Prof. Homer C. Hoeksema
Preface
John 3:16 is
probably the most frequently misinterpreted and misused verse in all of Holy
Scripture. I refer to the fact, of course, that so often it is explained as
meaning that God loves all men and that He gave His Son for all men.
Nothing could be farther from the truth!
The sad part of this misinterpretation and misuse
is that it deprives the child of God, who is in himself an utterly lost sinner,
of the very comfort and solid assurance that this Word of God is intended to
convey.
If this little booklet may serve to contradict the
misinterpretation referred to, and may serve positively to explain the text
correctly and also to convey to the reader something of the tremendous wonder
of God’s sovereign love, it will have achieved its purpose.
May the Lord use it to that end.
--------------------------------------------------------
“GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD …”
That
Great Question:
There is a very important question involved in the
subject of this booklet. That question is: whom does God love? To this question
we must by all means have the right answer, the answer of God Himself, the answer
of the Scriptures, therefore. John
3:16 teaches us: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have
everlasting life.” What is the “world” which God loved? Who belong to that
world? Do all men belong to that world, or do only some men belong to it? And
if only some men belong to that world, who are they?
I called this a very important question; and indeed
it is.
For, in the first place, it is important personally. From
this point of view, the question may be formulated: does God love me? And
in that form the critical importance of that question at once impresses you and
me. Does God love me? Can I be, may I be, am I certain of that love? Then all
is well. For the love of God is certainly all-important. If God loves me, then
I am an heir of eternal life. If God loves me, I shall never perish. If God
loves me, then I may lose all, yea, even my very life, and still possess that
which is precious above all. If God loves me, then my father and my mother may
forsake me; but the Lord will take me up, and clasp me to His divine bosom.
But, by the same token, if God does not love me, that is, if He hates me, then
all is ill. Then I shall perish eternally. Then, though I possess all things,
yea, the whole world, I am the most impoverished among men. Then His face is
against me for evil. Then I am of all men most miserable. Then I face the
prospect of everlasting suffering in hell, where shall be weeping and gnashing
of teeth. Indeed, this is an all-important personal question. Whom does God
love? Does He love me?
God
Must Provide the Answer
To this question I must needs have the answer. I
must have God’s answer. Man cannot convince me. A human answer cannot possibly
satisfy me. Nothing less will do than the answer from the mouth of God Himself.
Then only will I have peace, when I hear His own voice, “My son, my daughter,
I, Jehovah God, love you!”
Let this personal question be before your
consciousness as you contemplate this Word of God. For not only is it true that
you urgently need an answer to this question, but it is also true that as this
Word of God comes to you, you shall be confronted by that question and shall
have to give an answer to it. You cannot escape it.
In the second place, and in closer connection with
the preceding than is sometimes thought, this question is important with
respect to the content of the preaching of the gospel. When the gospel is
preached, the question, “Whom does God love?” must be answered. And again, the
answer must be that of the Scriptures. Only that answer may be proclaimed as
the gospel of Jesus Christ. The text says that God loved the
world. And by far the most common explanation which is given of this
expression, “the world,” is that this means that God loves all
men, every individual member of the human race. This is the open
teaching of all Arminian, free-will pulpits. We have all heard this kind of
preaching many times, if not in our own church, then via radio
or television. According to this position, God loved all men. Because He loved
all men, God gave His only begotten Son. God’s only begotten Son died for the
whole world, that is, for all men, thus making provision for all men to be
saved. The gospel is for all sinners. And now it is up to the sinner to believe
or not to believe, to embrace the love of God or not to embrace it, to be saved
and to have eternal life, or to perish. The opposite position is that of the
Reformed faith, sometimes called Calvinism. It holds that as far as men are
concerned, God does not love all, but only His elect, that is, those whom He
has sovereignly chosen in Christ Jesus from before the foundation of the world.
It teaches, further, that Christ died only for His own sheep, that is, those
whom the Father gave Him. Furthermore, the Reformed faith maintains that when
the gospel of Christ crucified is proclaimed, the gift of faith is sovereignly
bestowed only upon the elect through regeneration and the efficacious calling,
that then the elect repent and believe and have everlasting life. In a word, we
proclaim that the love of God is absolutely sovereign and particular, not
general and conditional, in its origin, its revelation, its operation, and its
fruit.
Whom
Does God Love?
