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 3:16).
(a)
[Source: The
Sovereignty of God]
Turning now to John 3:16, it should be evident
from the passages just quoted that this verse will not bear the construction
usually put upon it. “God so loved the world.” Many suppose that this
means the entire human race. But “the entire human race” includes all mankind
from Adam till the close of earth’s history: it reaches backward as well as
forward! Consider, then, the history of mankind before Christ was born.
Unnumbered millions lived and died before the Savior came to the earth, lived
here “having no hope and without God in the world,” and therefore passed out
into an eternity of woe. If God “loved” them, where is the
slightest proof thereof? Scripture declares “Who (God) in times past (from the
tower of Babel till after Pentecost) suffered all nations to
walk in their own ways” (Acts 14:16). Scripture declares that “And even as they
did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to
a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient” (Rom. 1:28). To
Israel God said, “You only have I known of all the families of
the earth” (Amos 3:2). In view of these plain passages, who will be so foolish
as to insist that God in the past loved all mankind! The same applies with
equal force to the future ... But the objector comes back to John 3:16 and
says, “World means world.” True, but we have shown that “the
world" does not mean the whole human family. The fact is that “the world”
is used in a general way ... Now the first thing to note in
connection with John 3:16 is that our Lord was there speaking to
Nicodemus, a man who believed that God’s mercies were confined to
his own nation. Christ there announced that God’s love in giving His Son had a larger
object in view, that it flowed beyond the boundary of Palestine, reaching out
to “regions beyond.” In other words, this was Christ’s announcement that God
had a purpose of grace toward Gentiles as well as Jews. “God so loved the
world,” then, signifies, God’s love is international in its scope. But does
this mean that God loves every individual among the Gentiles? Not necessarily,
for as we have seen the term “world” is general rather than specific, relative
rather than absolute … the “world” in John 3:16 must, in the final
analysis refer to the world of God’s people. Must we say, for
there is no other alternative solution. It cannot mean the
whole human race, for one half of the race was already in hell when Christ came
to earth. It is unfair to insist that it means every human being now living,
for every other passage in the New Testament where God’s love is
mentioned limits it to His own people—search and see! The objects
of God’s love in John 3:16 are precisely the same as the objects of
Christ’s love in John 13:1: “Now before the Feast of the Passover, when
Jesus knew that His time was come, that he should depart out of this world unto
the Father, having loved His own which were in the world,
He loved them unto the end.” We may admit that our interpretation
of John 3:16 is no novel one invented by us, but one almost uniformly
given by the Reformers and Puritans, and many others since them.
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