This week I read an interesting article on what the author considered to be the greatest love stories in history and literature.  There were many familiar stories listed: Romeo and Juliet of course; Lancelot and Guinevere, Darcy & Elizabeth, Heloise & Abelard, etc.  But the greatest love story of all time is not found in books by Jane Austen or Shakespeare.  It is found in the book I hope you are holding in your hand: the Bible, which tells the story of the love that God has for us.   

     As we continue our study of John 3:16, we will look at the second couple of words in this great verse: “For God SO LOVED the world …”.  Previously we saw that the opening words, “For God”, refer to a specific God: the God of the Bible; the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  They indicate that it is all about Him, and that salvation originates from Him.  But now, what does the verse say that this God did?  It tells of the world’s greatest love story, and says “For God SO LOVED …”.

 I.  The Response of Love

     God could, theoretically, have had a number of different responses to us.  He could have responded to us with contempt or spite.  He could have responded to us with anger.    He could have responded to us with instant judgment, which we would have deserved.  But He did not.  He responded with love.  We see this indicated several times in scripture:

— Ephesians 2, where it says “But God, being rich in mercy, BECAUSE OF HIS GREAT LOVE which He had for us …”.

— Ephesians 5:2 “as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us …”

— Titus 3:4 “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us …”

     When God sent His Son to earth for us, Jesus perfectly represented His nature here (“the fullness of Deity in bodily form”), and He responded to people in the same way: He loved them. 

— Matthew 14:14 says when Jesus “He saw a large crowd, and felt compassion for them” 

— Mark 10:21 says that when Jesus met the Rich Young Ruler, “Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him.” 

     This is a reflection of the same love of God that motivated Him to send Jesus in the first place.  We’ve all seen the billboard that is supposedly written from God’s perspective, saying, “Don’t make Me come down there …”!  But He did not come in anger; He came in love.  “For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”  He responded to us with love. 

     We should not be surprised at this.  I John 4 says “God IS love.”  Everything He does, He does with love (and with holiness, and justice, etc. too).  So we should not be surprised that God would respond to the world with love, and send Jesus to be our Savior.

     In one of my very favorite books, Bruce Catton’s Civil War, he tells the very unusual story of General Dan Sickles, whose wife had been unfaithful to him.  He shot and killed the man, and was acquitted in what they believe to be the first case in which they pleaded “temporary insanity.”  But then Sickles did the unthinkable.  When all the fallout had settled, he forgave his wife and took her back.  THAT was what society just could not forgive!  Sickles was a member of Congress, but Mary Chestnut, theSouth Carolin adiarist, sat in on a session of Congress, wrote in her diary that as she watched Congress, not one person would come near Sickles.  She said they treated him “as if he had the smallpox.”  All because Sickles did not respond with bitterness, or hatred towards his wife, but with forgiveness and love. 

     The Bible says that God has this same kind of shocking love for us.  We as a whole human race have sinned against Him.  In fact, God puts it in those same terms of unfaithfulness; He says in Jeremiah 3:20, “’But like a woman unfaithful to her husband, so you have been unfaithful to me, O house of Israel,’ declares the LORD.”  We have been unfaithful to God. We have exchanged Him for other gods; we have loved other things in His place. But instead of responding merely with anger, or judgment, or condemnation, God has shockingly responded by loving the world, and sending His Son to die for us, that we might be forgiven, saved, and changed.   

     In C.S. Lewis’ fictitious Screwtape Letters, he has the demon Screwtape telling his “apprentice” demon Wormwood, “One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men … is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does …”!  He does.  “For God SO LOVED”!  He responded to us with love.

     And you can make that personal!  If you are wondering today, because of your sin, if God could ever love you, or want you back, the answer is YES!  His response to you is a response of love.    

     (This is also a good reminder to us that we should respond to people in love – not in anger, not in bitterness, not in judgment, but in love – the way that God responded to us!)

 II.  The Meaning of Love

     What did it mean that God “so LOVED” the world?  We are not going to dwell here a long time because we just studied the meaning of love in I Corinthians 13.  We saw there that love is not just a feeling; love acts sacrificially to do what is best for the one who is loved.  C.S. Lewis wrote of agape love: “Divine Gift-love … desires what is simply best for the beloved.”   That is what God did for us.  He saw us in our sin and rebellion against Him, and wanted what was best for us.  So He acted sacrificially, and sent Jesus to die for us, that we might turn from our sins and turn back to Him, for that is what is best for us.  God loved us enough to do what was best for us – even at great cost to Himself.  That is what love does. 

