We've all heard how sly, cunning, and evil Satan is. Have you known how he has tried to suck the life out of the greatest verse in the Bible? John 3:16 has enough dynamite truth in it to save any sinner, but if its meaning is devalued, its effect on the human heart is weakened.
What kind of a sacrifice did the Father make when He "so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son"? There is a time-honored doctrine often labeled as "orthodox" that denies that God ever had a Son before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, that He became a "Father" only at that time. The idea is that God simply agreed for a Twin, or a fellow Committee Member, to come to earth and be sacrificed. Gracious, yes, generous even; but ... a sacrifice?
When it comes to thinking about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the "Godhead" is so great that my brain is like a little pea in trying to understand it. But God is trying to say something to me. According to John 3:16, Christ was always the Son of God, even from all eternity: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. ... And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father" (John 1:1, 2, 14).
There was never a "time" in eternity when the Son of God was not! The Muslims say we teach that God had a "wife" of some sorts; No. God has tried to tell us something beyond words: Christ was not "begotten" as we beget children--the word in the Bible does not mean that. It means only beloved One. The Father's love for His Son was the infinite Antitype of our human love for a child, and God has permitted us unworthy humans to have the experience of parenthood in order that we might understand just a trifle the heart-rending agony in the infinite Father's heart when it came time to "give His only begotten Son." The sacrifice was made in eternity, and it was and is infinite. John 3:16 does make sense; and a pea-size brain and heart like mine can at least begin to appreciate it.
Copyright © 2009 by Robert J. Wieland.
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