What was the first verse you ever memorized? Many of us were taught to memorize John 3:16 when we were children, and for good reason! This verse encapsulates the heart of the gospel and God’s unfathomable love for the world. There is no display of love greater than this: that God sent his only Son into the world to save sinners through Christ’s death and resurrection.
In 1885, Spurgeon examines the depths of John 3:16 in a sermon titled “Immeasurable Love”. As he explains, we will never grow beyond our need for the essential truths found in this verse. “Come, ye aged saints,” he says, “be children again; and you that have long known your Lord, take up your first spelling-book, and go over your ABC again, by learning that God so loved the world, that he gave his Son to die, that man might live through him.” Who among us – even the most mature of Christians – can fully mine the depths of the gospel?
God gave His Son. This was done willingly and abundantly, without coercion or reluctance. He offered what was closest to Him, His only Son, to redeem the world. Can anyone fathom the magnitude of God’s love that He displayed through His Son? “That love which spares nothing, but spends itself to help and bless its object, is love indeed, and not the mere name of it.” Christ is the greatest expression of God’s love for us.
And now, this great love is available to all if they repent and put their faith in Christ, trusting in His saving gift. Not only is this love given freely to all who believe, but there is no fear that it will ever run dry or His promise of redemption will ever be retracted. His love has no end and is forever for his children. “As long as there is a God, the believer shall not only exist, but live. As long as there is a heaven, you shall enjoy it; as long as there is a Christ, you shall live in his love; and as long as there is an eternity, you shall continue to fill it with delight.”
Excerpt:
Throughout the ages the great Father stood to his gift. He looked upon his Only Begotten as man’s hope, the inheritance of the chosen seed, who in him would possess all things. Every sacrifice was God’s renewal of his gift of grace, a reassurance that he had bestowed the gift, and would never draw back therefrom. The whole system of types under the law betokened that in the fulness of time the Lord would in very deed give up his Son, to be born of a woman, to bear the iniquities of his people, and to die the death in their behalf. I greatly admire this pertinacity of love; for many a man in a moment of generous excitement can perform a supreme act of benevolence, and yet could not bear to look at it calmly, and consider it from year to year; the slow fire of anticipation would have been unbearable. […] Yet the Lord God spared not his own Son, but freely delivered him up for us all, doing it in his heart from age to age. Herein is love: love which many waters could not quench: love eternal, inconceivable, infinite!