The Comfortable Words
We are continuing a Lenten study of the Comfortable Words, a vital part of our Anglican liturgy. These are four Scripture passages arranged in a specific order and meant to be read by the priest after the confession of sin. Last week, we studied the first Comfortable Word: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28, ESV).
Today, we’ll focus on the second Comfortable Word, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Somehow, we hold onto the idea that Jesus is annoyed with us and ticked that we keep coming back to him for forgiveness, because if we were really serious, we’d get it together. But the Comfortable Words present just the opposite: a patient Savior who is merciful, gracious, abounding in love and faithfulness, eager to forgive sin because he has paid the price. They cause us to focus on the heart of the gospel, that the Good Shepherd is bringing back his lost sheep by his self-sacrificing love. This second Comfortable Word captures that well.
God So Loved the World
While the first Comfortable Word focuses on the depth of human longing for good news, this one focuses on the depths of God’s longing to respond to our need, showing us that his disposition toward us is love. The divine desire and initiative to save his people lies at the very heart of this passage.
John 3:16 makes it clear that God the Father, moved by love, which is his very being, sent God the Son into the world to become the visible embodiment of the divine Good Shepherd. Jesus came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10), gently freeing his lambs caught in the thicket of sin. He laid down his life so that in the end, he could bear his wandering creatures safely back home on his wounded shoulders.
Let’s examine this. Certain parts of this passage stand out. The first is “God so loved.” When the Bible talks about the love of God, it frequently compares it to parental love. John Calvin described this love as “lavish, fatherly liberality.”
One of Calvin’s favorite words about God’s love and disposition toward us is gratuitous — overabundance, too much: gratuitous mercy, gratuitous promise, gratuitous love, gratuitous favor and goodness. The depiction of God the Father is as an indulgent father, one who gives an overabundance of love, an overflow, over the top, more than we need. It’s not like God is scraping the bottom of a barrel of love and giving us the scraps he can find; rather, there is more than we need.
You may be thinking, “What if I don’t deserve it? What if there are things in my life that make it inappropriate that I should receive this love?”
In that is both the scandal and the point of Jesus saying, “God so loved the world.” This isn’t the first time John’s Gospel mentions “the world.” John 1:9-10 says Jesus was coming to the world, but the world did not know him and rejected him. So when we see that God so loved the world, the primary point should echo in our memory: He loved the world that was determined to rebel.
God’s heart is so determined that he still loves the very world that rejected him. He loved the world, and he still came to be a gift of the Father. This shows how expansive, how vast, this love actually is.
That He Gave His Only Son
Still another scandal is not just that God so loved the world, but that the Father gave the Son: the innocent to save the guilty. The innocent, only Son of God is given over to death so we can have life. “The only Son” means one of a kind, unique, which highlights the costliness of the price paid for us. First Peter 1:19 calls it “the precious blood of Christ.”
And why was this price paid? “So that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” We’re called to believe that Jesus was sent for us. His very purpose was to die upon the cross so that when we face the cross and all the images of how awful it is — the thorns on the brow, the nails in his hands and feet, the blood pooled beneath him — we believe that it’s the penalty for our sin that is on him, and it is the expression of his glory.
Jesus came to be a curse so that we might look to him and live, to believe that our sin is on him, and any barrier between us and God is gone. If we look at him and see our sin on him, God looks at him and pardons us. So now, we can look back at Jesus Christ as a double-take, focusing on him and not ourselves. We can see his glory and worship him for his kindness and love toward us.
Not Perish but Have Eternal Life
What does all this mean for you and me? It means at least one thing: No matter what we’ve done, God’s love for us in Christ is secure. All our failures, stumbling, sin and willful disobedience don’t change the fact that he loves us to the end. And if we have faith in his Son, Jesus Christ, his love is ours for eternity. We’re now free to live without the burden of sin because it’s been taken care of. Instead of some sort of morbid introspection, we can look to him who is our pardon. The game is no longer scorekeeping but worship.
One of my favorite hymns about the secure love of God, “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go,” was written by George Matheson. But there’s a sad story behind it. As a young man, Matheson had only partial vision, and he was engaged to marry the love of his life. All was going well with the engagement until he told his fiancée what he had just learned: He would soon be totally blind. Unwilling to be married to a blind man, she broke off their engagement, returned the ring, and left him. George’s spirit collapsed.
In the pain of that experience, he consoled himself by thinking of God’s love that is never limited, never conditional, never withdrawn, never uncertain, and never forsakes. And out of his heartache came the words to the hymn: “O love that wilt not let me go / I rest my weary soul in thee / I give thee back the life I owe / That in thine ocean depths its flow / May richer, fuller be.”
With Matheson’s fiancée, it was a love that quickly let him go. With God, it was a love that wouldn’t. And because of the love with which God loves us, there is nothing in all creation that will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:38-39).
Let us trust in the one who loves us abundantly and gave his only Son over to death that we might live.
Note: A small part of the material for this post was influenced by “Divine Allurement: Cranmer’s Comfortable Words” by Ashley Null (The Latimer Trust, 2014).
