John 3:16 meaning and explanation of For God so loved the world

John 3:16 has one of the most surprising statements in all of Scripture: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have life. eternal ”. God’s love is so immense, and so amazing, that God loves the world so much. But what does that mean? We could measure God’s love, knowing that He loved the world.

God’s love.

God so loved the world that He sent His own Son to die for all mankind. That’s how great God’s love is. And while it may seem surprising that God can love so many people at the same time, I don’t think that’s the measure that John is using here to show us the greatness of God’s love.

Let’s not forget who this God is who so loved the world. Our God has no limits of any kind in any of his attributes. The prophet Isaiah says that all the water of all the oceans fits in the hollow of his hand and that He can measure the Universe with his span. And if all this were not enough, He knows by name each one of the stars of each one of the galaxies. “Such is the greatness of His might, and the might of His dominion,” it says in Isaiah 40:26.

So we cannot measure the greatness of God’s love by taking as a reference the number of people that populate our planet. That would be as surprising as the fact that an Olympic weightlifter was able to lift a grain of rice.

How to interpret how much God loves the world

Not all people are saved. So if the word “world” here refers to every human being who has lived, lives, and will live on the planet, we must conclude that the only thing that God did for all of us was to open the way of salvation and then leave in their hands the possibility of saving us.

Well, we must interpret this passage in such a way that God loved every human being who has lived lives and will live in this world in such a way because he gave his only begotten Son to make it possible for any of us to have access to it. kingdom and can be saved, but without ensuring the salvation of anyone. Since it depends on our will if we choose the way of salvation that God offers us.

But we can’t interpret this text in that way. If God left the final decision to accept Jesus in our hands, no one would be saved, because no man in his natural state is inclined to believe in him and submit to his authority.

Listen to what John continues in verses 19 to 20: “And this is the condemnation: that light came into the world, and men loved darkness more than light because their works were evil. Because everyone who does wrong hates the light and does not come to the light so that their works will not be rebuked.

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That is why it clearly says that everyone who does wrong is because he hates the light. So how many people in the world do wrong? Each one of them, as Paul says in Romans 3:12: “there is no one who does good, there is not even one.”

So if God the Father had limited himself to sending His Son to die for all the inhabitants of the planet, and then had left the final decision of salvation in our hands, no one would have been saved. But Christ came into the world to save and not simply to create the possibility for someone to be saved.

What does it mean, then, how much God loved the world?

When John uses the word “world” in his gospel, it is generally to refer to the system of evil that prevails in this world and that is radically opposed to God and His ways. Later, in chapters 14 through 16 of the Gospel of John, the Upper Room address, one of the prominent themes of that address is the opposition that the world raises against Christians for the simple fact of being Christians: “If the world He hates you, know that he has hated me before he hated you ”(John 15:18). It is because of the hatred that the world feels for Christ that the world hates all who are His. But it was precisely out of love for that world that it hates Him, that God the Father sent His Son.

As the theologian Benjamin Warfield says, what John wants to show us in this text is not “that the world is so big that it takes a lot of love to encompass everything, but that the world is so bad that it takes a love” too big to be able to love him, and especially when we think about the fact that that love cost him to deliver his Son. That God, Warfield continues, “whose holy justice is inflamed with indignation at the sight of all iniquity, and whose absolute holiness turns away in horror from any impurity, loves this sinful world in spite of everything… in such a way that he has given his only begotten Son to die for him

God, by giving his only-begotten son to die on the Cross for the sin of humanity, demonstrated the great love he has for his creation, which allows us to choose if we want to receive that love by being saved by the one whom he Shipping.

Conclusion:
If you have not yet experienced the love of God, then I invite you to recognize Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior so that you can experience the wonderful love, comfort, and joy that nothing can give you but the Father … God bless you.