John 3:16, is likely the best known verse in the Bible. Don’t let your familiarity with it make you overlook the crucial question with which it confronts you — do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?
Understand the love of God. The world that God loves is the world that has rebelled against him. Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. The time reference seems to suggest the darkness into which the incarnate Word came, John 1:4. Sometimes “world” simply refers to the physical creation, the planet on which we live. But in John it often has an ethical tone. John 1:9–10 suggests the character of the world. This is the world that hates Christ, John 7:4,7; “prince of this world” is Satan, John 12:31; 16:8. 1 John 2:16–17 describes the character of the world. This is the world dead in sin, justly under God’s righteous anger, the world of which you and I are part by nature. Do not think of yourself as needing a tune up, minor surgery, or even major surgery. By nature you are part of the world, you are dead, you need nothing less than Christ’s sacrifice and the renewing, rebirthing, work of the Holy Spirit, as we saw last week. As Warfield puts it, God’s love is so great “that it is able to prevail over the Holy God’s hatred and abhorrence of sin.” Does your God love people? The God of the Bible does. But does the God you deal with every day, does he love people? Does the conviction that he does color your life as a Christian, your efforts at reaching out with the good news?
Continue reading “Do You Believe?”