Life is full of choices:
• Some are easy choices: what to wear, what to eat, what to watch on TV.
• Some are difficult choices: where to attend university, where to work, when to retire.
• All of you had a choice this morning: Should I go to church or not?
• Some choices are easy; some are difficult. But in life we face one pivotal choice: Should I put my trust in Jesus Christ or not?
22After this, Jesus and his disciples went out in the Judean countryside, where he spent some time with them, and baptized. 23Now John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was plenty of water, and people were constantly coming to be baptized. 24(This was before John was put in prison.) 25An argument developed between some of John’s disciples and a certain Jewa over the matter of ceremonial washing. 26They came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan—the one you testified about—well, he is baptizing, and everyone is going to him.”
27To this John replied, “A man can receive only what is given him from heaven. 28You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Christ but am sent ahead of him.’ 29The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. 30He must become greater; I must become less.
31 “The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all. 32He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony. 22The man who has accepted it has certified that God is truthful. 34For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for Godb gives the Spirit without limit. 35The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. 36Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.”c
a 25 Some manuscripts and certain Jews b 34 Greek he c 36 Some interpreters end quotation after verse 30.
Verse 36 will be our focus: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.”
1. God is both a God of love and a God of WRATH.
“God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day” (Psalm 7:11).
God’s wrath = God’s intense hatred of all sin.
If God did not hate sin, He would be less than perfect. This week I was reading about the execution of children and torture that took place in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was in power. If God could watch that kind of evil and not be filled with wrath, He would be morally flawed.
We may not be as evil as Saddam Hussein, but God still looks upon our sin in anger. We are guilty before God. “Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (James 2:10).
“Yet he was merciful; he forgave their iniquities and did not destroy them. Time after time he restrained his anger and did not stir up his full wrath” (Psalm 78:38).
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Romans 1:18).
“Because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed” (Romans 2:5).
“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming” (Colossians 3:5-6).
“[The people of the earth] called to the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?” (Revelation 6:16-17).
Unless we are saved from real danger there is no meaning in salvation.
2. Sin cannot go UNPUNISHED.
“The vague and tenuous hope that God is too kind to punish the ungodly has become a deadly opiate for the consciences of millions. It hushes their fears and allows them to practice all pleasant forms of iniquity while death draws every day nearer and the command to repent goes unheeded.”—A. W. Tozer
“Remains” – God’s wrath will not eventually fade away. When I misbehaved as a child, my father would sometimes say, “When we get home, you’re going to be punished.” I would always hope that when we got home he would forget. Occasionally, he did. But God will not forget about our sin.
“The entire New Testament is overshadowed by the certainty of a coming day of universal judgment, and by the problem thence arising: how may we sinners get right with God while there is yet time?”—J. I. Packer
God is slow to anger.
3. JESUS bore the wrath of God against our sin.
Even though God is angry because of our sin, He still seeks our good. That’s the difference between our sinful wrath and God’s wrath. We seek harm for our enemies. But “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
“Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God” (Romans 3:25 KJV).
God had not simply forgiven sin and forgotten about the punishment in generations past. He had forgiven sins and stored up His righteous anger against those sins. But at the cross the fury of all that stored-up wrath against sin was unleashed against God’s own Son. It was like forgiveness on credit. The payment for sins was coming.
Propitiation = a sacrifice that appeases God’s wrath and in so doing changes God’s wrath toward us into favor. The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross did not make God love us. It was God who gave Jesus to be a propitiation.
“Therefore, he had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17 NASB).
“And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2 KJV).
“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
What does John 3:22-36 tell us about the One who became the propitiation for our sins?
a. Jesus is the BRIDEGROOM (v. 29). (Context: John the Baptist’s disciples were concerned about people leaving John to follow Jesus.) The Lord is called the bridegroom of Israel in the Old Testament. Jesus = the Lord.
b. Jesus is ABOVE ALL (v. 31).
c. Jesus is LOVED by the Father (v. 35).
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).
The question does not mean, “Why have you left me forever?” for Jesus knew that He was leaving the world, that He was going to the Father (John 14:28; 16:10, 17). Jesus knew that He would rise again (John 2:19; Luke 18:33; Mark 9:31). This cry of desolation was not a cry of total despair. Furthermore, “Why have you forsaken me?” does not imply that Jesus wondered why He was dying. He had said, “The Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Jesus knew that He was dying for our sins.
Jesus’ cry is a quotation from Psalm 22:1, a psalm in which the psalmist asks why God is so far from helping him, why God delays in rescuing him: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent” (vv. 1-2). Yet the psalmist was eventually rescued by God, and his cry of desolation turned into a song of praise (vv. 22-31). Jesus, who knew the words of Scripture, knew the context of Psalm 22. In quoting this verse, He is quoting a cry of desolation that also has implicit in its context an unrelenting faith in the God who will ultimately deliver Him. Nevertheless, it remains a very real cry of anguish because the suffering has gone on so long and no release is in sight.
