- THE DIVINE INTENTION

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (John 3:17)
The compelling message of John 3:17 is more than a statement of God’s intention towards the human race, for in actuality it constitutes a “proclamation extraordinary!”
It is a three-part proclamation joined beautifully to John 3:16. We are thus assured that God sent His Son into the world; that He did not send Him to condemn the world; and that He sent Him in order that the world might be saved.
Because I have been so involved with this passage in my preparation, waking up to it, walking with it, meditating over it, I have a burning question within me that I must ask. I suspect that it might be called “the unanswered question.”
It is not a question about any interpretation of this portion of John’s Gospel.
It is rather a question about our human reactions to such a moving proclamation from the living God:
Why is there a blank kind of indifference and why is there an incredible apathy to such an extraordinary proclamation of God’s best intentions for us?
It is not a sufficient answer to say that unregenerated people are indifferent to spiritual things. It needs to be said plainly that there is also an amazing apathy and dullness even among professing Christians in our churches.
This is a gravely significant message from the heart of God Himself, yet even in the full light of it, people are indifferent.
Upon our eyes there seems to have fallen a strange dimness.
Within our ears there seems to have fallen a strange dullness.
In our minds there is a stupor, and in our hearts, I am afraid, there is a great callousness.
It is a wonder, and a terrible responsibility, that we should have this message from the heart of God in our possession and be so little stirred up about it!
Now, if we had never had this communication from God, I could possibly understand why we could go on our way and as Tennyson said, “nourish a dumb life within the brain like sheep.”
If we had no personal word from the Lord, then I could see why we could all come to church and sit in stoical silence; why we could kneel in prayer and mumble into a deaf ear that does not hear; why we could rise in the morning and be more concerned about whether the newspaper has arrived than about spiritual and eternal verities.
If this verse had never been entrusted to us, I might be able to explain our indifference and apathy.
I could say, “It is the indifference of despair, or the apathy of despair.” I could use the illustration of the Israelites in the bondage of despair in Egypt, as generation followed generation in slavery. They had no hope of ever having it otherwise. They had no expectation.
If this verse were not here I would know why we are the way we are. If this proclamation extraordinary had not been made, I might understand how we can be so unhappy. I might understand how humans can walk around looking down at the earth like the beasts and rarely looking at the sky.
But in the light of the fact that it was made known 2,000 years ago, I can only ask: What is the matter with us? Why is there so little response? Why does this great stupor lie upon us as it does?
Some think that we are spiritual people and that we belong to spiritual churches. In all frankness, I think many would change their minds if they knew how little response there is, how little sensitivity to the Spirit, how little urgency of the heart in spiritual matters.
A victory for evil
I do believe that this apathy that is upon us is a tactical victory for organized evil. And I am not referring to organized crime. I do not know too much about the dark spirits that move up and down in the world and I want to know even less as I grow nearer to God in grace!
But I know the Bible teaches that there are sinister spirits walking up and down. The Bible speaks of them as principalities and powers and dominions. They are undoubtedly abroad, invisible to the naked eye, inaudible to the ear, but they are the legions of hell. They are the fifth column of iniquity, present in the world, and their business is to subvert and traduce and destroy and bind and kill, like the thief that gets into the fold.
Their business is to beat the propaganda of hell into human minds until we are groggy and punch drunk and without lift in aspiration or hope and without immortal dreams. I believe that is the tactical victory for the devil all around us.
Then, too, I believe that the very dull and gloomy countenances that Christians wear are an astonishment to the unfallen creatures yonder.
The Bible speaks of the unfallen beings, the watchers, the holy ones, angels and archangels. They are holy creatures who have continued faithfully in serving and worshiping the living God.
I do not know how much they know—but they must know something!
They were sent to joyfully announce the birth of Jesus in the fullness of time.
They were later sent to announce the Resurrection of Jesus.
In the book of Revelation we are told of their flight in midheaven and of their movements among men. So they must be here.
I repeat, then, that the manner in which we can take God’s love and concern with such indifference must be an astonishment to holy creatures.
Christians offer many excuses for their lack of interest and enthusiasm about the things which matter most to the heart of God.
