gathered thus from the whole world, that he has
given his only begotten Son to die for them? And is not this a truth big with
consequences, worthy of such a record as is given it in our text, and capable
of awakening in our hearts a most profound response?
Assuredly no one will doubt the value and
inspiration of such suggestions. The truth that lies in them, who can gainsay?
But it is difficult to feel that they quite exhaust the meaning of the great
words of the text.
In their effort to do justice to the conception of
the love of God, do they not do something less than justice to the conception
embodied in the term “the world”? In identifying “the world” with believers, do
they not neglect, if we may not quite say the contrast of the two things, yet
at least the distinction between the two notions which the text seems to
institute? “God so loved the world,” we read, “that he gave his only begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
Certainly here “the world” and “believers” do not seem to be quite equivalent
terms. There seems, surely, something conveyed by the one which is not wholly
taken up in the other. How, then, shall we say that “the world” means just “the
world of believers,” just those scattered through the world, who, being the
elect of God, shall believe in his Son and so have eternal life?
There is obviously much truth in this idea: and the
main difficulty which it faces may, no doubt, be avoided by saying that what is
taught is that God’s love of the world is shown by his saving so great a
multitude as he does save out of the world. The wicked world deserved at his
hands only total destruction. But he saves out of it a multitude which no man
can number, out of every nation, and of all tribes and peoples and tongues. How
much, then, must God love the world! This interpretation, beyond question,
reproduces the fundamental meaning of the text. But does it completely satisfy
all its suggestions? Does there not lie in the text
some more subtle sequence of thought than is explicated by it? Is there not
implied in it some profounder and yet more glorious truth than even the
worldwide reach of God’s love, manifested in the Great Commission, and issuing
in the multitude of the saved, the voice of whose praise ascends to heaven as
the voice of many waters and as the voice of mighty thunders?
What Does John 3:16 Actually Say?
Neither of the more common interpretations of the
text, therefore, appears to bring out quite fully its real significance. The
one fails to rise to the height of the conception of the love of God
embodied in it. The other appears to do something less than full justice to the
conception of the world which God is said to love. The difficulty in
both cases seems to arise from a certain unwillingness to go deeply enough. A
surface meaning, possible to impose upon the text, seems to be seized upon,
while its profundities are left unexplored.
If we would make our own the great revelation of
the love of God here given us, we must be more patient. Renouncing the easy
imposition upon it of meanings of our own devising, we must just permit the
text to speak its own language to our hearts. Its prime intention is to convey
some conception of the immeasurable greatness of the love of God. The method it
employs to do this is to declare the love of God for the world so great that he
gave his Son to save it. The central affirmation obviously, then, is this - and
it is a sufficiently great one to absorb our entire attention - that God loved
the world. “God,” “loved,” “the world” - we must deal seriously with this
great assertion, and with every element of it. We must first of all, then,
thoroughly enter into the meaning of the three great terms here brought
together: “God,” “loved,” “the world.”
We shall not make the slightest step forward in
understanding our text, for instance, so long as we permit ourselves to treat
the great term “God” merely as the subject of a sentence. We must endeavor
rather to rise as nearly as may be to its fullest significance. When we
pronounce the word, we must see to it that our minds are flooded with some
wondering sense of God’s infinitude, of his majesty, of his ineffable
exaltation, of his holiness, of his righteousness, of his flaming purity and
stainless perfection. This is the Lord God Almighty, whom the heaven of heavens
cannot contain, to whom the earth is less than the small dust on the balance.
He has no need of anything, nor can his unsullied blessedness be in any way
affected - whether by way of increase or decrease - by any act of the creatures
of his hands. What we call infinite space is but a speck on the horizon of his
contemplation. What we call infinite time is in his sight but as yesterday when
it is past. Serene in his unapproachable glory, his will is the irresistible
law of all existences to which their every motion conforms. Clothed in majesty
and girded with strength, righteousness and judgment are the foundation of his
throne. He sits in the heavens and does whatsoever he pleases. It is this God -
a God of whom to say that he is the Lord of all the earth is to say so little
that it is to say nothing at all - of whom our text speaks. And if we are ever
to catch its meaning we must bear this fully in mind.
Now the text tells us of this God - of this
God, remember - that he “loves.” In itself, before we proceed
a step further, this is a marvelous declaration. The metaphysicians have not
yet plumbed it and still protest inability to construe the Absolute in terms of
love. We shall not stop to dwell upon this somewhat abstract discussion. It is
enough for us that a God without emotional life would be a God without all that
lends its highest dignity to personal spirit whose very being is movement, and
that is as much as to say no God at all. And it is more than enough for us that
our text assures us that God loves, nay, that he is Love.
