In our daily meditations, we keep exploring Jesus' words to Nicodemus in the Gospel of John. After telling this teacher of Israel that he must be born again to see the kingdom of God, Jesus now speaks of God's love for humanity.
16For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him (John 3:16-17).
The Lord speaks about God's self-sacrificial love. The English word "love" translates to the Greek word Agapaō. It means to love, cherish, and esteem, as well as to show charity, devotion, respect, loyalty, and concern. This Greek word is rarely used outside religious literature and is mainly employed to translate the Hebrew word chesed, which means loving-kindness or mercy. Agape describes self-sacrificial love, that is, voluntary love or a choice made by a person's will. God so loved (past tense) that, even while we were still in our sin and enemies of His, He sent His Son into the world to heal us of our sin against Him.
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
Jesus explained to Nicodemus that God so loved the world that He gave. The kind of love we are talking about is one that gives again and again, even when it hurts, to all people and nations. The reason for His giving is His wish that no one should perish and that everyone would come to repentance. If you ever doubt God's love, look at Christ's cross and see God's judgment upon sin, but also see God's love for guilty sinners.
God has made the greatest gift available with the greatest simplicity, and He offers this gift to ALL who believe. The Lord made it so simple that even children with limited knowledge can receive the free gift of salvation. God loved you and me so much that He gave His one and only Son. If there was another way for man to be reconciled to God, don't you think He would have chosen it? If following laws, regulations, and being good could have brought reconciliation, God certainly wouldn’t have subjected His Son to such a painful death. God loved us so much that He gave. The word "so" is added for emphasis. God didn't just love; He so loved you and me that He endured watching His Son being brutalized and murdered at the hands of evil men.
Whose hands did this to Christ? Those who wielded the whips and shouted, "Crucify Him," will undoubtedly be judged when the curtains close on this age unless they, too, receive His forgiveness. But my sin and your sin brought Christ to the cross. The situation is such that, without a Savior, you and I would "perish" (v. 16). We had already been condemned. The judgment had already been made against us, and those who are not yet born again by the Spirit are prisoners held captive by Satan. There was only one way out: the Son of God had to step in and pay the ransom price for those who would look to the Savior. The barrier of sin is removed by the death of a substitute on your behalf.
There is a story that illustrates the kind of substitutionary love we are discussing. In his book Miracle on the River Kwai, Ernest Gordon shares the true story of a group of Prisoners of War working on the Burma Railway during World War II. At the end of each day, the work crew collected the tools. On one occasion, a Japanese guard shouted that a shovel was missing and demanded to know which man had taken it. He began to rant and rave, working himself into a fury, and ordered whoever was guilty to step forward. No one moved. "All die! All die!" he shrieked, cocking and aiming his rifle at the prisoners. At that moment, one man stepped forward, and the guard clubbed him to death with his rifle while he stood silently at attention. When they returned to the camp, the tools were counted again, and no shovel was missing. The Japanese soldier had miscounted. That one man had gone forward as a substitute to save the others.[1]
God was in Christ, substituting Himself for us. He loved you and me so much that He gave Himself for us. Keith Thomas
This meditation is a condensed version of the in-depth study: God So Loved
[1] Ernest Gordon, Miracle on the River Kwai, Fontana Books, 1973.