The Source of Our Salvation
In John 3:16, Christ reveals the foundation of our salvation in a way that leaves no room for doubt. He highlights God’s unmerited love as the source of our redemption. To understand the depths of this love, we must examine where Christ came from and why He was offered as our Savior.
God’s Love: The Foundation of Our Salvation
Faith in Christ brings life to everyone, and Christ brought life because the Heavenly Father loves humanity and desires that we should not perish. This order is crucial to note, as our nature tends to focus on our own merits rather than God’s pure and simple mercy. Christ’s words emphasize God’s love as the basis for our salvation, and the Spirit reinforces this through Paul’s writing, stating that this love is founded “in accordance with His pleasure and will” (Ephesians 1:5).
The Glory of Our Deliverance
The evangelist does not attribute our deliverance to anything within us that deserves such an excellent blessing. Instead, he ascribes the glory of our deliverance entirely to God’s love. This is further emphasized by the fact that God gave His one and only Son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. Until Christ intervened to rescue the lost, everyone was destined for eternal destruction.
Mercy Reconciles Us to God
Paul declares that God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). Where sin reigns, we find only God’s wrath, which brings death in its train. Therefore, it is mercy that reconciles us to God, restoring us to life.
The Intervention of Christ’s Love
While it may seem that many passages of Scripture attribute the foundation of God’s love for us to Christ, we must remember that the Heavenly Father’s secret love, which embraces us, is the first love given to us. However, the grace that He desires us to know, and through which we are stirred up to know the hope of our salvation, begins with the reconciliation won through Christ. Christ’s love must intervene to reconcile us to God before we can experience God’s fatherly kindness.
Faith Looks to Christ Alone
As we are told that God gave His Son to die for us because He loved us, it is immediately added that our faith should look to Christ alone. This emphasizes the importance of recognizing Christ as the sole source of our salvation.
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