     Some people mistakenly think that love is just “feeling good” about people, and letting them do whatever they want.  That is not love. 

     For example, if there was a child who is running wild, and their parent was not disciplining them, and someone said to them, “Why don’t you do something about your child?”  What if that parent said, “Oh, I know I should do something, but I just love them too much to do anything about it.”  What would you say about them?  You’d say they don’t really love that child, do they?!  Love cares enough to do what is best for them – even if it is hurtful or painful.  And you’d be right.  Proverbs 13:24 says the parent who does not discipline his child does not “love him too much”, it says he “hates” him!  Love does what is really needed to be done, for the best for the person. 

     What you need to understand is that this is exactly the way God is with YOU!  Some of you just want God to leave you alone and let you be.  But God loves you.  And He loves you too much to leave you the way you are.  He knows what your sin is doing to you; He knows what your sin is doing to your family; He knows what your sin is doing to the people around you; He knows that your sin is leading you to an inevitable eternal punishment in hell.  He loves you too much to leave you in that.  That is why He sent Jesus, at great cost – He gave His only Son — to die on the cross and pay for your sins, and raised Him from the dead to be your Savior, that you might repent of your sins, and call on Him, and be saved, and changed.  It cost God greatly to do that – but that is what love does; it acts sacrificially to do what is best for the one it loves – and that is what God did for you. 

 III.  The Motivation of Love

     Why did God do what He did for us in Jesus Christ?  Because He “so loved” the world.  His motivation was love.  This is important to understand.  People can do things for all kinds of different reasons.  You can do all the right things, but if you do them for the wrong reasons, there is no credit for you in it.

     For example, in Matthew 6, Jesus said that the hypocrites love to pray, and give, and fast.  Well, all of those things are good, aren’t they: praying is good; fasting is good; giving to the poor is good.  Every one of those things is good.  But the problem is, the people Jesus was speaking about were doing those things for the wrong reasons.  Jesus said they did them “to be noticed by men.”  Their motivation was wrong.  And Jesus said because their motivation was wrong, they had no reward with the Father in heaven.  He was saying, it matters WHY you do what you do.

     We saw in I Corinthians 13 that you can speak in tongues, give to the poor, give up your life as a martyr to be burned at the stake – but if you don’t do what you do in love, it profits you nothing.  Love is the important motivation.  The Bible says here that God did not do what He did for a less than perfect motivation – He did what He did for us in Jesus from the motivation of love!

     Repeatedly, the Bible tells us that God did what He did for us in Jesus because He loved us.  His motivation was love. 

— He did not send Jesus to demonstrate how much better He is than we are (although He is!). 

— He did not send Jesus just to demonstrate His own glory (though He is certainly glorified in Jesus, and we do all things to glorify God). 

— He did not do what He did for us because we deserved it, or because we were so worthy of it.  On the contrary, we did NOT deserve it.  Romans 5:8 “God demonstrates His own love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  God did not do what He did for us because of anything good in us; but merely because of His love for us.

     Elizabeth Barrett Browning is known for her famous love poems for Robert Browning.  In one of them, she speaks of what she hopes will be the motivation for his love for her:

If thou must love me, let it be for naught Except for love’s sake only.

Do not say ‘I love her for her smile—her look—her way Of speaking gently,

—for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine’ …

For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so …

But love me for love’s sake, that evermore Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.

     The poetess wanted Browning to love her, not “because” of any specific quality in her which could change, but just from true love alone – which would never change or alter.  The Bible tells us here that this was the motivation for what God did for us.  He did not love us for anything good in us – but simply because He loves us.  “For God so loved …”. 

     And we will talk about this more in the coming weeks, but it is not stretching the truth of scripture to apply this personally, and say that He “so loved” YOU!  In Galatians 2:20 the Apostle Paul says that Jesus “loved ME, and gave Himself for ME”!  We see there the Lord’s motivation was LOVE – and it is also very personal!  Paul said He didn’t just love “the world”; He said He “loved ME”!  You can make this personal, too.  God “so loved” you!  He did what He did because He loves YOU!

     By the way, this is God’s motivation for all the things He does in your life: “those whom the Lord LOVES He disciplines”, Hebrews says.  He brings us through a lot of things, and we wonder why.  He has an ultimate purpose for everything – but the scripture says the motivation behind it is LOVE.  He loves you.  You can know that whatever you go through is filtered through the love of God, who will use it for ultimate good. 