Some excuse themselves on the basis of comparison with others whom they call extremists and fanatics.
“We are more sober in personality. We are better educated. We are more cultured and that is why we display so little of our emotions!”
If I thought such an answer to be the truth, I would say, “Thank God.” But I do not think it is the truth at all.
In our own fellowship, as soon as the benediction is pronounced, anyone would be hard pressed to hear the archangel Gabriel if he tried to blow his horn just a few feet over our heads. Suddenly we are in high gear with our talk and noise and human exuberance with one another.
Brethren, the fact that we can deal with God’s love and mercy and grace with an almost complete silence and indifference is not a proof of our own culture, but a proof of our sin! It is not a proof that we are well educated, but proof that we are afflicted with hardness of heart!
Our attitudes about God and His love can result in a victory for organized evil and may well be an astonishment to unfallen creatures, but that is not all.
A great grief
I believe that our attitudes must be a great grief to God Himself, as He tries to move us to praise and delight and devotion.
I surely believe that it is the nature of God to delight in enthusiasm and I do not refer to the extreme aspects of fanaticism.
I refer back to the record concerning the warmth and brightness and enjoyment of our Lord when He walked with us on this earth. I read and study and am assured that the Lord Jesus Christ had a special fondness for the babies and the small children and I think I know why.
These little ones are always vigorous and buoyant and unsophisticated and fresh. Their reactions are unmeditated, candid, and truthful. They do just what they do out of simplicity showing the immediate response of their young hearts.
Jesus called the children and laid His hands upon them and blessed them, and then taught that “the kingdom of God belongs to such as these” (Mark 10:14 b).
As a result, the theologians have been tossing that statement around ever since wanting to know what it all means!
The simple-hearted people knew that Jesus just loved the babies because they were innocent and honest and unspoiled. They responded to Him and to His love without stopping to consider and measure all of the consequences.
A small child is never concerned with putting on a front as adults so often do when they would like to have others believe that they are something more than they really are.
In his famous work on human conceit, Wordsworth pictures us when we are born as coming down from the hand of God trailing clouds of glory. He shows a little bit of heaven trailing around the growing boy.
Then, as the lad travels farther and farther from home, sad and tragic as it may be, the glory evaporates away and finally disappears. That little bit of heaven that once surrounded the newborn boy disappears like dew before the sun, until there is no longer any glory remaining.
The lad becomes the man who has forgotten God. His heart is hard. He is a carnal man, fallen and low, and the earth shuts completely around him.
This is not the exceptional case—this is more likely to be the rule. How many in our day are aware that there is this hard crust that is over our hearts, our beings—and yet can never face it and confess it!
Everyone who has come to the years of responsibility seems to have gone on the defensive. Even some of you who have known me for years are surely on the defensive—you have your guard up all the time!
I know that you are not afraid of me, but you are afraid, nevertheless, of what I am going to say. Probably every faithful preacher today is fencing with masters as he faces his congregation. The guard is always up. The quick parry is always ready.
Guard completely down
It is very hard for me to accept the fact that it is now very rare for anyone to come into the house of God with guard completely down, head bowed and with the silent confession: ”Dear Lord, I am ready and willing to hear what You will speak to my heart today!”
We have become so learned and so worldly and so sophisticated and so blasé and so bored and so religiously tired that the clouds of glory seem to have gone from us.
The very fact that I should have to talk like this is incriminating in itself: incriminating that a verse like this should not bring a fresh and instant response in the human breast when it is read.
God sent His Son into the world. He did not send Him to condemn. He sent Him that the world might be saved!
I ask again: how can we consider it with such indifference?
Brethren, who has poisoned our cup?
What evil alliances have we made?
What has sin been doing to our hearts?
What devil has been working on the strings of the harp of our soul?
Who has been giving us sedatives and feeding us the medicine of apathy?
What has happened to us that we can talk about this, sing about this, and even preach about this—and still be left untouched and unmoved?
Wordsworth was not a preacher but he sounded these same unanswered questions in his day when he wrote with honesty in his own soul: ”I would rather be a heathen and believe in an outworn, heathen creed, standing on the shore of the ocean and imagining that I could hear old Neptune or old Triton blow his horn, than to be a civilized Christian within whom everything has died.”
