“For God so loved THE WORLD, that he gave his only Son,
that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”[1]
When we have a God who wants people to
have the gift of life in that born-again kind of way, and we discover that he
was motivated by love to do something to bring this about, how would we know if
we are one of the people who gets the gift? Wouldn’t it matter whether we were
the people he loved?
When bad things are going on, people
instinctively think of how their loved ones are doing. When a plane crashes,
the family members of passengers are the most desperate to find out if their
family members survived. When a tsunami sweeps through a coastline, people who
had loved ones living in or visiting those areas are the most desperate to know
if the people they care about were able to escape unharmed.
When God shows us in his book that he
was moved to do something out of love, he was dealing with a most terrible
malady. Something was seriously wrong, and in tremendous need of a solution, a
God-sized resolution. God was moved by love to give a gift that would meet the
demand. However, who were the recipients of the gift? Who were God’s loved
ones?
God’s book tells us that God “so loved the world." Hmmm… sounds
like a big kind of love. It rather makes sense that God-sized love would also
be as large as the world. But does that mean God loves the planet, or the
people on the planet? Does this mean the world as in, “He’s got the whole world
in his hands”?
This is particularly troublesome
because God also says in his book, “Do
not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the
love of the Father is not in him.”[2]
Hold it a minute! How can God so love
the world, and say that if we do love the world, then his love can’t possibly
be in us? This has to be a clue about what it means that he loved the world in
such a way that we still celebrate at Christmas.
The fact that there is one way God did
love the world, and another way we are not to love the world, means there must
be different world-loves going on here. That being the case, we best consider
the context, or larger picture, of what God’s book was talking about when it
said that God so loved “the world.”
Remember that this is part of a
conversation that Jesus was having with a man named Nicodemus, a ruler among
his people. But who were these people? Maybe they had something to do with why
Jesus spoke of God loving the world.
What we discover is that Nicodemus was
a ruler among the Jewish people.[3] At
the time, the Jews had good reason to believe that, whenever God sent the
promised Savior into the world, this Savior would be for them, the Jews. After
all, God had chosen a man named Abraham to be the father of God’s people, and
promised all kinds of excellent things to his descendants. God had protected
them from their enemies, and gave them the land that he had promised. Through
his prophets, he told them that he would send a Savior who would take away
their sins.
Not only was Nicodemus struggling to
understand what Jesus meant by telling him that people must be born again, but
he also had to grapple with this message that God so loved “the world.” Nicodemus only thought of God’s love in relation to
their father Abraham, and the nation of Israel. He expected a Savior who would
do good things for them, for their nation.
This was especially significant
because, at the time, Israel had been groaning under the tyranny of the Roman
Empire. They wanted out. They wanted a Savior who would give them back their
country, and drive the despised Romans out of their land, just as God did for them in previous generations.
What Jesus taught Nicodemus was
something quite different. Instead of telling this Jewish ruler how God so
loved Israel that he sent his Son to drive out the Romans and return the
country to its rightful owner, he told this man that God’s love was much bigger
than he imagined. He loved the world. His love was for the nations, for all the
people groups around the world.
This comes out when Jesus later tells
his friends to go throughout the world proclaiming the good news of salvation. He
told them, “And this gospel of the
kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all
nations, and then the end will come.”[4] He
then included them in this work by declaring, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day
rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be
proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are
witnesses of these things.”[5]
The message of hope we celebrate at
Christmas is intended for the whole world, not just one particular nation. God
loved the entire world in its messed-up condition. He wanted people from all
over the world, from every nation, to believe in him in the born-again kind of
way.
So now you can decide if you are
eligible for this gift. Are you in the world? Are you in a particular country,
with a specific nationality? Then be assured that God loved your world as part
of “the world.”
The question is not about whether God
loved the whole world, and offers his hope and good news to all nations. That
is settled. Hundreds of years of celebrating the coming of Jesus into our world
proves it. What we need to prove is that we are the people who are receiving
his gift.
If you are one
of the people who have received God’s gift, or want to receive that gift now,
get ready to have a blessed “About Christ” Day!
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures
are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version
Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
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