5/24/59

Scripture: John 3: 1-17

Text: John 3: 16; -- “God so loved the world ---”

I have heard stories from the Bible since I can remember anything. They have been told in the home of my childhood and in the Sunday School, and in the church to which I was taken at a very early age. My father was Superintendent of that Sunday School for many of his most vigorous years.

But it was in a special meeting, under a visiting leader, that a group of boys and girls, of which I was a part, was challenged to learn by heart what the speaker called the finest verse in Scripture: John 3: 16. It hadn’t occurred to me, until that time, to memorize any portion of Scripture. But, in the next day or two, I had that verse memorized so that it had been part of my religious treasure ever since.

I feel that many of you folk in this congregation have memorized this same verse in early childhood, or during your youth, or even in later years; and it is a familiar friend that you meet when you say, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Not only is it a well-recognized friend, but it has been maturing as a friend, through the years. For new facets of understanding and association are added to it as we grow with it.

Today I want our thinking to dwell on a part of that verse for a while: “God so loved the world.” It should not take long to remember that much. But it immediately begins to shed some light on our experience and some direction to our thinking as we think of the meaning behind those words.

Douglas Horton points out that the text does not read, nor is it true, that God so loved me alone, or my family alone, nor my nation alone as over against other nations or any nation. This text reads, in clear simple words of one syllable, of unmistakable meaning, that God so loved the world. Now that was a revolutionary idea in contrast to some earlier religious ideas. In fact it was a culmination of a long chain of progressive revelation, to the understanding of man, as to what God is like.

The early gods, even of the chosen Hebrews, were largely tribal deities. And there are sure indications that, in the under-standing of many early peoples of Hebrew history, God was even something less than that.

You will recall the story of Jacob, who had conspired with his mother to trick his aged father into awarding him the birthright that really should belong to his older brother, Esau. And Esau was so murderously angry about it that Jacob dared not stay home any longer. He started out in the direction of Haran where a distant relative lived and where he was to make his home for many years. [Genesis 27].

On the first night in the foreign land, Jacob, sleeping on the hard earth with a stone for a pillow, had quite a dream about angels ascending and descending a ladder that seemed to reach up to the heavens. He was still astonished, when he woke up, at the idea that God could be out here in the supposedly godless wilderness. He could hear Jehovah, the god of his childhood clan and land, saying to him in the dream, “I am the Lord God of Abraham, thy father, and the God of Isaac.” [Genesis 28: 13]. And Jacob had wakened with an idea that was brand new to him; “Why, Jehovah is here, too, and I had never known it.” [Genesis 28: 16]. It was a genuine step ahead for Jacob to learn that God is not confined to any one locality -- not even the familiar land of his father’s family.

It took some of the Old Testament prophets to jar loose the notion of many people that there were as many gods as there were tribes or nations, some of whom were stronger than others. It had been commonly supposed that the only way to find out whose god was strongest was to see which tribe or nation could win out in a pitched fight on the plains of history.

When, 700 years before Christ, the king of Assyria overthrew the city of Samaria, it meant only one thing to the people who heard it: the god of Assyria, who had his great temple in the city of Nineveh, was stronger than Jehovah, god of Israel. It was humiliating to the Jews, but they took it that this was just the way things are. It was considered quite proper that, when the Syrian temple was plundered of its ornaments, they should be set up in the altar room of Ashur, god of Nineveh, since he had won them in fair combat.

It was the prophets who set themselves to abolish this narrow view. And by the time Amos came on the scene, the people of Israel had come to understand that Jehovah was not alone their God, but was God of all the nations. However, they did have the lingering notion that God would treat them better than the people of other nations. Amos set himself to straighten out that idea. And you can follow his efforts in the first chapters of the book of Amos. Addressing the crowds at their national fair at Bethel (the very location where Jacob had had that earlier dream) Amos told his hearers how God would punish the foreign state of Damascus (loud shouts of delight from the crowd). Then he went on to another nation of people they did not like -- Philistia. For their sins, God would punish the Philistians (prolonged applause). And so Amos proceeded to one of the foreign nations after another -- Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab. The enthusiasm of the Hebrew hearers mounted.

But then the rugged prophet gets closer to home. “For the transgressions of Judah, I will not turn away punishment” [Amos 2: 4] (ouch!) -- and finally, “for three transgressions of Israel and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof.” [Amos 2: 6]. That was just too much for his hearers to accept. They drove Amos out of town! But the idea began to sink in: God loved the whole world, and made no nation - not even Israel - His favorite.

We now look at our calendar and write down the year 1959 AD. But some of us - perhaps many of us - seem still to be living in the era of those crowds to whom Amos spoke in the 8th century BC. In spite of our Christian adherence, we tend to believe that God is so clearly on the side of our northern way of life (or our southern way of life) that we do not open our eyes to the fact that God is more truly on the side of the United States as a whole. Or we assume that God is on the side of the American way of life so fully that he can hardly have a vital interest in the people of India or Africa or Russia or China.

But the truth of the text is insistent: “God so loved the world” --- not my particular race, or church, or party, or nation --- but the whole world, that he gave his only begotten Son. To come to Christian maturity, it is necessary to see that the good of the world comes above the exclusive good of any part of the earth’s population -- even our own. This means disciplining ourselves against contracting our outlook.

Let us take a sober look at our international situation in the light of this text’s truth. We recognize the cold war and the necessity of struggle for a world of freedom. But, the situation being what we see it to be, are we not likely to ask, concerning any new proposal, “What would it profit the present free world?” We may believe that that which will help the free world is all that counts. But is not that an inverted way of thinking?

