September 13, 2026 | God So Loved

This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Then Peter came up and said to him, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him?

As many as seven times?

Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.

Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants.

When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents.

And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made.

So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.

And out of pity for him the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.

But when he but when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denari, and seizing him he began to choke him, saying, Pay what you owe.

So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me, and I will pay you.

He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.

When his fellow servants saw what he had taken what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place.

Then his master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.

And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?

And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt.

So also my so also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Please pray with me.

Father, we know that you inspired the writing of Scripture by your Holy Spirit.

And we pray right now by that same Spirit that you would open our ears to hear your life-giving words to us and open our hearts to respond with faith and obedience.

We pray this all in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

In the spring of 1962, the Swiss theologian Carl Barth was going around the United States giving a tour and giving lectures in various places.

And that may not seem like something worth talking about, some foreign theologian going around giving lectures.

May not seem very interesting right now, but at the time, it gathered a lot of attention.

For at the time, Carl Barth was one of the most well-known, perhaps the most revered theologian in the world.

And in fact, in that same spring, Time magazine had just published an edition with his face on the front cover and a lengthy article describing him as the greatest living Protestant theologian.

He was the epitome of a learned, sophisticated European intellectual, and people were flocking to hear him speak.

And at one of the ends of his lectures, there was a question and answer time.

And a student posed a question to him.

But as impertinent as it may have sounded, Bart actually answered.

He said, Yes, I can.

And the words of a song I learned at my mother's knee, Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

That answer is so simple that it's hard to take seriously.

But Bart wasn't trying to be clever and he wasn't joking.

He was sincere.

He had spent a lifetime thinking and writing.

He had written hundreds of thousands of words about the nature and ways of God.

But after nearly six decades of reflection at the age of 76, he'd come to a realization, all that life's work, all of that study and scholarship and writing, all of it ultimately amounted to one long, extended reflection on a single simple yet astonishing fact that God loves us and that we can know his love in the person of Jesus.

I mention that story because I'm often reminded of it when I read the words of the verse that we're going to be focusing on this morning, our our second comfortable word in our liturgy, John 3.16.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Much like that little song that Bart quoted, these words, they are plain, they are simple, they are utterly familiar to most Christians.

We just sang them a moment ago in a song.

But also, like that song, these words capture something that is at the heart of what we believe about God, about what he has done, and about what our response to him should be.

They are profound.

Just think about those first four words of that sentence.

For God so loved.

You might remember that when Jesus first spoke these words, he was having a conversation with the Pharisee, Nicodemus, who had come to talk to him, and they had been having a conversation about the kingdom of God and about the work of the Holy Spirit.

And then, in John chapter 3, verses 14 and 15, then Jesus said, And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

John 3:14

No doubt Nicodemus would have been a little confused at this statement, as he was with a lot of what Jesus was saying in this conversation.

He wouldn't have understood that Jesus was referring to his crucifixion.

He would have been puzzled at what Jesus meant by talking about being lifted up, but he perhaps would have been even more puzzled at Jesus' use of the word must.

So must the Son of Man be lifted up.

He must?

Why?

Why must he?

Why is this necessary?

Why is it necessary for human beings to have eternal life?

Sometimes we take for granted, because we're Christians, we take for granted that God saved the world.

But we would do well to sometimes ask the question, why?

Why did he do it in the first place?

In the ancient world in which Jesus and Nicodemus lived, there were a variety of answers to this question.

Why would the gods intervene to help or save human beings?

According to the ancient Babylonians, it was really because the god needed humans to feed them.

They needed them to plant and to harvest and to feed them through sacrifice.

The Greeks and the Romans had a somewhat similar answer.

They didn't believe that the gods needed humans to feed them, but they did think that the gods needed humans for honor and glory and worship and sometimes entertainment.

But Jesus knew otherwise.

The God of the Bible, the one true God, he doesn't need anything from his human creatures.

