John 3: 16-21
"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.
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.
But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God."

Message:
In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul, under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, pens one of the most beautiful descriptions of love:
"Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, it is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails......"

He may have the gift of tongues, but it was no better than the uproar of heathen worship if love was absent. He may have the gift of prophecy or have the gift of intellectual knowledge, but both have no value to mankind if love is not behind them and motivating them.

(1) He stresses its absolute permanency. When all the things in which men glory have passed away love will still stand. In one of the most wonderfully lyrical verses of Scripture THE SONG OF SOLOMON (8:7) sings, "Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it." The one unconquerable thing is love! That is one of the great reasons for believing in immortality. When love is entered into, there comes into life a relationship against which the assaults of time are helpless and which transcends death.

(2) He stresses its absolute completeness. As things are, what we see are reflections in a mirror. That would be even more suggestive to the Corinthians than it is to us. Corinth was famous for its manufacture of mirrors. But the modern mirror as we know it, with its perfect reflection, did not emerge until the thirteenth century. The Corinthian mirror was made of highly polished metal and, even at its best, gave but an imperfect reflection. It has been suggested that what this phrase means is that we see through a window made with horn. In those days windows were so made and all that could be seen through them was a dim and shadowy outline.

In this life Paul feels we see only the reflections of God and are left with much that is mystery and riddle. We see that reflection in God's world, for

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the work of anyone's hands tell us something about the workman, we see it in the Gospel and we see it in Jesus Christ. Even if in Christ we have the perfect relation, our seeking minds can grasp it only in part, for the finite can never grasp the infinite. Our knowledge is still like the knowledge of a child. But the way of love will lead us in the end to a day when the veil is drawn aside and we see face to face and know even as we are known. We cannot ever reach that date without love, because God is love and only he who loves can see him.

(3) He stresses its absolute supremacy. Great as faith and hope are, love is still greater. Faith without love is cold, and hope with love is grim. Love is the fire which kindles faith and it is the light which turns hope into certainty.

Such are the dimensions and characteristics of human love.
Listen to what the Scriptures say about God's love!

Romans 8:31-39
"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?
Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies.
Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also make intercession for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
As it is written: "For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter."
Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come,
nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Romans 5:8-9
"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him."

1 John 3:1-2
"Behold what manner of love that Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!
Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."

Ah! THE GREATNESS OF THE LOVE OF GOD!
NOT ONLY IS THE LOVE OF GOD GREAT....IT IS INFINITE!

This thought is expressed in Paul's prayer recorded in Ephesians 3:14-19:
"For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.
I pray that out of His glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ made dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, they have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpassed knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

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GOD'S LOVE MEANS THAT GOD ETERNALLY GIVES HIMSELF TO OTHERS. This attribute of God shows that it is part of his nature to give Himself in order to bring about blessing and good for others.

John tells us that "God is love" (1 John 4:8). We see evidence that this attribute of God was active even before the creation of the world among the members of the Trinity. Jesus speaks to His Father of "my glory which you have given in your love for me before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24), thus indicating that there was love and a giving of honor from the Father to the Son from all eternity. It continues at the present time, for we read, "The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand." (John 3:35)

The self-giving love that characterizes the Trinity finds clear expression in God's relationship to mankind. "In this 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). Paul writes, "God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Paul also speaks of "the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20), thus showing an awareness of the directly personal application of Christ's love to individual sinners.

It should cause us great joy to know that it is the purpose of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit to give themselves to us to bring us true joy and happiness. It is God's nature to act that way toward those upon whom He has set His love, and he will continue to act that way toward us for all eternity.

One of the great classics of our day is a book by J. I. Packer...KNOWING GOD. In chapter twelve of this wonderful book, Dr. Packer tells about the love of God. Let me quote from his book:
"To know God's love is indeed heaven on earth. And the New Testament sets forth this knowledge, not as the privilege of a favored few, that as a normal part of ordinary Christian experience, something to which only the spiritually unhealthy or malformed will be strangers..

When Paul says, "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us (Romans 5:5), he means not love for God, as Augustine thought, but knowledge of God's love for us. And though he had never met the Roman Christians to whom he was writing, Paul took it for granted that the statement would be as true of them as it was of him. Three points in Paul's words deserve comment. First, notice the verb SHED ABROAD. It means literally POURED or DUMPED OUT. It is the word used of the OUTPOURING of the Spirit himself in Acts 2:17-18, 33. It suggests a free flow and large quantity--in fact, an inundation. Hence the rendering of the NEB, "God's love has FLOODED our inmost heart." Paul is not talking of faint or fitful impressions, but of deep and overwhelming ones.

Then, second, notice the tense of the verb. It is in the perfect, which implies a settled state consequent upon a completed action.
The thought is that knowledge of the love of God, having flooded our hearts, FILLS THEM NOW, just as a valley once flooded remains full of water. Paul assumes that all his readers, like himself, will be living in the enjoyment of a strong and abiding sense of God's love for them.

Third, notice that the instilling of this knowledge is described as part of the REGULAR MINISTRY OF THE SPIRIT to those who receive him, to all, that is, who are born again, all who are true believers. One could wish that this aspect of his ministry was prized more highly than it is at the present time.

