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Subject 16 : The Gospel According to JOHN
[Chapter 3-9] God Gave Us His Only Begotten Son! (John 3:16-21)
(John 3:16-21)
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. ‘He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.’”
God is the Creator of the universe and the Almighty God and has absolute authority. Everything in the universe exists thanks to the grace of God. The sun, the moon, stars, animals, plants and everything else were all made according to the providence of God. God made us unique humans with a free will, and made us with high and noble values as beings that are able to receive God’s love.
And God put the universe under the rule of human beings. This is one example of how much God loves us. But the bigger picture is that God gave up His only begotten Son Jesus Christ to die for us in order to make humans like us God’s own children and His own people to live together with them eternally.
There could never be any right minded father in this world that would push his own son to death for others. But the Father gave up His only begotten Son Jesus Christ for our salvation. And He made it so that anyone could become God’s own child by believing in Jesus Christ. God did not just love us with words, but He actually loved us by coming into this world Himself. God bestowed His love and grace without any condition or price in order to save us. We must understand that receiving the love of the Creator is an amazing grace that cannot be compared with anything else.
God loved us through the gospel of the water and the Spirit, and we became the children of God by being clothed with this love. We need to live out our faith with the understanding of the heart of the Father towards us. The Father heart toward us is love. It means that God has a heart that loves us so much. We will understand through today’s Scripture passage how much God’s heart has loved us a very long time ago. The heart of the Father that sent His only begotten Son is a heart of love. We can lead an upright spiritual life when we understand God’s love toward us through the gospel of the water and the Spirit.
God’s Heart Is the Heart That Loves Us
As I read the Holy Word, I think about what was going through God’s heart. And I understand and believe through God’s Word that God unfolded His loving heart towards us. The Lord’s salvation would be useless if God did not have a heart that loved us like this. What He had done for us would have nothing to do with us if He did not love us. We are therefore thankful that He is doing all these things for us, because He has a heart of love. We can experience this deeper love and be thankful just for the fact that God has a heart that loves us.
John chapter 3 tells us that God’s heart is a heart that loves us. God gave up His only begotten Son because He essentially loved us. God would not have given up His Son for us if He did not love us. Because God so loved us, He gave up His own Son and transferred all our sins onto His Son through His baptism and put an end to the judgment of our sins and the sins of the world by nailing His Son to the Cross. And the Son was resurrected from the dead and then ascending up to the Kingdom of Heaven, and even His second coming is from a heart that loves us. Because He truly loves us, He was able to send His only begotten Son, transfer over all our sins onto His only begotten Son, nail Him to the Cross, resurrect Him again from the dead, and this Jesus Christ will also return to this world as the Lord of the Second Advent.
The most precious thing for humans is not money, honor or power. The thing we need the most, the most precious thing is God’s love that He has given through the gospel of the water and the Spirit. We can endure any difficulty in God’s love and wait for the Lord in hope. When we are convinced of His loving heart toward us, we can enjoy rest, receive new strength and peace and receive the blessings of eternal life in the Lord.
All such blessings come from God’s heart that loves us. Whenever we face difficulty or hardship, whenever we are happy or sad, we can receive new strength and peace when we understand and believe God’s love for us. We can receive the power to live each and everyday with God’s love because He has loved us first, and makes us love each other. All our faith would die if it were not for the loving heart of God toward us. Therefore, there is nothing that is more important than God’s love. We can follow after Him and live each day because we know and believe that God essentially has the heart that loves us. We can go on living because of God’s love, and will be happy people if we know and believe that God loves us.
The Strength for Us to Live in This World by Faith
God gave up His only begotten Son to save us out of His heart that loved us. He has protected us from eternal destruction with His love of Truth. He not only gave up His only begotten Son, but also did all the righteous work to save us from all sins because He essentially loved us. Today’s Scripture passage makes us able to understand God’s heart. God did these things because He loved us. God made us humans out of His love and He sent His Son to save us. And we can now understand that Jesus also sacrificed His own body because He loved us.
