There is no verse in the Bible better known and less believed than this. Almost every Sunday school scholar can repeat it; from our earliest infancy we were taught it, and there is hardly anyone who ever looks at a Bible, but could say it without a mistake.
Yet commonly as it is known, there are no less than three statements in this blessed little verse that most people do not believe.
“God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.” So far people give a nominal assent; they do not question God’s love in a general way to the world, or that He expressed it by the gift of His only begotten Son; but it is in what follows, as the effect of this wondrous gift, that infidelity so abounds even among professors of religion. There are three points I would notice:
Firstly—The persons contemplated, “That whosoever.” Here difficulties are immediately raised. “Whosoever” seems too wide a circle. People do not credit this; they think salvation is for some favored few, some select number of exceptionally good people, or for the elect. But mark what Jesus says, “That whosoever.” Surely that means anyone under the canopy of heaven, every inhabitant of this globe; the richest or the poorest, the highest or the lowest, the most learned or the most ignorant; the religionist or the profane person; the moral, amiable, and respectable, or the immoral, the vicious, and the profligate; anybody and everybody in “the world” that “God so loved” are here considered, and life eternal, offered to all. Reader, whoever you are, it includes you.
Secondly—The terms, “That whosoever believeth in Him.” Here, again, all is doubted, if not emphatically denied. Only to believe! O, that’s too simple! That would be making heaven easily obtained indeed! “No,” says the world by general consent, “We must work, and pray, and fast, and attend the means of grace, and keep the commandments, and then perhaps God may have mercy on us.”
“O, but,” you say, “everyone believes in Him.”
Stop a little. Does everyone believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as his or her own personal Savior? Is it a real, heartfelt, individual belief in His work and blood-shedding, as having met all God’s claims on account of sin; or is it, that people merely assent to the general facts, and go on perfectly indifferent as to their soul’s salvation? Remember, that believing in Jesus, if it be real, must necessarily shut out any belief in yourself or your own works. It must be Christ alone, not Christ and your doings combined.
Reader, God’s terms are, that “whosoever believeth in Him.” Don’t try to alter or improve upon them.
Thirdly, The result, “Should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Once more man’s notions, or prejudices, or theology, set themselves up against God’s infallible Word, and unbelief thus argues:
“You don’t mean to say that I get everlasting life the moment I believe in the Lord Jesus as my Savior?”
Yes, that is precisely what Jesus does say.
O! but what a dangerous doctrine, to tell people that they have everlasting life! What carelessness and sin it would lead to! But is the Word of God to be credited or not?
“Well,” you say, “tell people they will have everlasting life if and so long as they go on well and live consistently.”
But that won’t do, for it would make everlasting life not God’s gift—which Romans 6:2323For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:23) says it is—but a thing to be earned by us, and therefore a thing never to be obtained, for where is the man that lives perfectly for even twenty-four hours? God gives us “everlasting life,” and it does not lead to carelessness; but it is God’s way of leading people to love Him and serve Him as their greatest joy. Gratitude for benefits conferred, and love to the blessed person who conferred them, is the principle of Christian life and service. Reader, everlasting life is what God gives.
Let us then believe the Lord Jesus Christ as to—
(1St) The universality of the love of God in offering salvation to all;
(2nd) The simplicity of the terms it is to be had upon; and,
(3rd) The blessed fact that it is nothing less than everlasting life that He confers, for “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)).