Again, it’s better than that. You’ll please turn with me in your Bibles. We’ll begin with the Book of Jonah, chapter 2.
Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, ‘I called out to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol, I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’ The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love, but I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord.’
And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land. There we return to John, chapter 3, beginning at verse 16.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Father, we thank you for the gift of your Son. We confess our sins and acknowledge that we need saving. Thank you for sending us the Savior. His salvation alone belongs to you. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
‘God so loved the world’ is the first of two reasons which Jesus, through John, gave to Nicodemus and us to explain why God the Father sent his Son, the Word made flesh, the logos who is Theos and Andros, into the world. You would think that love itself is reason enough. Is love not a good enough reason for us? Do people not try to justify most things by the reason of love? The world teaches that love is love, right? That love is enough.
I mean, together even John and Paul tell us, ‘All you need is love.’ ‘Love is all you need,’ but those were the Beatles, not the apostles. Yet, if one considers the consequences of that philosophy, you quickly see that love is never enough. Something more is always required. Acceptance, adoption, affirmation, promotion, submission, and obedience all become required.
So it is with all reliance upon human love, a love which does not naturally or easily manifest itself as agape, because sinful humanity is not naturally self-sacrificing in our depravity. So it is a good thing for us that God is agape. Still, the Apostle Paul proclaims to us the good news that, while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly—that’s us. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. That is because God so loved the world.
But even that is not the whole or all of the why for which God gave his only Son. God the Father also gave his Son because of who he is, because God is the Savior. He is the God who saves. John 3:16 is the first reason for our salvation: God’s great love for the world. And that makes John 3:17 the second reason because verse 17 tells us, ‘For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’
Reading this verse, we tend to be more inclined to focus heavily on the first part rather than the second. We focus on the negative statement, since it becomes such a positive for us: ‘For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world.’ Because no, no one wants to be condemned. ‘Judge not, lest you be judged,’ right?
Alone, the first part of this verse would be a very easy gospel to receive, but again that is not all there is to it. That kind of good news without the threat and promise of judgment just means that the status quo continues without the fear of consequence. Instead, we must remember that it is the second part where the truly good news is—that the world might be saved through him. That is the gospel of salvation—not freedom from consequence.
Because by accepting, we must also admit to that most painful fact: we need a Savior. If the world and all humanity is truly fallen, as Scripture teaches us, and the Lord God simply chose to not punish our sin and wickedness, then that would be an act of gross injustice, not mercy. If someone does the crime, then they must do the time. We call that justice. If someone does the crime but then does no time, could any reasonable person call that mercy or grace? No, because that would be unjust.
That is an act of injustice without any question or debate. If someone gets off without any punishment, does anybody besides the perpetrator call it good? No, because it is not just, right, or fair to the victim. And when it comes to sin, God is the victim of our sin. Nowhere does it say that God is fair; he is just.
Please understand: the gospel is not about freedom from our rightful consequences. That would be antinomianism, but that is a charge frequently leveled at the gospel through misunderstanding and confusion, and sometimes because it’s intentional. The Apostle Paul was accused of antinomianism by his Judaizing opponents, to which he responded, ‘For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.’
‘What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?’ By no means! Means that even though we shall not be condemned under the law, we are still obligated to keep it. Perhaps even more obligated now, because of the grace we’ve received through Christ Jesus.
However, the gospel is the gospel of salvation, and part of that salvation includes freedom from most of our deserved consequences because God gave his only Son so that we should not perish but have eternal life. Because God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him, God sent Jesus to take our condemnation upon himself so that the world might not be condemned but instead be saved.
Again, considering these verses alone or only apart is a grave mistake of interpretation, because otherwise you risk believing a gospel that is patently false, forgetting part of who God is—the Savior, the God who saves.
Salvation is not just something that God does or gives. To say is who he is. Savior is as much of an attribute of God as being just, righteous, holy, merciful, gracious, loving, wrathful, jealous, incomprehensible, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and simple. It is the Lord’s nature to save. But if there’s never anyone to save, then we wouldn’t know it about him, would we?
We could not know the Lord’s saving grace except by his temporary allowance of our sin. So there is a sense in which tells us that humanity needed to fall into sin in order for us to be brought to our greatest good in Christ Jesus. We needed it; God did not need it. One could almost say that the world needed to need saving because of who God is. Otherwise, God would not be who he is.
