For God so loved the world
“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.”—JOHN 3:16,17
At the very heart of the message of God to us is a way to escape perishing. To “perish” connotes everlasting destruction, divine judgment and wrath, horrible punishment. Jesus said more about hell than He did about heaven. He talked about a fire never quenched, about a place where people experience permanent gnashing of teeth, loneliness, darkness, weeping, and wailing. That’s perishing. But God so loved the world that He sent His Son so that we don’t have to perish, but we can have everlasting life. And that’s not just a quantity of life; that’s a quality of life. It isn’t this temporal life; this kind of life forever. That would be a kind of hell in itself. It’s another kind of life. God will give us eternal life, and that’s why we have the word “saved” used here. It’s the word “rescued.” We are rescued from perishing and given not only a life different from this life, but a life also very different from the life of perishing. We are given everlasting life. It is God’s kind of life. We literally participate in the bliss of divine immortality, the very life that belongs to God Himself. God gives us His own life, the very life that exists within His being and the being of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Rejoice always that you have been rescued by the love of God.