Most people have a hard time believing God—or anyone else—really loves them. Our daily interactions confirm our suspicion that love is conditional, has to be earned, and can be lost if performance drops below expectations.
Yet what we find in Jesus is something very different. Rather than making us earn His love, He moves in and earns it for us. This sounds way too good to be true because it's counter to our human experience, but these words from the New Testament tell the story:
For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly...God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6, 8)
Once we move into a relationship with God through the death and resurrection of Jesus, John 3:16 becomes very personal. Instead of reading, "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son…" we insert our own names: "God so loved ME!" It's not just the world He loves but me as a person, which is so meaningful and personal.
As we continue to grow in our faith, there may be times we again find ourselves doubting God’s love, especially when we've gone off the rails and experienced failure. But these become fewer and fewer as we learn to live in the confidence of His everlasting love and forgiveness. We KNOW we are right with Him and look forward to the day we move from Earth to our forever home. So what are we to do in the meantime? Live like pigs in mud, rolling around in the blessings of God?
As good as that may sound, it's not why we're still hanging around this planet. God has a part for us earth-dwellers today, tomorrow, and every day until we relocate—one that is directly related to His purpose for dying (2 Corinthians 5:14-15):
The love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died. And He died for all so that…
So that what? How would you complete that sentence? So that we can be forgiven of our sins? So that we can spend eternity in heaven? So that we can have God's attention when life hits the fan? All these are great truths, but let's keep reading:
…so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for Him who died and rose on their behalf.
Did you get that? He died to free us from the tyranny of ourselves! He died to free us from a me-centered life so that we can now live a God-centered life of giving, serving, and loving the
world He loves. He died to give us a life that is so much bigger, so much more meaningful, and so much more fulfilling than our little who-really-cares lives.
While He wants His followers to live in the deep joy of His endless blessings, there’s so much more. God designed our redeemed humanity to be the divine delivery system of His goodness and love to the world. If we make the good news of Jesus only about ourselves, we end up creating a very narcissistic Christianity; a very selfish John 3:16. It's OK to start there. In fact, it has to start there. But it's never to stay there.
It's time to put the WORLD back into John 3:16.