With this context for the quotation it is better to understand the question “Why have you forsaken me?” as meaning, “Why have you left me for so long?” This is the sense it has in Psalm 22. Jesus, in His human nature, knew He would have to bear our sins. But, in His human consciousness, He probably did not know how long this suffering would take. Yet to bear the guilt of millions of sins even for a moment would cause the greatest anguish of soul. To face the deep and furious wrath of an infinite God even for an instant would cause the most profound fear. But Jesus’ suffering was not over in a minute—or two—or ten. When would it end? Hour after hour it went on—the dark weight of sin and the deep wrath of God poured over Jesus in wave after wave. Jesus at last cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Why must this suffering go on so long? Oh God, my God, will you ever bring it to an end?
Then at last Jesus knew His suffering was nearing completion. He knew He had consciously borne all the wrath of the Father against our sins, for God’s anger had abated and the awful heaviness of sin was being removed. He knew that all that remained was to yield up His spirit to the Father and die. With a shout of victory Jesus cried out, “It is finished!” (John 19:30). Then with a loud voice He once more cried out, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46). Then He died. As Isaiah had predicted, “he poured out his soul unto death” and “bore the sin of many” (Isaiah 53:12). God the Father saw “the fruit of the travail of his soul” and was “satisfied” (Isaiah 53:11). (The above four paragraphs were adapted from Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, pp. 576-577)
“We can never understand the love of God until we understand the wrath of God.”—D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Jesus faced God’s wrath so that we could escape it. “Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:3-5). “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:9).
Many years ago, a father and his daughter were walking through the grass on the Canadian prairie. In the distance, they saw a prairie fire. Eventually, they realized, it would engulf them. The father knew there was only one way of escape: they would quickly begin a fire right where they were and burn a large patch of grass. When the huge fire drew near, they then would stand on the section that had already been burned. When the fire approached them, the girl was terrified by the raging flames. But her father assured her, “The flames can’t get to us. We are standing where the fire has already been.”
Those who trust in Christ as Savior can never come under God’s wrath. They are safe; they are where the wrath of God has already been. (Erwin W. Lutzer, Failure: The Back Door to Success, p. 53)
4. The pivotal choice: TRUST in Jesus and receive eternal life or REJECT Jesus and face God’s wrath.
ETERNAL LIFE: The Life Jesus Gives
Part 3: THE PIVOTAL CHOICE (John 3:22-36)
“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him” (v. 36).
1. God is both a God of love and a God of _____________.
“God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day” (Psalm 7:11; see also Psalm 78:38; Romans 1:18; Revelation 6:16-17).
God’s wrath = God’s intense hatred of all sin.
“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming” (Colossians 3:5-6).
2. Sin cannot go _____________________.
“The vague and tenuous hope that God is too kind to punish the ungodly has become a deadly opiate for the consciences of millions. It hushes their fears and allows them to practice all pleasant forms of iniquity while death draws every day nearer and the command to repent goes unheeded.”—A. W. Tozer
“Remains” – God’s wrath will not eventually fade away.
3. ____________ bore the wrath of God against our sin.
“Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God” (Romans 3:25 KJV; see also Hebrews 2:17; 1 John 2:2; 4:10).
Propitiation = a sacrifice that appeases God’s wrath and in so doing changes God’s wrath toward us into favor.
What does John 3:22-36 tell us about the One who became the propitiation for our sins?
a. Jesus is the ______________________ (v. 29). The Lord is called the bridegroom of Israel in the Old Testament. Jesus = the Lord.
b. Jesus is ______________________ (v. 31).
c. Jesus is ________________ by the Father (v. 35).
“We can never understand the love of God until we understand the wrath of God.”—D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Jesus faced God’s wrath so that we could escape it. “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:9; see also Romans 5:9; Ephesians 2:3-5; 1 Thessalonians 1:10).
4. The pivotal choice: ____________ in Jesus and receive eternal life or ____________ Jesus and face God’s wrath.
LIFE GROUP QUESTIONS
Warming Up
1. What do you think is the most important word in John 3:16? Why?
2. How would you define God’s love?
3. What would God be like if He didn’t hate and punish sin?
Look to the Book
4. Read John 3:17 and 9:39. Did Jesus come to bring judgment or not?
5. Read Genesis 22:1-19. What similarities and differences are there between this passage and John 3:16?
6. John 3:16 says that God loves the world. So why does 1 John 2:15-17 tell us to not love the world.
7. Read Jeremiah 48:26-36 and Ephesians 2:1-5. What do these passages tell us about the wrath and love of God?
8. How does the wrath of God make sense of salvation?
9. Read Romans 3:21-26. If God must punish sin, how were people saved prior to Christ’s death?
10. God demonstrates what love really is by His actions toward us. What is real love?
So What?
11. How should we respond to God’s love for us?
12. What specific action(s) will you do this week in response to God’s love for you?