Now it is perfectly obvious that both of the above
views cannot be true. Even a child can understand this. It is either ... or. Either God
loves all men; or He loves only His elect. It is also
perfectly obvious that those who maintain the above views both claim
to preach the gospel when they proclaim these views. Both the Arminian and the
Reformed preacher will tell you that he is preaching the gospel. That is to be
expected. No preacher will come right out and tell you that what he is
preaching is not according to the Bible. They both claim, “The Bible says …”
Further, it is also evident, unless you would maintain the impossible position
that God contradicts Himself, that one or the other (not both) of the above
views is according to the Scriptures, and constitutes the true preaching of the
gospel. And whoever proclaims what is not according to the Scriptures has no
business to pretend that he is preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
What, therefore, is the test? How can we determine
which of the above is the Word of Christ according to the Scriptures? Remember,
the question is not what you or I would like to think about this question. It
is not which of these two “gospels” is the most popular, which apparently brings
the greatest fruits, which is supposedly the warmest, the most appealing, the
most stirring. The question is not what this or that theologian maintains. And,
though you may love your church very dearly, it is not a question of what your
church teaches. In fact, if you love your church, you certainly do not want
your church to walk in error. The sole question is: what does the Word of God
say? And let every earnest-minded Christian, who wants to walk in obedience to
the will of Christ, and who wants the church to be faithful to its calling to
preach the gospel, bow before that Word. You do not have to bow before me
and my word; but you must bow with me before the Word of God!
And you may expect the Word of God to be very clear on this question.
In the third place, this question, “Whom does God
love?” is of great importance because if there was ever a time when the
Reformed community stood at the crossroads with respect to the preaching of the
gospel, it is today. With ever greater boldness and bluntness it is being
taught in Reformed circles today that God loves all men. It is even maintained
that this doctrine, against which our Reformed fathers fought so gallantly at
the Great Synod of Dordrecht, is Calvinism. More and more Reformed churches
make common cause with Arminians and join them in supporting wildly
evangelistic movements. As an example of this blatant Arminianism let me quote
from the writings of a Reformed seminary professor concerning this very text
of John
3:16:
How much did God
love? So much that He gave His only begotten Son. So much that He emptied
Himself; He gave Himself. The amount of the love is indicated by the amount of
the gift. That means no less than an infinite love.
Love without
limit! Can an unlimited love be limited in its scope? Can an unrestricted love
be restricted in those whom it loves? Can the infinite love of the incarnation
have as its object only a part of mankind? Hardly. Neither does the Bible teach
this. Rather we are told, ‘God so loved the world that he
gave.’ Whether taken as the cosmos or as the human race, ‘world’ in this
passage clearly covers all men. By no strain of exegesis can God’s redemptive
love be confined to any special group. Neither the language of this verse nor
the broadest context of Scripture will allow any other interpretation but that
God loves all men.
And again, note this very bold statement:
If the Church is
unwilling to say in any sense that Christ died for all men and refuses to say to
unbelievers, in addition, ‘God loves you,’ ‘Christ died for you,’ it places the
infinite love of God under an illegitimate restriction.
Now, if that is the direction in which Reformed men
want to go, then let them openly disavow the Reformed position and the Reformed
confessions as being unscriptural. But let no one be deceived that such
Arminianism has anything in common with the Reformed faith. It does not. And let
all who love the truth of God’s Word and who purpose to be faithful to that
Word examine this matter with me. Let us put this question to the test of Holy
Scripture.
Whom does God love?
God’s
Love According to Scripture
Our text in John
3:16 answers, “God so loved the world …”
In the first place, let us view the matter from the
point of view of that term “world” in Scripture. Does that term actually
mean all men? This is frequently taught. And I will admit that
this is a very easy assumption to make. There are undoubtedly many who quite
uncritically accept this claim, and believe that John
3:16 means that God so loved all men.
But let us put this to some simple Scriptural
tests. First of all, let us examine some other passages of Scripture that make
use of the same term.
In the high-priestly prayer of the Lord Jesus,
preserved for us in this same gospel narrative of John, chapter 17, verses 8
and 9, we read:
For I have given
unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have
known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst
send me. I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou
hast given me; for they are thine.
From this passage, in comparison with John
3:16, it is evident, in the first place, that the term “world” here
in John
17 is not the same as in John 3.
This is evident from the simple point that Jesus does not pray for this “world.”
And certainly, it would be blasphemous to assume that our Lord Jesus Christ
does not pray for the world which God loved. In the second place, it is evident
that the term “world” in John 17 cannot
possibly mean “all men.” This is plain from the fact that the Lord Jesus makes
a very clear distinction between His disciples, who believed that the Father
had sent Him, who were given unto Jesus, and who are the Father’s, on the one
hand, and the world, on the other hand. Notice: “I pray for them: I pray not
for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, for they are thine.” In
the third place it is also clear that in John 17 those
whom God loved are just exactly not the world, but those whom God gave to
Christ in distinction from that world.
