God was Willing to Sacrifice His Only Son…That’s a Lot!
Most people are familiar with the Bible verse, John 3:16. It is the most popular verse out there. The reason for this is in its simplicity. This one verse summarizes the entire Gospel message in one simple statement.
This is the Gospel in a nutshell.
- Martin Luther called it “The Gospel in miniature”.
- Biblical Commentator William Barclay wrote that it is “the very essence of the Gospel.”
- Comedian Jeff Foxworthy stated, “This is the promise that bears hope for the hopeless.”
- Gospel preacher, Robert Jackson, entitled it “The greatest sentence ever written.”
- Author Max Lucado described it as the “hope diamond of the Bible.”
John 3:16.
Jesus said to Nicodemus, the inquiring Rabbi, who came to Jesus by night:
For God
so loved the world
that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whoever believes in Him
should not perish
but have everlasting life.
John 3:16, “is a twenty-six word parade of hope: beginning with God, ending with Life, and urging us to do the same,” wrote Max Lucado. “Brief enough to write on a napkin or memorize in a moment, yet solid enough to weather two thousand years of storms and questions.
If you know nothing of the Bible, start here. If you know everything in the Bible, return here.”
An unknown author penned this tribute to John 3:16
“God“…………………………………………..….The greatest Lover
“so loved”………………………………………The greatest Degree
“the world”……………………………….….The greatest Company
“that He gave”………………………………………The greatest Act
“His only begotten Son”…………………………The greatest Gift
“that whosoever”………….………..……The greatest Invitation
“believeth”………….………………..…….The greatest Simplicity
“in Him”………………….…………………..…..The greatest Person
“should not perish”….……………….…….The greatest Promise
“but”………………………..………..………The greatest Difference
“have”….……………………………………..The greatest Certainty
“everlasting life”………………………..The greatest Possession
God’s willingness to give His Son to be killed on a cross by the very people that He came to save shows how much God loves us. This level of sacrifice is hard to emulate.
The Rev. George Bennard was “praying for a full understanding of the cross and its plan in Christianity.”, when he wrote the famous hymn, The Old Rugged Cross. He spent many hours in study, prayer and meditation, until he could say, “I saw the Christ of the cross as if I were seeing John 3:16 leave the printed page, take form and act out the meaning of redemption.”
As humans we overcomplicate the simple. We think everything has to be difficult. We think the message in John 3:16 is too amazing to understand and too simple to accept. It’s not!
It’s everything we need to know and nothing we don’t.
God has done all of the hard work… we just need to believe, accept and share!