     We should also strive for this to be OUR motivation for what WE do, too!  Is it?  Why do you do what you do?  Because people expect it?  From guilt?  Peer pressure or embarrassment?  Some of us need to fall down before God and say, Lord, forgive me: I have been doing many of the right things, but I have not done them for the same reason that YOU do: I have not done it from LOVE.  “Make me like You” – who “so loved”!

Our motivation for mission needs to be LOVE as well, if we are going to be effective.  You will only do so much from obligation, or obedience, or expectation, or guilt.  There are sacrifices you will only make, and things you will only do, from a motivation of love!  We must ask God to fill us with the same Spirit of Love which impelled Him to send His Son.  Our motivation, too, must be love. 

IV.  The Measure of Love

     Finally, this great verse does not just say “God loved” – which would be incredible enough indeed – but amazingly it says that “God SO loved”!  It indicates that the measure of His love for us was (and is!) very great.  D.A. Carson says that the grammar here “emphasizes the intensity” of God’s love.

     Now, there are those who assert that the Greek word translated “so” here does not refer to an intensity of love, but rather that this is the way in which God loved.  They would translate this verse:  “God loved the world IN THIS WAY …”.  Now, to be fair, the Greek word “houtos” can be translated that way, and actually most often IS in the New Testament.  Yet there are a number of times when it is used emphasizing intensity:

— Galatians 1:6 “I am amazed that you are SO quickly deserting”;

— Galatians 3:3 “are you SO foolish?” 

— I Thess. 2:8 “SO deeply do we care for you” (this verse is very similar to John 3:16’s expression of sentiment!)

— Heb. 12:21 “SO terrifying was the sight …”

— Rev. 16:18 this same author John writes: “SO violent was the earthquake …”

     Thus we see that “so” is used several times in scripture in such a way which indicates intensity, so that can have confidence that we are not mistreating scripture to assert that “SO loved” in John 3:16 indicates the intensity of God’s love for us. 

     There is yet another thing which argues for this meaning of the word “so.”  In Greek, this word “houtos” is actually the FIRST word in John 3:16.  This is the emphatic position.  So the verse literally reads: SO MUCH did God love the world!  It is indeed emphasizing the intensity of God’s love for us. 

     But the intensity of God’s love for us is not merely a matter of grammar.  Scripture reinforces that:

— I John 3:1 “See HOW GREAT a love the Father has bestowed upon us …”

— Ephesians 3:18-19, Paul prays they will comprehend “what is the breadth and length and height and depth, to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge.” 

— Romans 8:38-39 famously says that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

     All through scripture we see that the “measure” of God’s love is immeasurable!  It is no exaggeration to say that He “SO loved the world”!  John Piper (who, ironically wrote elsewhere that “houtos” should be translated “in this way”) wrote: “This love is of such a kind and such an intensity and such a magnitude that it moved God to give his Son to die for the world.”  That is an intense love!

     Several years ago, a couple from America went to China on a mission trip.  While they were there, they went to a village, and they saw an odd sight: there was a boy behind a plow, guiding it, but an older man was actually PULLING the plow instead of animal.  The American man laughed at the sight, and pulled out his camera to take a picture of it.  He said something about it to his host, who told him the rest of the story.  He said, yes, it is an unusual sight.  They used to have an ox.  But they belong to a church here, which was building a building in which to worship.   They wanted to give something for the building, but they didn’t have any money.  So they gave their only ox, which was sold, and the money given for the church.  Now the man must pull the plow.  The American man said he was humbled by the thought of that man’s sacrifice. 

     That is some kind of love that man and his son had for their church, that they would give their only ox, and that the father would pull the plow himself.  How great a love would you have to have for your church, to give your only ox; your only source of income?  But if that is so, think about this: what kind of love must God have for US – that He would give His only SON to die for us?!  And yet that is exactly what the Bible says.  God SO loved the world, with such an intensity, that He would give His only Son to die for us.  THAT is an intensity of love! 

     Years ago, I said something in one of my sermons which I wish I could take back.  (Probably not the only occasion, either, by the way!)  I said that you could tell how much something was worth, by what someone was willing to give for it – and that meant that we must really be worth quite a bit as human beings, that God would give Jesus for us.  As I said, I wish I could take that statement back.  I can’t – although I may correct it today.  The fact that God gave Jesus for us is not a measurement of our great worth; it is a measurement HIS GREAT LOVE:  “For God SO loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son”!