Title: The Cross of Salvation… Sacrificial Love!
Text: John 3:14-21
Thesis: We may share in the suffering of Christ by receiving his love and living sacrificially for others.
Lenten Series: The Crosses of Lent
Arthur Burns, a Jewish economist of great influence in Washington during the tenure of several Presidents, was once asked to pray at a gathering of evangelical politicians. This was his prayer: Lord, I pray that Jews would come to know Jesus Christ. And I pray that Buddhists would come to know Jesus Christ. And I pray that Muslims would come to know Christ. And Lord, I pray that Christians would come to know Jesus Christ.” (Mark Buchanan, “Singing in the Chains,” Christianity Today, February 2008, p. 33) My desire for us as we make our way through the Lenten Season is that we come to know Christ and experience the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his suffering...
Series Key Verse: I want to know Christ and experience the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His suffering, becoming like Him in His death, and so somehow, to attain the resurrection from the dead. Philippians 3:10-11
Introduction
The placard stapled to the telephone phone pole read: “Lost Dog.” There was a description of the dog and a promise of a substantial reward to whomever found and returned the dog. It said, “He’s only got three legs, he’s blind in the left eye, he’s missing his right ear, his tail is crooked, he’s been neutered, he is almost deaf and answers to the name ‘Lucky.’”
Obviously, the only thing that makes that old dog lucky is the fact that his owner loves him and wants him back.
I guess that is the essence of our own understanding of salvation. It is a good thing for us that God loves us and wants us back.
I want to unpack a series of truths about the nature of our Christian understanding of salvation. The first truth is that it originates with God. There would be no salvation were it not for God.
I. Existence of Salvation… salvation originates in God.
For God so loved… John 3:16
Cause and Effect Theory
Two or three years ago Bonnie and I left of Christmas Day to drive to Chicago to join our family for a few days between Christmas and New Years. At the intersection of Sheridan and 60th Avenue the light turned red and we were suddenly aware that we were at that the intersection was a sheet of black ice. We slid to a stop and were promptly rear-ended as other cars careened through the intersection resulting in multiple collisions. We are fortunate to have excellent insurance coverage with Farmers Insurance Group and a nice lady in Alabama arranged for us to pick up a rental car out at Jeffco Airport and we were on a way in just a couple of hours.
But to the point… had there not been black ice there would not have been any accidents at the intersection of Sheridan and 60th that day. The black ice was the factor that caused the phenomenon or effect of multiple accidents. Of course it isn’t that simple because we know that something caused the black ice and something caused the conditions that caused the conditions that caused the black ice and so.
Some call that the butterfly effect which proposes that a hurricane forming somewhere far out at sea is contingent on a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere, several weeks prior. Similarly the ripple effect is the phenomenon that is caused by a stone being dropped into a pond.
The argument for causality is essential to our biblical understanding of creation, i.e., “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…” The argument then being, God is the original cause of all causes and effects.
Similarly, our text today teaches us that Christian salvation originates with God.
When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. Romans 5:6-8
William Barclay reminds us that a biblical understanding of salvation is of “God acting, not for His own sake, but for ours.” (William Barclay, The Gospel of John, Vol. 1, p 128) In other words, we brought nothing to the table. We were utterly helpless. We were spiritually bankrupt. We did not have a leg to stand on. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. Salvation originates with God.
A second truth about the nature of salvation is that it is vast in scope.
II. Expanse of Salvation… the world.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son… John 3:16
The love of God is nothing if it is not immeasurably vast.
The Love of God Verse 3
The third verse of the hymn, The Love of God, speculates:
Could we with ink the ocean fill
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Tho’ stretched from sky to sky.
The love of God is immeasurably vast!
When the Apostle Paul wrote of God’s love he used expansive dimensional terms as well. He wrote:
When I think of the wisdom and scope of God’s plan… I pray that you may have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high and how deep his love really is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it. Ephesians 3:14-19
The Vastness of the Earth
The earth is a vast chunk of real estate… It is not, as the popular Disney ride says, “A Small, Small World.” A string stretched around the earth would be 24,901.24 miles long. If you dug a hole all the way through the earth, that hole would be 7,917.5 miles deep. The surface of the earth is over 57.5 million square miles. Earth is massive with vast expanses of land and water.
It is true that God loves the earth and it is true, as it says in Romans 8, “All of creation (including the earth) anticipates the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay.” To say that God loves the world, as in the earth, is a correct statement. However our text clearly links the “world” with “whosoever.” The word “world” refers to the people of the world.
The Vastness of People
This week I read an interesting article. It was originally published by the Population Reference Bureau in 1995, updated in 2002 and again in 2011. The article asked the question, “How many people have ever lived on Earth?”
The writer honestly observed, “Any such exercise, i.e., trying to figure out the answer to that question, is a highly speculative enterprise.” However, it is intriguing and of interest.
After all the prehistory and history estimates and “guesstimates,” the people at the Population Reference Bureau estimate that over the course of history 107 billion, 602 million, 707 thousand and 791 hundred people have lived on this earth… they also believe that only 6.5 % of those who have ever lived are living today, i.e., nearly 7 billion people. (That is in stark contrast to a commonly held belief in the 1970’s, to the effect, that 75% of the people who had ever lived were alive at that time.)