We live in a day of temptations, and the world is too much with us, getting and spending. But even for our kind of world, even for the human race in its present condition, there is no message, no hope, no word of authority and promise that can compare to God’s proclamation of love and forgiveness.
There may be a time way out yonder in the glorious tomorrow when all that we know today is over and sin has passed away and the shadows have been driven from the sun and the brows of men are no longer furrowed, that there will be other and newer and grander proclamations that God may make based upon this one. But for us in our present condition there is no other proclamation as great as this.
Now, when the Word says that God sent His Son into the world, it is not talking to us merely about the world as geography. It does not just indicate to us that God sent His Son into the Near East, that He sent Him to Bethlehem in Palestine.
He came to Bethlehem, certainly. He did come to that little land that lies between the seas. But this message does not have any geographical or astronomical meaning. It has nothing to do with kilometers and distances and continents and mountains and towns.
What it really means is that God sent His Son into the human race. When it speaks of the world here, it does not mean that God just loved our geography. It does not mean that God so loved the snow-capped mountains or the sun-kissed meadows or the flowing streams or the great peaks of the north.
God may love all of these. I think He does. You cannot read the Book of Job or the Psalms without knowing that God is in love with the world He made.
He came to people
But that is not the meaning in this passage. God sent His Son to the human race. He came to people. This is something we must never forget—Jesus Christ came to seek and to save people. Not just certain favored people. Not just certain kinds of people. Not just people in general.
We humans do have a tendency to use generic terms and general terms and pretty soon we become just scientific in our outlook. Let us cast that outlook aside and confess that God loved each of us in a special kind of way so that His Son came into and unto and upon the people of the world—and He even became one of those people!
If you could imagine yourself to be like Puck and able to draw a ring around the earth in forty winks, just think of the kinds of people you would see all at once. You would see the crippled and the blind and the leprous. You would see the fat, the lean, the tall, and the short. You would see the dirty and the clean. You would see some walking safely along the avenues with no fear of a policeman but you would see also those who skulk in back alleys and crawl through broken windows. You would see those who are healthy and you would see others twitching and twisting in the last agonies of death. You would see the ignorant and the illiterate as well as those gathered under the elms in some college town, nurturing deep dreams of great poems or plays or books to astonish and delight the world.
People! You would see the millions of people: people whose eyes slant differently from yours and people whose hair is not like your hair.
Their customs are not the same as yours, their habits are not the same. But they are all people. The thing is, their differences are all external. Their similarities are all within their natures. Their differences have to do with customs and habits. Their likeness has to do with nature.
Brethren, let us treasure this: God sent His Son to the people. He is the people’s Savior. Jesus Christ came to give life and hope to people like your family and like mine.
The Savior of the world knows the true value and worth of every living soul. He pays no attention to status or human honor or class. Our Lord knows nothing about this status business that everyone talks about.
When Jesus came to this world, He never asked anyone, “What is your IQ?” He never asked anyone whether or not they were well-traveled. Let us thank God that He sent Him—and that He came! Both of those things are true. They are not contradictory. God sent Him as Savior! Christ, the Son, came to seek and to save! He came because He was sent and He came because His great heart urged Him and compelled Him to come. Now, let’s think about the mission on which He came. Do you know what I have been thinking about our situation as people, as humans?
Let us think and imagine ourselves back to the condition of paganism. Let us imagine that we have no Bible and no hymn book and that these 2,000 years of Christian teaching and tradition had never taken place. We are on our own, humanly speaking.
Suddenly, someone arrives with a proclamation: “God is sending His Son into the human race. He is coming!”
What would be the first thing that we would think of? What would our hearts and consciences tell us immediately? We would run for the trees and rocks and hide like Adam among the trees of the Garden.
What would be the logical mission upon which God would send His Son into the world? We know what our nature is and we know that God knows all about us and He is sending His Son to face us.
Why would the Son of God come to our race?
Our own hearts—sin and darkness and deception and moral disease tell us what His mission should be. The sin we cannot deny tells us that He might have come to judge the world!
Why did the Holy Ghost bring this proclamation and word from God that “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world” (John 3:17)?