With a perversity as pathetic as it is impoverishing, we have become preoccupied today with the

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extraordinary, sporadic, nonuniversal ministries of the Spirit to the neglect of the ordinary, general ones. Thus, we show a great deal more interest in the gifts of healing and tongues--gifts of which, as Paul pointed out, not all Christians are meant to partake anyway (1 Cor. 12:28-30)--than in the Spirit's ordinary work of giving peace, joy, hope and love, through the shedding abroad in our hearts of knowledge of the love of God.

"GOD'S LOVE IS AN EXERCISE OF HIS GOODNESS TOWARD INDIVIDUAL SINNERS WHEREBY, HAVING IDENTIFIED HIMSELF WITH THEIR WELFARE, HE HAS GIVEN HIS SON TO BE THEIR SAVIOR, AND NOW BRINGS THEM TO KNOW AND ENJOY HIM IN A COVENANT RELATIONSHIP." (Packer)

Dr. Packer goes on to explain his definition of God's love as noted above.
"GOD'S LOVE IS AN EXERCISE OF HIS GOODNESS." The Bible means by God's goodness his cosmic generosity. Goodness in God, writes Berkhof, is "that perfection in God which prompts him to deal bountifully and kindly with all His creatures. It is the affection which the Creator feels towards His sentient creatures as such. (Psa. 145:9, 15-16, Luke 6:35; Acts 14:17).

Of this goodness God's love is the supreme and most glorious manifestation.
"Love, generally," wrote James Orr, "is that principle which leads one moral being to desire and delight in another, and reaches its highest form in that personal fellowship in which each lives in the life of the other, and finds his joy in imparting himself to the other, and in receiving back the outflow of that other’s affection unto himself. Such is the love of God!

GOD'S LOVE IS AN EXERCISE OF HIS GOODNESS TOWARD SINNERS. As such, it has the nature of GRACE and MERCY. It is an outgoing of God in kindness which not merely is underserved, but is actually contrary to desert; for the objects of God's love are rational creatures who have broken God's law, whose nature is corrupt in God's sight, and who merit only condemnation and final banishment from his presence.

It is staggering that God should love sinners; yet it is true! God loves creatures who have become unlovely and (one would have thought) unlovable. There was nothing whatever in the objects of his love to call it forth; nothing in us could attract or prompt it. Love among persons is awakened by something in the beloved, but the love of God is free, spontaneous, unevoked, uncaused.

God loves people because he has chosen to love them--as Charles Wesley put it, "he hath loved us, he hath loved us, because he would love love" (an echo of Deut. 7:7-8)--and no reason for his love can be given except his own sovereign good pleasure!

The Greek and Roman world of New Testament times had never dreamed of such love; its gods were often credited with lusting after women, but never with loving sinners; and the New Testament writers had to introduce what was virtually a new Greek word, AGAPE, to express the love of God as they knew it.

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son...."
No wonder Paul speaks of God's love as great and as passing knowledge! (See Eph. 2:4; 3:19). Was there ever such costly munificence? Paul agrees that this supreme gift is itself the guarantee of every other; "He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?" (Romans 8:32).

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In St. Paul's Cathedral, London is a life-size, marble statue of Christ writhing in anguish on the cross. The statute is inscribed: "THIS IS HOW GOD LOVED THE WORLD."
Luther called John 3:16 "the heart of the Bible--the Gospel in miniature." It's so simple a child can understand it; yet it condenses the deep and marvelous truth of redemption into these few pungent words:

God..............................the greatest Lover
so loved........................the greatest degree
the world.......................the greatest number
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 deliverance
"But".............................the greatest difference
"Have"......................... the greatest certainty
"Everlasting life".............the greatest possession.

This is a point made by one of the greatest stories in the Bible, the story of Hosea and his unfaithful wife, Gomer.

Hosea was a preacher. One day the Lord came to him and said, "Hosea, I want you to marry a woman who is going to prove unfaithful to you. You are going to love her, but she is going to turn from your love. Nevertheless, the more faithless she becomes, the more faithful and loving you will be. I want you to do this because I want to give Israel an illustration of how I love them. Your marriage will be a pageant. You will play God. The woman will play the part of Israel. For I love Israel with an unchangeable love, and she runs from me and takes other gods for lovers."

Hosea did as God had told him to do. So the Book of Hosea tells us, "When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him. "Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the Lord." So he married Gomer daughter of Didlaim, and she conceived and bore him a son" (Hosea 1:2-3).

At this point in this story God intervened, for he had said that he was going to order each stage of the relationship between Hosea and Gomer. God intervened to give a name to this son. "Call his name Jezreel," God said. Jezreel means "scattered," for God was going to scatter the people of Israel all over the face of the earth. After a time Gomer conceived again and bore a daughter. "Call her Lo-Ruhamah," God said. Lo-Ruhamah means "not pitied." God was saying that the time would come when he would "no longer showed love to the house of Israel" (v. 6). Finally, another son was born and Hosea was told to call him Lo-Ammi. Lo-Ammi means "not my people." "For," said God, "you are not my people, and I am not your God."