As the Apostle Paul himself put it to those Greek philosophers in Acts chapter 17: the God who made the world and the heaven and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in a temple made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

So again, you have to ask why.

Why, if God needs nothing from us at all, why must the Son of Man be lifted up?

Not may, must.

That is the question that Jesus is answering in John 3.16.

And what does he say?

For God so loved.

God's relationship with us isn't based on need or debt or obligation or coercion of any kind, but purely and simply on free and unconstrained love.

And this becomes even more apparent when you consider the next two words in the sentence.

For God so loved what?

Whom?

God so loved the world.

And you have to remember, this is not the first time that John has mentioned the world in his gospel.

He's actually already told us quite a bit about the world.

He tells us in his opening chapter in John chapter 1 about how God created the world, but then he also tells us about how the world had turned away from God.

John 1 · chapter mention

The true light, he said, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world was made through him.

Yet the world did not know him.

He came to his own.

And did they receive him?

No.

And his own received him not.

When John 3.16 says that God so loved the world, it is not referring to a world filled with good and beautiful people who deserve that love.

It is referring to a world that has already chosen darkness over light.

A world that has turned its back on its creator, a world that refuses to recognize its maker when he is standing right in front of them.

This is not a world that deserves God's love.

It's not a lovely world.

It is a very unlovely, very undeserving world.

And that tells us something about the love of God.

It tells us that it is strange.

It is unexpected.

It is very different from love as we often experience it.

Because let's be honest, in the regular world, love is something that for the most part is given to the lovable.

We all know it.

Why else do we spend so much time, so much energy, so much money trying to improve our appearance?

Why do we work so hard to be charming and attractive?

Why do we try to cover our faults and hide our flaws?

It's because we know the truth.

Love, attention, affection, that goes to the people who deserve it.

Respect is given to those who earn it.

That is just how the world works.

But according to John 3.16, that is not how God works.

The God who made us, the God who sustains us, the God who is with us in this very room right now.

That God does not love us because we deserve it, but simply because he chooses to.

As C.S.

Lewis once put it, God does not love us because we are lovable, but because he is love.

What's more, God's love for us is not some warm or fuzzy feeling.

It takes the form of action.

It takes the form of a gift.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

Some of you may have seen last Sunday that I was wearing a pectoral cross.

This is a little embarrassing because I have a whole illustration about this, and I'm supposed to be wearing it right now.

And I realized as I was walking up to the pulpit that I wasn't wearing it, I forgot to put it on.

But imagine I'm wearing this lovely pectoral cross, right?

Well, part of the reason that I forgot to put it on is I've never actually worn one until I came here.

Last week was my first time.

And the reason I was wearing it is because our very last Sunday at Christ Church back in Texas, our rector had invited the whole family up in front of the sanctuary, and he was going to pray for all of us and bless us, and he prayed for y'all.

I knew he was gonna do that, but what I didn't know is that when I got up there, he had a gift for me.

And it was his own pectoral cross, the one I forgot to wear this morning.

It was the same cross that he wore for his first eight years as a rector of Christ Church.

And he wanted to give it to me, he said, because he wanted it to be a constant reminder to me of what my call was here to always preach Christ and Him crucified.

But I knew that there was more to it than just that.

Because he wasn't just giving me a symbol, he was giving me a part of himself, something that belonged to him, something that he had worn every single Sunday for nearly a decade.

Love, true love, is not just a matter of words or feelings.

Love is wanting someone else's good and wanting it badly enough that you will do something about it, that you will give them what they need, even if it costs you.

And there is nothing greater that you can give than the gift of your own life.

Jesus Himself said so.

Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

God does not owe you his love.

You don't deserve God's love, but he has chosen to love you anyway, and he loves you so much that he gave the greatest possible gift that he could give.

Himself.

His very own son, his very own life.

That's the message of John 3.16.

It is simple, it's plain.

You've heard it before, for God so loved the world that he gave.

But what, you might ask.

But what are we supposed to do?

What's our response?

You know, I don't know if you know anyone like this, but but some people you meet are wary of getting gifts.