What it concerns us now to note, however, is not
the mere fact that he loves, but what it is that he is declared to love. For
therein lies the climax of the great proclamation. This is nothing other than “the
world.” For this is the unimaginable declaration of the text: “God so loved the
world.” It is just in this that lies the mystery of
the greatness of his love.
For what is this “world” which we are so strangely
told that God loves? We must not throw the reins on the neck of our fancy and
seek a response that will suit our ideas of the right or the fitting. We must
just let the Scriptures themselves tell us, and primarily that apostle to whom
we owe this great declaration. Nor does he fail to tell us,
and that without the slightest ambiguity. The “world,” he tells us, is just the
synonym of all that is evil and noisome and disgusting. There is nothing in it
that can attract God’s love - nay, that can justify
the love of any good man. It is a thing not to be dallied with or acquiesced
in. They that are of it are by that very fact not of God. And what the
Christian has to do with it is just to overcome it. For everything that is
begotten of God manifests that great fact precisely by this: that he overcomes
the world. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world” (1
John 2:15a) is John’s insistent exhortation. And the reason for it he states
very pungently: because “if any man love the world, the love of the Father is
not in him” (1 John 2:15b).
“God” and the “world,” then, are precise
contradictions. “Nothing that is in the world is of the Father,” we are told.
Or, as it is put elsewhere in direct positive form, “The whole world lieth in the evil one” (1 John 5:19). “The world, the
flesh, and the devil” - this is the pregnant combination in which we have
learned from Scripture to express the baleful forces that war against the soul:
and the three terms are thus cast together because they are essentially
synonyms.
See, then, whither we are brought. When we are told
that God loves the world, it is much as if we were told that he loves the flesh
and the devil. And we may, indeed, take courage from our text and say it
boldly: God does love the world and the flesh and the devil. Therein indeed is
the ground of all our comfort and all our hope. For we
- you and I - are of the world and of the flesh and of the devil. Only - we
must punctually note it - the love wherewith God loves the world, the flesh,
and the devil - therefore, us - is not a love of complacency,
as if he, the Holy One and the Good, could take pleasure in what is worldly,
fleshly, devilish; but that love of benevolence which would fain save us
from our worldliness, fleshliness, and devilishness.
That indeed is precisely what the text goes on at
once to say: “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.” The world then was perishing. And it was to save it that
God gave his Son. The text is, then, you see, in principle an account of the
coming of the Son of God into the world. There were but two things for which
he, being what he was as the Son of God, could come into the world, being what
it was - to judge the world, or to save the world. It was for the
latter that he came. “For,” the next verse runs on, “God sent not the Son into
the world to judge the world; but that the world should be saved through him.”
Not wrath, then, though wrath were due, but love was the impelling cause of the
coming of the Son of God into this wicked world of ours. “For God so loved the
world, that he gave his only begotten Son.” The intensity of the love is what
is emphasized. It is so intense that it was not deterred even by the sinfulness
of its objects.
You will perceive that what we have here then is,
in effect, but John’s way of saying what Paul says when he tells us that “God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were
yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).
The marvel, in other words, which the text brings
before us is just that marvel above all other marvels in this marvelous world
of ours - the marvel of God’s love for sinners. And this is the measure
by which we are invited to measure the greatness of the love of God. It is not
that it is so great that it is able to extend over the whole of a big world. It
is so great that it is able to prevail over the holy God’s hatred and
abhorrence of sin! For herein is love, that God could love the world
- the world that lies in the evil one: that God, who is all holy and just
and good, could so love this world that he gave his only begotten Son for it -
that he might not judge it, but that it might be saved.
The key to the passage lies, therefore, you see, in
the significance of the term “world.” It is not here a term of extension so
much as a term of 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 all, but that the world is so bad
that it takes a great kind of love to love it at all, and much more to love it
as God has loved it when he gave his Son for it.
The whole debate as to whether the love here
celebrated distributes itself to each and every man that enters into the
composition of the world, or terminates on the elect alone, chosen out of the
world, lies thus outside the immediate scope of the passage and does not supply
any key to its interpretation. The passage was not intended to teach, and
certainly does not teach, that God loves all men alike and visits each and
every one alike with the same manifestations of his love. And as little was it
intended to teach or does it teach that his love is confined to a few especially
chosen individuals selected out of the world. What it is intended to do is to
arouse in our hearts a wondering sense of the marvel and the mystery of the
love of God for the sinful world - conceived, here, not quantitatively but
qualitatively as, in its very distinguishing characteristic, sinful.
And search the universe through and through - in
all its recesses and through all its historical development - and you will find
no marvel so great, no mystery so unfathomable, as this: that the great and
good God, whose perfect righteousness flames in indignation at the sight of
every iniquity and whose absolute holiness recoils in abhorrence in the
presence of every impurity, yet he loves this sinful world - yes, has so loved
it that he has given his only begotten Son to die for it! It is this marvel and
this mystery that our text would fain carry home to our hearts, and we would be
wise if we would permit them to be absorbed in its contemplation.