If the story stopped at this point the ending would be exceedingly dismal, and the pageant would be illustrating the opposite of the unchangeable love of God. But it does not stop here! God intervenes again to tell how the story will end. "I am going to change the names of those children one day," God promised. "I am going to change Jezreel to Jezreel." It is the same word but with a second meaning, a change from "scattered" to "planted," because in the ancient world the same gesture by which a man would throw something

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away was that by which he would plant grain. God was promising to plant the people once again in their own land, as he has done in our own generation. Moreover, said God, "I am going to change Lo-Ruhamah to Ruhamah and Lo-Ammi to Ammi because the time is coming when I will again have pity upon those who will have again become my children. The Bible says, "Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where it was said to them, "You are not my people," they will be called "sons of the living God" (v. 10). The time came in the marriage when the events that God had foretold happened. Gomer looked around and caught the eye of a stranger. Before long she had left with him, and Hosea was alone. The time came when her lover could no longer take care of her, and she became hungry.

"Now," said God to Hosea, "I want you to go and see that she gets the things she needs, because I take care of the people of Israel even when they are running away from me." Hosea went and bought her the groceries. He gave them to the man who was living with his wife, but he said that Gomer did not even know he had bought them. This story tells us, "Their mother has been unfaithful and has conceived them in disgrace. She said. "I will go after my lovers, who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink."....She has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine, and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold" (Hosea 2:5-8).

Does God love like that? Yes, he does! Have you ever run away from God? Of course, you have! What happened? God paid your bills! If you have been running away from God, do you realize that it is God who gives you the strength to run? Here is a girl who says, "I don't care if God called me into Christian work. I'm going to turn away and marry this young man. But you cannot run away from God's love successfully. You can run, but God pursues you. He steps before you and says, "My child, I am the One who has been providing for you all the time. Won't you stop running and allow me to take you to myself?"

Back to our story of Hosea and Gomer. The final act of the drama was approaching. The time came when Gomer sank so low that she was sold as a slave in the city of Jerusalem, and God told Hosea to go and buy her. Slaves were always sold naked. Thus, when a beautiful girl was on sale, the men bid freely and the bidding always went high.

Here was Gomer. Her clothes were taken off. The bidding began. One man bid three pieces of silver. Another said five...ten...twelve...thirteen. The low bidders dropped out when Hosea said, "Fifteen pieces of silver." A voice from the back of the crowd said, "Fifteen pieces of silver and a bushel of barley." "Fifteen pieces of silver and a bushel and a half of barley," said Hosea. The auctioneer looked around for a higher bid. Seeing none he declared, "This slave is sold to Hosea for fifteen pieces of silver and a bushel and a half of barley." So Hosea took his wife (whom he now owned), put her clothes on her, and led her away into the anonymity of the crowd.

You say, "Is that a true picture of God's love? Yes, it is! That is how God loves you. Listen to what the Bible says about it. "The Lord said to me. "Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adultress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.’ So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and lethek of barley. Then I told her, "You are to live with me many days, you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you" (Hosea 3:1-3).

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OH, THE GREATNESS OF THE UNCHANGEABLE LOVE OF ALMIGHTY GOD! God loves you and me like that! We are the slave sold under the bondage of sin. We are the one placed upon the world's auction block. The bidding of the world goes higher and higher. "What am I bid for this person's soul?" At this point Jesus Christ, the faithful bridegroom, enters the slave market of sin and bids the price of his blood! "Sold to Jesus Christ for the price of his blood! Says Almighty God. So he bought you. He clothed you in his righteousness. And he led you away with himself, saying, "You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you." Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay the penalty of our sins...to set us free from the bondage of sin and its guilt...to place His Spirit within us...to fill us with His peace and joy...and eternally, to make a place for us to live with Him for all eternity!

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son...."

GOD'S LOVE TO SINNERS REACHES ITS OBJECTIVE AS IT BRINGS THEM TO KNOW AND ENJOY HIM IN A COVENANT RELATIONSHIP. A covenant relationship is one in which two parties are permanently pledged to each other in mutual service and dependence (example: marriage as depicted in our story of Hosea and Gomer). A covenant promise is one by which a covenant relation is set up (example: marriage vows). Biblical religion has the form of a covenant relation with God. The first occasion on which the terms of the relation were made plain was when God showed himself to Abraham as EL SHADDAI (God Almighty, God All-Sufficient) and formally gave him the covenant promise, "to be your God and the God to your descendants after you" (Genesis 17:1-7)

Here is what God was saying: "You shall have as true an interest in all my attributes for your good, as they are mine for my own glory...My grace, saith God, shall be yours to pardon you, and my power shall be yours to protect you, and my wisdom shall be yours to direct you, and my goodness shall be yours to relieve you, and my mercy shall be yours to supply you, and my glory shall be yours to crown you. This is the comprehensive promise, for God to be our God: in includes all."

THE ETERNAL, ALMIGHTY GOD IN LOVE, revealed the extent of that LOVE at the cross of Jesus Christ. Thus faith in Christ introduces us into a relation bid with incalculable blessing, both now and for eternity!