They don't really like it.

Because gifts, gifts tend to imply obligation and reciprocity.

I didn't owe you anything, but then you bought me that meal, or then you offered to watch my dog, or then you gave me some really nice, thoughtful birthday gift, and now I owe you a meal.

I have to watch your dog, and your dog is the worst.

I have to get you some birthday gift.

Some people love getting gifts, but some people hate it because they know it just means that now you owe somebody and you're gonna have to pay it back somehow.

That's that very old feeling, by the way.

There's an ancient Latin dictum coined by the Roman author Lucian.

Do ut dece.

It means I give so that you may give.

I scratched your back, now you scratch mine.

And sometimes I think sometimes that's how we imagine our relationship with God.

As if we get into the kingdom of God by grace, but we only stay there by proving that we belong.

That salvation may come to us as a gift, but somehow that is a gift that's gonna have to be paid back if you're gonna keep it.

Now, most people won't say that, but I do think that we start thinking that way sometimes.

And when you start thinking that way, that is when being a Christian becomes a burden.

When you start to feel like it's just some performance you have to keep up, that you have to prove something to God, or maybe just to the person in the pew next to you.

But that is not the kind of relationship that John 3.16 is describing.

Jesus did not say, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever responds appropriately and proves they're worth it and pays back this gift should have eternal life.

No, he says, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should have eternal life.

Not paying back the gift, not proving you're worth it, just believing in Jesus, trusting in him, accepting that this gift is for you, and receiving it with thanks.

That is what we owe.

And I know that sounds obvious, sounds simple, you've heard it before, but you know, when you really begin to understand what John 3.16 is saying, it can change your life.

I remember a couple years ago, I was talking to a young woman and she was telling me about how she came to faith.

And she was from a non-religious family.

Her parents didn't have any kind of faith, they didn't think that was very important.

And it's not because they were bad parents.

In many ways, they were great parents.

They had immigrated from China and they had worked tirelessly to give this young woman the opportunities that they never had.

And they had instilled in her a hard work ethic, and she she had done really well.

She had excelled academically, she had been accepted into a prestigious university.

But as diligently as she worked, and this is what she told me, she said that she also felt at times like it was all meaningless.

All that work.

For what?

So she could climb a few rungs higher on some social ladder so her parents could have something to brag about.

Her whole life revolved around this felt obligation to pay back these gifts that she had received.

But at the end of the day, it just felt like one long, never-ending burden.

And then in her senior year of high school, a friend gave her a book.

It was Mere Christianity by C.S.

Lewis.

And she read it and she told me.

I thought this was fascinating.

She said, I read it and I wasn't sure if what Lewis was saying was true.

I didn't think it was, but I desperately wished it could be.

I said, Why?

Why did you wish it were true?

She said, because if Lewis was telling the truth, then that means that I was wrong.

That life is not just some burden of paying back debts, it's not just some endless competition with no real meaning.

If he is telling the truth, then that means that there is love at the heart of the universe, and that that love is what defines my life.

And it took her, it took her about a year to come to terms with what she found in that book and to actually believe it.

But when she finally did, when she embraced it, when she accepted this gift of undeserved love and the gift of Jesus Christ for her, she said it radically transformed her.

The weight of all those burdens, it just felt removed.

She felt freed.

Her life was filled with joy.

Sometimes some of the simplest and most familiar things are the things that we need to hear again and again and again and again.

So just in case you need a reminder, let me tell you one more time.

Jesus loves you.

This I know.

For the Bible tells me so.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Now please pray with me.

Father, we do not deserve your love, but you lavish your love upon us.

You gave us the gift of your son Jesus.

I pray for all of us this morning, whether this is a gift that we have never accepted before, that this would be the day that we experience just the wonder and beauty of that gift.

Or if this is a gift that we have accepted many times over, Lord, that you would just surprise and astonish us once more with how we have been freed by your love and your gift.

Make us thankful, Lord.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.