Turn next to I
John 2:15-17. There we read:
Love not the
world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the
love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the
flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father,
but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he
that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
Here again, it is evident that the term “world”
cannot possibly mean all men, and that it does not and cannot possibly have the
same connotation as in John
3:16. For, in the first place, would it be possible that God loved the
world, and that He would enjoin His people, “Love not the
world, that is, the same world that I love?” And, in the second place, the
world of which I John
2 speaks passeth away. And is it possible that the world which is the
object of a divine love could nevertheless pass away? To ask these questions is
to answer them.
These are but two of the many passages in the Bible
in which the term “world” appears. But wherever that term appears in Scripture,
and whatever else that term “world” may mean, you can put every passage to the
test, and you will discover that the word never simply means all
men. By no strain of exegesis can this faulty assumption be
maintained.
In the third place, let us not forget that the same
Scriptures which speak of the love of God also speak of the very opposite of
His love, namely, His divine hatred. Now if it is true that God loves all men,
then it must also be true that He hates no man. But if the
Scriptures cannot be broken, and if then it can be shown by those very
Scriptures that God hates so much as even as one man, then it also follows that
God does not love all men, and that the term “world” in John
3:16 cannot possibly mean all men.
Let us examine the Scriptures with a view to this
question.
In Psalm
5:4-5 we read: “For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in
wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee. The foolish shall not stand in
thy sight: thou hatest all workers of
iniquity.” In Psalm 11:5-6 we read: “The Lord trieth
the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth. Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire
and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.”
And in Romans
9, a chapter that is very significant for this whole question, we read in
verses 10-13:
And not only
this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; For
the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the
purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that
calleth; It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is
written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau
have I hated.
From all these passages it is perfectly evident
that there is a hatred of God as well as a love of God, and that some men are
the object of the divine hatred, while others are the object of the divine
love.
God
Does NOT Love All Men
Therefore, our first answer to the question, “Whom
does God love?” must be a negative one: God does not love all men. Let us
obediently bow before this plain Word of God.
Hence, to proclaim nevertheless that God loves all
men is false, and contrary to the church’s mandate to preach the Word.
Moreover, that pseudo-gospel cannot be anything else than devastating for the
Christian’s personal assurance of the love of God. And remember, all the while
that we consider these words, that is after all the significant personal
question: does God love me?
Next, let us explore that important question, “Does
God love all men?” from another viewpoint, namely, that of God’s love itself.
In the first place, let us notice that the text
speaks emphatically of the love of God. This certainly implies
that the love of God is almighty as He is almighty, sovereign as He is
sovereign, unchangeable as He is the Unchangeable One, and that therefore the
love of God is divinely able to seek and to find and to save its object. If
God, therefore, so greatly loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son
for the salvation for that world, could it possibly be that the world, or any
part of that world, goes lost? Yet the Scriptures themselves teach us plainly
that not all men are saved. There will be thousands and millions of men who
will never see eternal life, who have never been touched by this love of God.
The choice therefore is obvious. Either you must maintain that God loves all
men, and then accept the consequence that this love of God is powerless to
reach and to save its object and to attain its purpose—the very thought of
which is blasphemous; or you must acknowledge that the almighty, sovereign,
efficacious love of God is not for all men.
Or, in the second place, consider that love of God
from the viewpoint of its revelation, namely, the gift of God’s only begotten
Son. That love of God is redemptive. God gave His Son in the
fullness of time, in order that He might die the death of the cross, and that
He might offer Himself on the altar of the righteous love of God as a perfect
sacrifice for sin, for the sin of those whom God loved. Could it possibly be
that the gift of God’s Son was either wholly or partially in vain? To put it
concretely, could it be that even one drop of His precious blood was shed for a
man, and that then that man goes lost forever? Yet that must needs be the
conclusion if we would maintain that God loved and gave His only begotten Son
for all men.
Or again, consider that love of God, in the third
place, from the point of view of its proclamation. Millions upon millions of
men, from both the old and the new dispensation, have never heard of the love
of God. That is, it was never preached to them. But could it possibly be that
God would love any man, love him so greatly that He gave His only begotten Son
for him, and then would never tell that man of His love? What a strange love of
God that would be! You say, perhaps, that that is the fault of the church for
failing to preach the gospel to all men? But is not the sovereign and almighty
God powerful to cause the gospel to be preached to whomsoever He wills? And is
not the very scope of the preaching of the gospel a matter of His own sovereign
determination and sending? How shall they preach, except they be sent—sent by
God in Christ?
