For God So Loved The WorldSample

For most Christians, John 3:16 is a familiar verse, because it sums up the Gospel in a mere 25 words, give or take.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (ESV)

Appropriately, we celebrate what this verse says about God: His love, His mercy, His grace, His sacrifice. But what does this verse say about us? What must be true of you and of me for God to have freely chosen this road to ensure our own path toward redemption, salvation, and eternal life?

We can look to the Bible’s very first chapter to discover the answer: You are made in the image of God. The world is full of God’s magnificent creations—the wondrous, the beautiful, the breathtaking—but you, as a member of the human race, are the only being created in God’s image, and it is His image that establishes your value.

Out of all the words in John 3:16, the shortest is arguably the strongest: “so.” God didn’t just think the world was “okay.” In His own words it was “very good,” and He “so” loved the world, loved humanity, that He sacrificed His Son to bridge the gulf between Himself and mankind.

“Well,” you may think, “He may have loved some people enough to send His son to die on the cross, but He doesn’t love me that way.” John 3:16 doesn’t say that God loved Billy Graham and Mother Teresa so much that He decided to save everyone else. The passage says that He loved all “the world,” so that “whoever” believes in Him can be saved. That “whoever” is you. It’s me.

The implications of this truth are revolutionary. They establish a firm foundation for positive self-regard and diminish the impulse toward self-contempt. There is nothing about you that God doesn’t know; He loves you as you are, as He created you to be. There is no secret place of your life that upon discovery would void God’s promise to you. This liberating truth must drive us to constant gratefulness and unhindered testimony of God’s vast love for all the world.

Today, ask God to reveal His love not just for “the world,” but for you.