Regardless, even in this need we must still believe that God is not the author of sin or evil, even while he has permitted. Think about it: how could the Lord be a Savior if there was never anyone to save? This remains good news for us because we do need saving by our own account without God having to do anything to cause us to need it.
Consider the case of Jonah and his prayer from within the belly of the fish: ‘I called out to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol, I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me.’
If there was ever a guy who needed saving, then it was Jonah. But there are a few details we tend to gloss over during this part of the story. What did Jonah need saving from? He needed rescue from the belly of the fish. He was trapped and buried deeper than any man could ordinarily survive. But again, what did Jonah need saving from? He needed saving from drowning in the sea, and so God saved him by sending a fish to swallow him.
But why was he at risk of drowning in the sea? Jonah was in his predicament because God put him there: ‘For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me.’
Why did God put him there? As divine discipline. But did God cause Jonah to be tossed out of the boat? No, Jonah volunteered in order to save the others on the boat. Why did he volunteer? He volunteered because a storm threatened to destroy their vessel. He volunteered because he knew that God had sent the storm to punish him. He volunteered to sacrifice himself because he was guilty of disobeying God’s command, and the other people on the vessel were innocent and undeserving to share in his punishment.
Jonah needed to be rescued from the consequences of God’s just wrath—to be rescued from God for his sinful disobedience. The only person who could rescue him from God is God. So in his repentance and contrition, Jonah asked the Lord to save him from himself, and God was pleased to save him.
And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land. That’s not all we should learn and take from Jonah’s prayer. Jonah also looked to the Lord with hope through faith in God.
‘Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.” Although he had no bronze serpent to gaze upon nor any cross to meditate on, Jonah looked up to the Lord from the belly of a fish in the midst of the deep with faith and trust because he knew who the Lord God is. God is the Savior.
He continued his prayer with an expectation born from confidence in God: ‘The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love, but I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay.’
Hearing that last sentence, one might think that Jonah was trying to offer God a bribe—that he was assuming a transactional posture by offering to give the Lord something he thinks God wants if God would do what Jonah wants. But he wasn’t.
Jonah was praying out of the confident assurance of God’s sovereign love and his divine deliverance because he knows that God is the Savior. Jonah trusted that God had already decreed his salvation. Jonah knew that salvation belongs to the Lord.
Jonah knew a lot about who God is. He knew that God is omnipotent and that God is sovereign over all things. He knew that God is omniscient and that God is gracious and forgiving towards those who repent of their sin in faith. Jonah knew that because that was why he tried to flee to Tarshish.
Jonah knew that salvation belongs to the Lord, and he didn’t want to see Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, the enemy of Israel. He didn’t want to see them saved and delivered from God’s judgment. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God relented of the disaster that he said he would do to them, and he didn’t do it.
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. True, salvation does belong to the Lord. God saves people because God wants to save people—because his nature is to save people. Yet, in order to save us, to save the world from our deserved condemnation, and still also remain perfectly just, our condemnation had to go somewhere else.
It had to be suffered by someone else. Someone had to volunteer to sacrifice themselves to save us, as Jonah volunteered to save his shipmates. And that someone else was God the Son, Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, because God so loved the world.
This time it was the innocent person volunteering to sacrifice themselves for the guilty. Thus, the world we are saved through him as all of our condemnation was imputed to him, and his righteousness is imputed to us. Thus we receive the benefits of this transaction—eternal life through our believing in him.
That is the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is the very best of good news for us if we believe. But that’s also the very worst possible news for us if we do not believe.
Moving on to verse 18, we encounter another serious touchpoint between the Reformed and Arminian positions because whichever view a person holds defines who they consider the ultimate sovereign authority, power over and in creation.
See, Jesus continues by explaining to Nicodemus, ‘Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.’
So we’ve already established that believing in, trusting in, and having our faith in Jesus Christ is the only operative means through which any person is saved—period. This verse adds a new understanding to the necessity of faith for salvation and that’s the opposing consequences of faith or no faith.
‘Whoever believes in him is not condemned, and whoever does not believe is condemned already.’ Once again, we find ourselves in an either/or circumstance—it’s one or the other. There is no other option possible. There is no middle ground or third way; we compromise. It is only not condemned or condemned.
This forces us to ponder the questions: Which do you want to be—condemned or not condemned? You even have a choice. Is your will free to choose, or is it bound in some way or another? If you honestly believe that it is your choice to believe in and trust Jesus Christ, then might you also be able to choose to not believe if you want? Could you choose to want to not trust him?