Men and women are condemned in their own hearts because they know that if the Righteous One is coming, then we ought to be sentenced.
But God had a greater and far more gracious purpose—He came that sinful men might be saved. The loving mission of our Lord Jesus Christ was not to condemn but to forgive and reclaim.
Why did He come to men and not to fallen angels? Well, I have said this before in this pulpit, and I could be right although many seem to think that because others are not saying it I must be wrong: I believe He came to men and not to angels because man at the first was created in the image of God and angels were not. I believe He came to fallen Adam’s brood and not to fallen devils because the fallen brood of Adam had once borne the very image of God.
Morally logical decision
Thus, I believe it was a morally logical decision, that when Jesus Christ became incarnate it was in the flesh and body of a man because God had made man in His image.
I believe that although man was fallen and lost and on his way to hell, he still had a capacity and potential that made the Incarnation possible, so that God Almighty could pull up the blankets of human flesh around His ears and become a Man to walk among men.
There was nothing of like kind among angels and fallen creatures—so He came not to condemn but to reclaim and to restore and to regenerate.
We have been trying to think of this condescension of God in personal and individual terms and what it should mean to each one of us to be loved of God in this way.
Now I think I hear someone saying, “But John 3:16 does not mention the cross. You have been telling about God’s love but you have not mentioned the cross and His death on our behalf!”
Just let me say that there are some who insist and imagine that whenever we preach we should just open our mouths and in one great big round paragraph include every bit of theology there is to preach.
John 3:16 does not mention the cross and I declare to you that God is not nearly as provincial as we humans are. He has revealed it all and has included it all and has said it all somewhere in the Book, so that the cross stands out like a great, bright, shining pillar in the midst of the Scriptures.
We remember, too, that without the cross on which the Savior died there could be no Scriptures, no revelation, no redemptive message, nothing! But here He gave us a loving proclamation—He sent His Son; He gave His Son! Then later it develops that in giving His Son, He gave Him to die!
I have said that this must be a personal word for every man and every woman. Like a prodigal son in that most moving of all stories, each one of us must come to grips with our own personal need and to decide and act as he did: “I am hungry. I will perish here. But I will get up. I will go to my father. I remember his house and his provision” (Luke 15:17-20). He said, “I will go”—so he got up and went to his father.
You must think of yourself—for God sent His Son into the world to save you!
Here I insist that you must have some faith about yourself and I am almost afraid to say it because someone will send me a critical, nagging letter.
I am not asking you to have faith in yourself—I am only insisting that it is right for you to show faith about yourself, faith in Christ and in what He has promised you as an individual person.
That is, you must believe that you are the one He meant when He said, “Come home.”
Believe he meant you
All of the general faith you have about God will not do you any good at all unless you are willing to believe that He meant you—you yourself—when He said “God so loves that He gave His Son for you!”
The prodigal son could have said in general terms: “When one is hungry and ready to perish, one could return to his father’s house.” But he said, “I am the one that is hungry. I am the one for whom my father has a complete provision. I will arise and go!”
God lovingly waits for each individual to come with a personal resolve and decision: “I will arise and I will go home to claim the provision in my Father’s house.” If you will make that personal decision of faith in Jesus Christ, with faith in the fact that it is really you whom God loves and wants to forgive, it will mean something more to you than you have ever known—something beautiful and eternal.
I close by reminding you also as an individual that unbelief always finds three trees behind which to hesitate and hide. Here they are: Somebody Else. Some Other Place. Some Other Time.
We hear someone preaching an invitation sermon on John 3:16 and in effect we run to the garden to hide behind these trees.
“Of course it is true,” we say, “but it is for Somebody Else.”
If it were only Some Other Place or at Some Other Time you might be willing to come.
Whether you get the right grammar or the proper tense is not important: what our Lord is delighted to hear is your confession that “that means me, Lord! I am the reason, the cause and reason why You came to earth to die.”
That is positive, personal faith in a personal Redeemer—and that is what saves you. I give you my word that if you will just rush in there, just as you are and with faith in Jesus Christ, our Lord has very little concern as to whether or not you know all of the theology in the world!