God
Loves His Elect People
But now let us face the question positively: whom
does God love? Whom did God eternally love? Whom did God love so greatly that
He gave His only begotten Son?
John
3:16 answers: God loved the world, the cosmos. The
general meaning of that term is that of harmony, orderly arrangement, beauty.
Our word “cosmetics” is derived from it. And the term is used to denote the
created universe, all creatures in heaven and on earth, as an organic whole,
from the viewpoint of its order and harmony. This fundamental idea is never
absent from the term in its various uses in Scripture. Often the word “world”
in Scripture refers especially to mankind, or to a part of mankind. But because
man is closely related to the world outside of him, in fact, stands at the head
of the universe as we know it, lives and moves and develops in that universe,
the word “world,” even when it has man especially in view, never excludes the
universe, but denotes mankind as it is organically related to the orderly whole
of created things.
And while that same term “world” is used in
Scripture to denote the whole of reprobate, wicked men, as they are in
darkness, and as they subject all things in their universe to their own sinful
mind and will, and use all things in the service of sin, it is used in John
3:16 to denote the sum total of the elect as an organic whole, the
body of Christ, the church, again in connection with the whole universe. We
must always remember that in His elect God does not merely save a number of
individual men. God saves an organism,
a whole world!
That implies, in the first place, that when God
saves His elect people in Christ Jesus, He saves the real organism of the human
race. Many individual men go lost; but mankind is saved. But, in the second
place, God does even more. Not only the elect body of Christ is saved, but God
saves and glorifies the whole creation. The whole creation, which groaneth and
travaileth in pain together until now, being subject to vanity because of sin
and the curse, shall participate in the glorious liberty of the children of
God. That entire world of God’s elect and of all created things, organically
conceived, God loved and saves. This fact, that God saves an organism, explains
also why, though many individual creatures go lost, the world is nevertheless
saved. When, for example, an orchardist goes out to prune his fruit trees, and
presently a large heap of branches is accumulated on the ground and burned up,
you certainly do not say that he destroyed his trees and his orchard. No, the
trees are saved; the orchard is still standing. But some individual branches
perished. Thus, not those men who are lost, but those who are saved constitute,
together with the rest of creation, the world of God’s love. When all the lost
are separated from that world finally in the day of judgment, it is still the
world which is saved. The world of John
3:16 is the world in Christ, the Firstborn of every creature, as God
conceived of it in His eternal and sovereign counsel, and as it shall one day
be revealed and shall appear in perfect harmony and heavenly beauty and glory,
united in the Son of God.
That world God loved.
The
Profound and Blessed Mystery
The text speaks of a profound and blessed mystery,
a mystery which becomes more profound and more blessed according as we, poor,
miserable, sinful creatures of the dust, pause to consider this wonder.
Consider for a moment the implications of that one,
simple, and oft-repeated truth: God loved the world.
This means that in His sovereign and eternal and
unchangeable thoughts God beheld that world in its perfect beauty in Christ
Jesus, the Firstborn of every creature, and united that world with His own
divine Father-heart in the bond of perfectness. His heart goes out to that
world. He is attracted to that world. Even when in time that world was in
itself lost in sin and misery, and lay under the curse, God still loved the
world. He longed for that world. He could not rest, so to speak, until He
sought that world, saved it, drew it unto Himself with cords of love, and
clasped it to His heart, safe in the harbor of eternal life, where He might
bestow all the tokens of His love upon that world in the fullness of
perfection.
Consider too: God loved the world.
Not only did the Father, the First Person of the Holy Trinity, love that world.
Not merely did our Lord Jesus Christ love the
world. Certainly not is it thus, that God hated the world, but that our Lord
Jesus Christ came and by His death and atonement changed the hatred of God into
love. But God, the ever blessed Triune God, loved the world. This love is of
the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. And even as the love, so
also the gift is of the Triune God. The Father gave the Son in the Holy Spirit;
and the Son gave Himself in the Spirit.
The
Greatness of God’s Love
Oh, if you would ask the question, “How much did
God love?” you must not try to limit the limitless character of that love by
the quantitative characterization that God loved “all men.” After all, that is
still attempting to portray the infinite love of God in finite terms. Indeed,
the love of God is infinite. It is limitless. It knows no bounds. And my text
sets this forth not in terms of those who were the objects of
that love, but in the amazing and mysterious terms of the revelation of
that love. How much did God love? The text gives the answer: “God so loved the
world, that he gave His only begotten Son”!