This is where the Arminian separates from the Reformed believer. The Arminian will say that it is their choice. They will say that Jesus’s death on the cross made salvation possible for the whole world—that God so provided only for all if they decide to take advantage of the opportunity to receive this effect.
Really, when a person is presented with the choice of either being condemned or not, nobody is going to choose condemnation. See, this perspective, though, it makes man sovereign over their own salvation because through their need to choose, God’s saving grace becomes contingent upon their decision, taking the power of salvation away from God and placing it in the hands of men.
Yet if this were the case and everybody chose according to what they considered their own best interest, then everyone would choose to be saved. But the evidence shows that they do not. There are plenty of people who have most assuredly chosen to follow the way of the wicked and revel in their sinfulness and reproval.
Whereas the Reformed Christian will say that is God’s sovereign choice. We will say that Jesus’s death on the cross made salvation effective for all of God’s elect, his children, chosen people—not just possible. A people called out of the world which God so loved.
See, this perspective preserves God’s sovereignty over salvation. The elect receive it; they do not choose it because God first chose them. It is given to them, and then they decide to respond to it with obedience and love because they no longer want or desire to do otherwise. Their desires are transformed through regeneration, and those who are born again want God instead of all the false promises of sin and Satan in the world.
Now they cannot choose to not want God because we know that he is in our best interest. The elect respond to God’s work of salvation with love, faithfulness, and obedience, and therefore choose to live in the way of the righteous.
See, God chose the elect back before the foundation of the world, and he decided who he would save way back there. God decided whoever would believe in Jesus, his Son, and he decreed that they would believe. He decreed when and where the Holy Spirit would give them a new heart full of faith and love.
The Lord knows who shall believe because he foreordained it. He said it would happen in just such a way. His foreknowledge of this matter is perfect because as the sovereign, he is in control, and he decided everything that shall ever be. He is the first cause while our responsiveness in faith is a secondary cause because he decided that we shall not be condemned.
See, God only deals in certainties. He does not deal with probabilities or potentialities. God does not play dice with the universe. God plays with a stacked deck—a deck stacked by him for our good and for his glory alone. And every card that God holds and plays is an ace.
Unfortunately, even with all this, we’re still left trying to understand the unfortunate other side of the coin—those who are condemned already. This is why whenever we talk about the doctrine of predestination, we should always remind ourselves of the negative side along with the positive.
There is a term which few of us enjoy employing because it is an ugly-seeming term, and it does not feel gracious or loving. Unfortunately, it is a necessary term: double predestination. But it’s not meant in the way its detractors explain it.
It can be needfully complex because it’s an expression of biblical theology, the whole of Scripture. I’m going to try and explain it simply: God created everything, including mankind as male and female. God created man and woman with a free moral will able to choose either good or evil. God permitted Adam and Eve the capacity to sin. He allowed our forebears to choose evil and fall into sin and wickedness and so require saving.
But before creating, God had already decreed that man should be allowed to fall and that the Lord would save some fallen humanity—the elect—from out of the world. And yet, despite Adam and Eve damning all mankind to the fires of hell through our secondary cause of their freely exercised choice, the Lord by his eternal decree predestined some unto salvation by his sovereign choice.
While others were predestined to be reprobate and to be damned by his sovereign choosing, not to save—that is double predestination. This doctrine does not teach us that God unfairly sends some people to hell and others to heaven. What it teaches is that God very fairly sends some people to their chosen hell while unfairly sending other people to heaven by rescuing them—by saving them through the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, his Son.
God is not fair, but he is just. The good news is that the Lord God is not a bully. He does not amuse himself through torture or through his wrath like a young child attacking an ant with a magnifying glass, burning the ants as they try to flee. If someone must suffer his wrath, it’s because they deserve it or they chose it.
By Jesus, the Lord God is the Savior. He saves some when he’s obligated to save none. That is what makes our salvation a gift of God’s free grace and mercy and not our just reward. He gives us mercy, not justice. That is why Jesus saves, and that is what he saves us from—himself and our consequences.
That we leave because God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Because God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, not to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Jesus loves us so much that he gave himself to save us from the condemnation we each deserve. This is why, when we pray, we ought to ask God for his mercy to be given us and not ask that we receive justice. We may trust and be confident that the Lord will enact justice in his time and in his way, just as we can be confident that he has, he is, and he will save us. He will always save his people, because that is just who God is—our God is the God who saves. Salvation belongs to the Lord. Hallelujah! Amen.