The fundamental question is: what will this, or that, proposition profit the world’s people -- and therefore the free world? This simple difference, in a way of thinking, marks the truly Christian statesman; -- that is, the statesman with a Christian ethic -- from others with a purely provincial outlook.

I am impressed with one small glimpse from Congressman Laird who, you may know, has been appointed by the President as Congressional Advisor of the US Delegation to the World Health Assembly in session at Geneva. He says that, at the same time national ministers meet in an atmosphere of tension, under the glare of publicity, to deal with the political future of Berlin, Germany, and the world; the health leaders of 88 nations meet “in an atmosphere of comradeship and friendly intimacy born of years of constructive cooperative effort.” Largely ignored by the press, these health representatives in the World Health Organization, largest of the international organizations, drive together toward a single goal; the rapid improvement of the health of all peoples. Whether Arab or Israelite; Negro or Caucasian; Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist, or Christian; USSR or USA, all delegates appear committed to the notion that the health of the world is paramount and that the health of each sector stems from the health of the whole.

It may be that the political health of the earth could take a turn for the better if it can be remembered that God loves the world, and within that world, all peoples. The same outlook ought to be applied to the whole of a community like ours, rather than to each of its several segments alone.

A further key word is love. God is related to the world in a dynamic way, the way of creative love. Let us note what God’s love is not. True love is never a simple extension of one’s own selfishness. When a parent appears to “love” a child in such a way as to make the child simply a servant of one’s own parenthood, that becomes a vicious form of self-centeredness. True love in a parent desires that the child shall grow into the individual manhood and womanhood which is a person’s right.

The love of man for woman or woman for man is more than self-gratifying, or it is not truly love. When Jack loves Alice in such a way that he will spend, or give his life, that Alice may be her best self, and vice versa, that is love of a genuine sort.

When God is thought of as a great being whose love is essentially selfish, then his love becomes a set of rules or laws which his followers can disobey only at their peril. In primitive tribes, the members are slaves to the will of their gods in this way. Dr. Schweitzer tells of a young helper of his who came in hungry, picked up the nearest bowl, and ate his yams from it. Just as he finished, an older brother saw him and turned pale with terror. It seems that bananas were taboo (forbidden) to the younger brother. The older brother had eaten bananas from that bowl and had neglected to wash the last remnant of banana from the bowl before the younger brother used it for his yams. The boy who had eaten his yams from that unwashed bowl believed that it meant death to him, because of the strict taboo. And because he believed it meant his death, it was so. In 24 hours, despite all Dr. Schweitzer could do, the boy was dead.

Fear of this kind is an extreme but natural reaction to selfish love which chokes out individuality in the loved one. This is a rigid thing, essentially without forgiveness. It is not the love with which God’s heart overflows.

There is another kind of relationship which is mistaken for love. It is love without judgment. It appears to be the opposite of selfishness, but it also has evil effects. Dr. S. Parks Cadman of Brooklyn used to tell of an incident he encountered while calling in a parish home. The doting mother of an only child allowed the child to come into the room and repeatedly whisper to the mother, interrupting all conversation. After this had happened repeatedly, with no effort of the doting mother to reprove the spoiled child, or make him understand that that was ill-mannered behavior, the mother said fondly, “Do you know what he wants?” To which Dr. Cadman replied, “Yes, I know what he wants, but I know that you won’t give it to him!”

When this kind of love is attributed to God, it makes him an uncritical deity, the kind of deity that would spoil people by letting them have their own way. God’s love is not a hard demand for obedience without forgiveness in it; nor is it without judgment. God’s love judges, and forgives; it forgives and judges. God’s desire is to see every one of his creatures reach his perfect estate. When he loved the world, he had its highest good in mind. He loves his people -- all his people -- with the need for responding love, so that their good deeds are done not in compulsive obedience, but in gratitude toward Him. This is the essence of the gospel, that God loves the world, and that there is forgiveness and judgment in his love.

We have examined two key words, from the end of the phrase back toward its beginning --- the world and love. Now let us look carefully at the subject of the sentence, the first noun in the phrase --- God. Here the subject is no ordinary subject. It is the most important subject possible in any sentence or in any realm. God is the eternal subject. He can not be shifted over to some other part of the sentence. He can not be reduced to a way of acting. He is not just a process. One does not pray “Our Process who art in heaven.” God is not governed by the world; the world is governed by him. He is the One to whom we pray “Our Father.” We take God seriously, earnestly, when we worship him, for in our prayer and worship we make ourselves the object of his will. We consciously accept him as the subject of our lives. We open ourselves into willingness to accept all that he does for us. We accept his love for all the world.

In worship we “give up our power” to his power. And out of his power, we find our power. We are not trying to make God do something for us, but giving ourselves to his will.

What he does to us in worship is to make us more like himself as revealed in Christ. For one must needs be Christ-like who walks with God at all. And being Christ-like you do learn to take the whole world into consideration. You become members of the whole human race, including all of the world’s people. Your desire to be helped at the expense of other people shrinks before your sense of fairness and of shared love.

And your relation to the world becomes what God’s is -- that of love. You do not devote yourself to the world uncritically; yet you love the world, as God loves it.

The result of Christian worship is to be molded into more Christ-like form. You do not do it; I do not do it; God does it in the lives of his people who own his name and sway. And it may be that strange things happen, but they become wonderfully right.

George McDonald put it in verse:

I said, Let me walk in the fields.

He said, no; walk in the town. ----

I said, I shall miss the light,

And friends will miss me, they say.

He answered, Choose tonight

If I am to miss you or they.

I cast one look at the fields,

Then set my face to the town; ----

Then into his hand went mine;

And into my heart came he; ----

That is the way it is. And God’s love calls out your love for the world.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, May 24, 1959.