When we receive a letter, we not only look at the words in the letter but also feel the sender’s heart hidden behind the words. Like this, we can understand through God’s Word the heart of the Triune God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who loves us.
The Gospel of John chapter 3 verses 17-18 tells us, “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
Those who believe in the love that is contained in God’s heart believe in all the work Jesus has done to save us from sin so that we could receive our salvation. But those who do not know that God the Father loves them cannot understand Jesus and they cannot receive salvation. We can receive salvation by accepting all the things Jesus Christ had done to save us when we believe that God the Father loves us.
Gospel of John chapter 3 verses 19-21 says, “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”
It says that God saved us because He essentially loved us. Both before and after we are saved, we must believe that God loves us. We must understand that God has a loving heart toward us. We cannot help but betray the Lord and fall out from faith if we do not know ‘that heart.’ God has a heart that loves each and every person; He has a heart that especially loves us who have received salvation. He really loves us. We must believe in this special love of God.
It is written in 2 Corinthians 3:6, “For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” This passage can make you wonder and make you think the Scriptures have so many strange sayings because, it says that it kills people some times and it gives life to everyone at other times. It reads that way when we just look at it literally, but we can understand why God said such things when we understand God’s heart hidden in the Word.
We must understand the heart of God. Even between our brothers and sisters, between the servants of God and the saints, we must understand each others hearts. You may feel happy when someone is nice to you, but you start thinking a person must hate you when he treats you coldly, if you just lay emphasis on his deeds without knowing his heart. Like this, we must at least know God’s heart and also know our fellow saints’ hearts, and the hearts of God’s servants. We can have true fellowship and love one another and have new hope and new strength when we know each other’s hearts. And all the blessings will be given.
The biggest reason why people do not receive salvation from sin is because they do not know that God loves them. The door of their heart does not open because they cannot believe this fact. When we believe the fact that Jehovah God loves us, we can believe and accept all the things that were spoken by God who created the universe and everything in it. And we can also understand these things.
Therefore, it is very important for us to understand God’s heart. God’s heart loves all people. But He especially loves the saints who have been born again. Our faith can fall into hopelessness even though we have been saved if we do realize this; there would only be irritation, frustration, dissatisfaction and tediousness; we will suffer hardships, difficulties and death. Therefore we must understand God’s love even more deeply after receiving the salvation because we can endure everything and wait for everything when we believe in God’s heart.
We must trust one another’s heart. We must recognize that there is no real hatred between the born-again brothers and sisters and between the servants of God and the saints. We can dislike someone momentarily but there will not be hatred deep in our hearts. We the born-again sometimes scold each other when we find they are not going on the right path for fear that the person could leave God’s blessings, but we again do not essentially hate each another. Servants of God have hearts like this. The brothers and sisters essentially do not hate the servants of God. We may sometimes be disappointed by someone’s treatment, but there is not a heart of hatred among us the born-again.
God is love. But the Scriptures say, “We did not love Him, but He loved us first.” We who have received such love from God may dislike the unrighteousness and there sin because the Holy Spirit has came into our hearts; but we do not dislike people themselves, in other words we hate the sin but love the person. Hearts of the believers and the servant of God are like this, those who have been born again through the water and the Spirit. It’s because God’s love is in our hearts.
And we must understand that God has the heart that loves us. We become happy and energized in our spiritual life when we recognize this. But everything becomes bothersome and irritating when we face Him in a fleshly way without knowing that God has a heart that loves us. We rejoice and live out our faith joyfully with hope because God has a loving heart towards us eternally, and because that is very clear. Our faith will not be a faith but an illusion, if God the Father did not have a heart that loved us. Today we can preach, serve and follow the after gospel before the presence of God because we know and believe that God’s heart loves us.
Because of the love of God the Father, we can live now and we can continue to live in the future. We can live eternally because of this incredible love of God the Father. We have received salvation because God the Father has a heart that loves us. We have even received eternal life because He has a heart that loves us.
Because God the Father has a heart that loves us, this world and Heaven exist, we exist, and the Truth exists. We live in the love of God the Father. God loved us through the baptism of Jesus, His blood and His resurrection, and He gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38).
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