God’s All-Conquering Love
At the same time, however, although we cannot
permit the passage to be interpreted in the terms of the debate in question, it
would not be quite true to say it has no bearing upon that debate.
One thing, for instance, which the passage tells
us, and tells us with great emphasis, is that the love which it celebrates
is a saving love; not a love which merely tends towards salvation, and may
- perhaps easily - be defeated in its aim by, say, the unwillingness of its
objects. The very point of the passage lies, on the one side, in the mightiness
of the love of God; and, on the other, in the unwillingness not of some but of
all its objects.
The love here celebrated is, we must remember, the
love of God - of the Lord God Almighty: and it is love for the world
- which altogether “lies in the evil one.” It is a love which is great and
powerful and all-conquering, which attains its end and will not stand helpless
before any obstacle. It is the precise purpose of the passage to teach us this,
to raise our hearts to some apprehension of the inconceivable greatness of the
love of God, set as it is upon saving the wicked world. It would be possible to
believe that such a love as this terminates equally and with the same intent
upon each and every man who is in “the world,” only if we may at the same time
believe that it works out its end completely and with full effect on each and
every man. But this the passage explicitly forbids us
to believe, proceeding at once to divide the “world” into two classes, those
that perish and those that have eternal life. The almighty, all-conquering love
of God, therefore, certainly does not pour itself equally and with the same
intent upon each and every man in the world. In the sovereignty that belongs of
necessity to his love as to all love, he rather visits with it whom he will.
But neither will the text allow us to suppose that
God grants this immeasurable love only to a few, abstracted from the world,
while the world itself he permits to fall away to its destruction. The
declaration is not that God has loved some out of the world, but that he has
loved the world. And we must rise to the height of this divine
universalism.
It is the world that God has loved with his
deathless love, this sinful world of ours. And it is the world, this sinful
world of ours, that he has given his Son to die for.
And it is the world that through the sacrifice of his dear Son, he has saved, this very sinful world of ours. “God sent not the Son
into the world,” we read, “to judge the world; but that the world should be
saved through him” (John 3:17). That is to say, God did not send his Son into
the world for the purpose of judging the world, but for the purpose of saving
the world - a declaration which could not be true if, despite his coming, the world were lost and only a select few saved out of it. The
purposes of God do not fail.
You must not fancy, then, that God sits helplessly
by while the world, which he has created for himself, hurtles hopelessly to
destruction, and he is able only to snatch with difficulty here and there a brand
from the universal burning. The world does not govern him in a single one of
his acts. He governs it and leads it steadily onward to the end which, from the
beginning, or before a beam of it had been laid, he had determined for it. As
it was created for his glory, so shall it show forth his praise.
And this human race on which he has impressed his image shall reflect that
image in the beauty of the holiness which is its supreme trait.
The elect - they are not the residuum of the great
conflagration, the ashes, so to speak, of the burnt-up world, gathered sadly
together by the Creator, after the catastrophe is over, that he may make a new
and perhaps better beginning with them and build from them, perchance, a new
structure, to replace that which has been lost. Nay, they are themselves “the
world” - not the world as it is in its sin, lying in the evil one, but the
world in its promise and potency of renewed life.
Through all the years, one increasing purpose runs,
one increasing purpose: the kingdoms of the earth become ever more and
more the kingdoms of our God and his Christ. The process may be slow; the
progress may appear to our impatient eyes to lag. But it is God who is
building! And under his hands the structure rises as
steadily as it does slowly, and in due time the capstone shall be set into its
place, and to our astonished eyes shall be revealed nothing less than a saved
world!
Meanwhile, we who live in the midst of the process
see not yet the end. These are days of incompleteness, and it is only by faith
that we can perceive the issue. The kingdom of God is as yet only in the
making, and the “world” is not yet saved. So, there appear about us two classes
- there are those that perish as well as those that have eternal life. With the
absoluteness which characterizes the writer of this gospel, these two classes
are set before us in the text and in the paragraph of which it forms a part, in
their intrinsic antagonism. They are believers and unbelievers in the Son of
God. And they are believers and unbelievers in the Son of God, because they are
in their essential natures good or bad, lovers of light or lovers of darkness. “For
every one that doeth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light.... But
he that doeth the truth cometh to the light” (John 3:20–21). Throughout
the whole process of the world’s development, therefore, the Light that has
come into the world draws to himself those who are of the light. He, that is,
who through love of the world came into the world to save the world - yea, and
who shall save the world - in the meantime
attaches to himself in every generation those who in their essential nature
belong to him.
