The immensity of God's love to the world.
The apostle here emphasizes the love which was manifest in the method of salvation.
I. THE TRUE ORIGIN OF SALVATION. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son." It is God's love, infinite, eternal, unchangeable.
1. Salvation is not wrung from the Father by the Son. The atonement was the effect, not the cause, of God's love.
2. This love is no contradiction to the wrath of God, which is implied in this very verse as the doom of unbelievers.
3. It is not inconsistent with the justice of God; for love is here defined as giving the Son to a sacrificial death, which signifies the satisfaction of Divine justice.
4. It is not possible to resolve justice into love under the idea of "a dualism of the Divine attributes;" for they are each distinct attributes: as in love God gives, in justice he maintains his inalienable prerogatives as God.
5. Christ does not set forth God's love with the mere object of assuring us of its reality, but rather to magnify it by the value of the sacrifice which was the design of it.
6. Love is not sacrificed to justice, but becomes all the more transcendently glorious because of the Divine necessity for a satisfaction to justice.
II. THE INFINITE SACRIFICE FOR THE WORLD. "He gave his only begotten Son."
1. It was the Son of God who was given by God. In the previous verse his tide is the Son of man, which recalls his humiliation. Here his title recalls his Divine dignity. The union of the two natures in the Person at the Mediator gives an infinite value to his sacrifice.
2. The gift of the Son implies his sacrificial death.
3. The unworthy objects of this love. "God so loved the world."
III. THE DESIGN OF THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. "That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
1. The channel of Divine life is opened by faith.
2. The tremendous evil that is averted. "Should not perish." This implies
3. The infinity of the blessings received by faith. "Everlasting life." It is contrasted