Consider this. Ah, if you look at Calvary’s cross
outside of the light of revelation, you see there but a mere man hanging on the
accursed tree. And in that mere man you cannot behold the revelation of the
infinite love of God. But the Word of the cross is: God gave His only begotten
Son! And in that only begotten Son, nailed to Golgotha’s cross, shines the
wondrous light of divine love into our night, penetrating, piercing, swallowing
up the darkness of judgment and death. That love is strong as death. Its
jealousy is cruel as the grave. Its coals are the coals of fire, which hath a
most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench that love; neither can all the
floods of our guilt and iniquity drown it. For God gave His only begotten Son!
He gave Him who is eternally in the bosom of the Father, Him who is the contents
and the representative of all His love, Him upon whom all the infinite love of
the Father is concentrated, God of God, Light of Light, His only Son, His all,
Himself.
God gave Him! He gave Him freely.
He gave Him, not because He was obligated to do so, but because He wanted to do
so, wanted to reveal His infinite love. He gave Him not because that world
deserved that gift, but of free, sovereign grace. And He gave Him up, that is,
He gave Him as a sacrifice for sin, gave Him up unto death, the death of the
cross, and poured out over His head all the vials of His fierce and holy wrath.
Mystery of mysteries! God gave up God! Ah, do you not see that this is just
exactly the tremendously profound thrust of this Word of God? God’s love of the
world cost Him something! It cost God His all!
For, in the first place, remember that it was the
Person of the Son of God who came in the likeness of sinful flesh. He took upon
Himself all our sins, and suffered and died on Calvary. And to be sure, we are
very careful to state that as to His divine nature He could not and did not
suffer; all the agonies of death and hell were suffered only in the human
nature. But at the same time, never may that be understood so that dogmatically
we destroy the mystery that it was nevertheless the only begotten Son of
God who suffered on the cross! While all the agonies of Calvary were
suffered only in the human nature, the Word of God nevertheless draws our
attention to the fact that at Calvary you behold the suffering of God’s Son, and
that by that suffering you may measure the infinite height and depth of the
love of God. For, in the second place, even on Calvary you dare not separate between
the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity. To be sure, the Person of the Son of God
died on Golgotha; but His death was the revelation of the love of the Triune
God! God Himself suffered the agonies of death in the flesh of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Or, to put it otherwise, do you imagine that the Father and the Holy
Spirit looked coldly on while the only begotten Son died on the tree? No, that
were impossible! The message of the love of God, the Word of the cross, is
this: God spared not His own Son! When faced, as it were, with
the alternative of giving His only begotten Son or letting the world perish,
God so loved the world that He sent His Son to the death of the cross.
Such is the revelation of God’s infinite love. And
the end attained by that love is everlasting life: “that whosoever believeth in
him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” That world as it is in
itself is perishing because of sin and guilt and corruption. So great is that
power of sin and guilt that there is no way out as far as that world is
concerned. But that world is saved through the death and resurrection of the
Son of God. All the power of salvation, of wisdom and righteousness and
sanctification and complete redemption, is in Him. And apart from Him who is
the life and the resurrection there is no life for the world. That world,
therefore, must be united with the Son of God, and through Him to the heart of
God. It must become one with Him, must partake of His death and resurrection.
And the bond that so unites that world with Him is faith. Faith is the
God-given bond of the union with Christ. The activity which proceeds from that
bond is the act of believing, whereby one consciously clings to Christ, the
only begotten Son of God, as the revelation of God’s redemptive love. That
faith, as a bond and as a power and as an activity, is not of ourselves: it is
the gift of God, bestowed sovereignly upon all the elect members of that world
that God saves in redemptive love.
And therefore the Word of God says: “whosoever believeth shall
not perish, but have everlasting life.” All, without exception, who believe
shall never perish. They have everlasting life now, in principle. They shall
endure unto the end, kept in the power of God’s infinite love. And in the day
of our Lord Jesus Christ they shall have everlasting life in perfection. Then
God shall take them to His bosom forever, and they shall enjoy the highest
realization of the covenant of friendship in His heavenly tabernacle, and shall
see Him face to face.
In conclusion, let us return to our original
question, and ask it from a personal point of view. Whom does God love? Does He
love you? Does He love me? I ask: do you believe in the only begotten Son of
God? Then you may be assured of His love, and then only, but then certainly.
And then yours is and shall be forever the gift of everlasting life. And mark
well: not because you believed, but because God loved you,
loved you with eternal, sovereign, unchangeable love. Glory to His Name!
No comments:
Post a Comment