How they came to be his, and therefore to be attracted
to him, and therefore to enter into the life that is life indeed - to become
portions no longer of the world that lies in the evil one, but of the
reconstructed world that abides in him - the paragraph in which our text is set
leaves us much uninformed. Accordingly, some rash expositors wish to insist
that to it the division of men into the essentially good and the essentially
bad is an ultimate fact. They speak therefore much of the ineradicable dualism
of Jesus’ conception, not staying to consider the confusion thus wrought in the
whole paragraph. For in that case how could there be talk of the Son of God
coming into the world to save the world? Obviously, to the text, those who
belong to the Son themselves require saving. That is to say, no less than the
lost themselves, they belong by nature to the “evil one,” in whom the whole
world - not a part of it only - we are told explicitly, “lieth.”
And if we will but attend to the context in which
our paragraph is set, we will perceive that we are not left without guidance to
its proper understanding. For we must remember that this paragraph is not an
isolated document standing off to itself and complete in itself, but is a
comment upon the discourse of our Lord to Nicodemus. It necessarily receives
its color and explanation, therefore, from that discourse of which it is either
a substantive part or upon which it is at least a reflection. And what does
that discourse teach us except this: that all that is born of flesh is flesh,
and only what is reborn of Spirit is Spirit; that no man can enter the kingdom
of God, therefore, except he be born again of God; and that this birth is not
at the command of men, but is the gift of a Spirit which is like the wind that bloweth where it listeth, the
sound whereof we hear though we know not whence it cometh and whither it goeth - but can say of it only, Lo, it is here!
Here then is the explanation of the essential
difference in men revealed in the varying reception they give to the Son of
God. It is not due to accident of birth or to diversity of experience in the
world, least of all to inherent qualities of goodness or badness belonging to
each by nature. It is due solely to this - whether or not they have been born
again by the Spirit and so are of the light and come spontaneously to the light
when it dawns upon their waiting eyes.
The sequence in this great process of salvation,
then, according to our passage, when taken in its context, is this: the fight
of the Son of God to save the world; the preparation of the hearts of men to
receive the Son of God in vital faith; the attraction of these “children of the
light” to the Light of the world; and the rebuilding of the fabric of the world
along the lines of God’s choosing into that kingdom of light which is thus
progressively prepared for its perfect revelation at the last day.
Thus, then, it is that God is saving the world -
the world, mind you, and not merely some individuals out of the world - by a
process which involves not supplanting but reformation, re-creation. We look
for new heavens and a new earth, it is true; but these new heavens and new
earth are not another heaven and another earth, but the old heaven and old earth renewed; or, as the Scriptures phrase it, “regenerated.”
For not the individual merely, but the fabric of the world itself, is to be
regenerated in that “regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the throne
of his glory” (Matt. 19:28). During the process, there may be much that is
discarded. But when the process is completed, then also shall be completed the
task which the Son of Man has taken upon himself, and the “world” shall be
saved - this wicked world of sinful men transformed into a world of
righteousness.
Surely, we shall not wish to measure the saving
work of God by what has been already accomplished in these unripe days in which
our lot is cast. The sands of time have not yet run out. And
before us stretch, not merely the reaches of the ages, but the infinitely
resourceful reaches of the promise of God. Are not the saints to inherit
the earth? Is not the re-created earth theirs? Are not the kingdoms of the
world to become the kingdom of God? Is not the knowledge of the glory of God to
cover the earth as the waters cover the sea? Shall not the day dawn when no man
need say to his neighbor, “Know the Lord,” for all shall know him from the
least unto the greatest?
O raise your eyes, raise your eyes, I beseech you,
to the far horizon. Let them rest nowhere short of the extreme limit of the
divine purpose of grace. And tell me what you see there. Is it not the supreme,
the glorious, issue of that love of God which loved, not one here and there
only in the world, but the world in its organic completeness; and gave his Son,
not to judge the world, but that the world through him should be saved?
And he spake
with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
And he ... showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from
God, having the glory of God.... And the city hath no need of the sun, neither
of the moon, to shine upon it: for the glory of God
did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb. And the nations shall walk
amidst the light thereof: and the kings of the earth bring their glory into it.
And the gates thereof shall in no wise be shut by day (for there shall be no
night there): and they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into
it: and there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean, or he that maketh an abomination and a lie: but only they that are
written in the Lamb’s book of life. (Rev. 21:9–11, 23–27)
Only those written in the Lamb’s book of life, and
yet all the nations! It is the vision of the saved world. “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.” It is the
vision of the consummated purpose of the immeasurable love of God.
The author was
professor of didactic and polemic theology at Princeton Theological Seminary
from 1887 until his death in 1921. This article was originally a sermon
preached in the Princeton chapel, and has been slightly edited. The Bible
quotations are from the ASV. Reprinted from New Horizons, April 2003.