John 3:16-21

 John 3:16-21

I killed a roach yesterday and I just don't care. I have no emotions about it one way or the other. Till it served as an illustration I did not think about it at all. In my emotional universe that roach was very far from the center.  As such, what happened to it had no bearing on my life or attention. Yesterday I also received some bad news, not devastating news. It was bad because it was about an organization I cared about but not devastating because this organization is not at the center of my emotional universe. The nearer someone or something is to the center of our emotional universe the more we care about what happens to it. As a parent or grandparent the least little thing that touches our child or grandchild is immensely important.

In versus 16 we see two powerful pictures of the center of God's emotional universe. First is the world,  “For God so loved the world...” We have said, read and quoted this verse so much that we may have lost the emotional power and passion of this verse. The grammar of the word “loved” indicates a supreme act of love that can never be repeated or superseded. These words are more than a doctrinal truth; they are a picture into God's passionate heart. The ‘giving’ here is not just the birth of Christ in Bethlehem but the whole plot of God's plan to send the Son to be our sin-bearing sacrifice.

The second picture of God's heart universe is the description of Jesus as the “only begotten”. Begotten is a word that we only use when we quote John 3:16 and so we may not understand it. Heretics claim that Jesus was less than God, in every heresy of all ages the heretics teach that the Son was made when He was begotten. In this understanding  the heretics are completely wrong. The word translated begotten would better be translated to describe the quality of Jesus as “absolutely unique” and not a sort of “becoming or beginning”.   Begotten also expresses the idea of “only” and “precious”. The love of a Father expressed for Jesus is as the unique and precious Son. Jesus is eternally begotten, eternally passionately loved.

John 3:16 expresses great theological truth about Redemption but that truth is in the two great loves of God the love for the Son and the love for the world.

“Lord, help me to live in the reality of Your Love.  AMEN”