When the bible says, “For God so loved the world, it means God so loved 107 billion, 602 million, 707 thousand and 791 hundred people! That is a vast, vast, vast number of people!
The possibility that the numbers are highly speculative, do not diminish the fact that God’s love is without limit. God’s love is vast beyond any expanse we can imagine.
When I think of the wisdom and scope of God’s plan… I pray that you may have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high and how deep his love really is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it. Ephesians 3:14-19
The cause of salvation may be the love of God but the effect is our being able to experience God’s salvation.
III. Experience of Salvation… forgiveness and eternal life
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16
Love Feels and Does – Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee?
In the 43rd Sonnet of Sonnets of the Portuguese Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a love poem to her husband, Robert Browning. They had eloped and they were deeply in love.
How do I love thee? (And then she says) Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
In How Do I Love Thee? She expresses her feelings of love but she also expresses what her love does.
When Jesus spoke of love he commanded his disciples to, “love each other in the same way I have loved you.” And then he said, “This is how you measure love – the greatest love is shown when people lay down their lives for their friends.” John 15:12-13 And so it is that we enter into the suffering of Christ as well when we live out sacrificial love for others.
Love not only feels it does. Love acts!
What More Can God Do to Show He Loves Us?
Brennan Manning is one of my favorite authors. Among his books are the classics, Ragamuffin Gospel and Ruthless Trust. While growing up his best friend was Ray Brennan. They did everything together. They bought a car together as teenagers. They double dated together. They rode to school together. They enlisted in the army together, went to boot camp and ultimately to the frontlines in WWII together. One night Brennan was reminiscing about the good ole days back in Brooklyn while Ray ate a chocolate bar. Suddenly a live grenade dropped into their foxhole. Ray looked at Brennan, smiled, dropped his chocolate bar and threw himself onto the grenade.
When Brennan became a priest he was instructed to take the name of a saint, so he took the name of his friend, Brennan. Years later he went to visit Ray’s mother in Brooklyn and in the course of their conversation Brennan asked, “Do you think Ray loved me?” He said, Mrs. Brennan got up off the couch, shook her finger in his face and shouted, “What more could he have done for you?”
Brennan Manning said at that moment he had a double epiphany. Not only did he know Ray loved him… he grasped the extent of God’s love for him. How much more can a person love another person than by dying for that person?
And should we ask that same question of Jesus Christ, the answer would be:
How much more could he have done for you?
When his friend Ray died for him, he was given the gift of life. When Jesus Christ died for him, he was given the gifts of forgiveness and eternal life. The experience of salvation is the receiving of a love that acted in our behalf… a love that laid down his life so that we may receive forgiveness of sin and eternal life.
Christ suffered when he died for our sins once for all time… that he might bring us safely home to God. I Peter 3:18
Did Jesus love us? How much more could he have done for us?
Given the vastness of God’s love it is beyond sad to realize that some people resist and even reject it.
IV. Exception to Salvation… rejection of God’s love.
God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to save it. There is no judgment awaiting those who trust him. But those who do not trust him have already been judged for not receiving the only Son of God. John 3:17-18
Grabbing a Rope from Our Rescuer
A philosopher, a scientist and a simple man, none of whom could swim, were trapped in a cove surrounded by a sheer cliff as the tide was coming in. Rescuers lowered a rope with a safety harness. The philosopher said, “Ah, this looks like a rope, but I may be mistaken – it may in fact be an illusion.” So he did not take hold of the rope and was drowned. The scientist said, “Ah, this is an 11 mm polyester rope with a breaking strain of 2800 kilograms.” He continued with an extensive analysis of the ropes physical and chemical properties, but did not attach himself to the rope and drowned. The simple man said, “I don’t know what it is, but it is my only chance so I’m grabbing it and holding on for dear life.” He was rescued. (Adapted from John Polkinghome and Nicholas Beale, Questions of Truth, Westminster John Know Press, 2009, pp26-27)
All three men found themselves in the exact same predicament. They were all going to drown if they were not rescued. Rescue was available to each man but two of the men over-thought it and drowned. The third man simply grabbed hold of his only hope and hung on.
There is one huge exception to the offer of rescue and salvation and that is simply grabbing the rope God extends to every person. Everyone who simply believes Christ died for them and accepts or receives God’s offer of salvation receives eternal life. However, the person who does not is the exception.
Interestingly, the two men who did not grab the rope essentially condemned themselves to death. That is what God’s Word teaches. God offers salvation to every person but the person who rejects it condemns himself and suffers the consequences of his decision.
Conclusion
Certainly, the Season of Lent is an occasion wherein we may consciously be aware of the sacrificial nature of Christ’s suffering for our eternal salvation and consciously enter into his suffering by living out sacrificial love toward others...
We may share in the suffering of Christ as we pick up our crosses and follow him by living out sacrificial love.
Jesus said, “I command you to love each other in the same way I have loved you. And here is how to measure it – the greatest love is shown when people lay down their lives for their friends.” John 15:12-13
But the Season of Lent is also an occasion wherein we are gratefully aware of Christ’s love for us… and perhaps for the first time, wish to receive it for ourselves.
But to all who believed and received Christ, he gave the right to become children of God. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. John 3:12 and 16
