"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).

It is the world that God so loved; not a part of it, nor any class or race or color in it. Some seem to think that God loves the cultured, and the rich and the religious, and merely tolerates the rest; but our text sweeps away such a false conception of God and tells us that He loved the world. He is no respecter of persons. His love reaches out to all men, even to the uttermost part of the earth.

But a person may accept that as a fact because he has heard it since childhood, and yet be unaffected in any way by it because he does not see he is personally involved in it. He may refuse to believe anything about it at all because any thought of God disturbs his complacency. He may pose as an infidel, yet it is certain that no man was born an infidel. Many a man has argued himself into infidelity simply because he "did not like to retain God in his knowledge," as Romans 1:28 tells us. But whether indifferent, or infidel, or whatever else he may be, there is no man in the world to whom the words of our text cannot be spoken; and they will come home in their life-giving, saving power to all who feel their need of them.

But what a world it is that God has so loved! It reeks with moral putrefaction and prefers its sins and miseries to His great love and eternal life. When His Son came into it, though He was its Maker, it did not know Him, and the leaders of it crucified Him. Clearly is their guilt recorded in the Word of God. It says: "The princes of this world crucified the Lord of glory." It was not the rabble that took the lead in that great crime, but the princes, the best the world had ever produced. The rabble joined in it, for the universal cry was, "Away with Him!" But the great men first raised that cry. That was what the world thought about the only begotten Son of God, but it did not change God's love to hatred, nor the purpose of His beloved Son to save men. They laid the cross upon His shoulders, but He went forth bearing it. There was no resistance on His part, for He had come to do the Father's will, and that will was that He should die for sinners. And in this was manifested the great victory of God's love over man's hatred.

And now the word is going forth to all the world, to men of every race and color, "that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their transgressions unto them, nor is He imputing their transgressions unto them now. If He did, it would mean for them unsparing judgment and everlasting banishment from His presence. But He is sending the word of reconciliation unto the world, and its message is one of forgiveness and eternal life. But it must be heard and received, it is the whosoever believes that do not perish, and to them alone the blessing comes. All others grope onward in the darkness to death and judgment and the lake of fire.