If you have ever been to a Sunday School or sat in a church service there is a good chance that you will have heard, or read, the verse quoted above. It is one of the most widely quoted verses in the whole Bible, and for good reason. It is a verse which tells us that there is a God in heaven. Not a force or a feeling, but a personal God, who has the capacity for love; in fact, He is defined as “being” love later in the Bible. This God has loved the world – not the physical creation at large, but the people whom He created to enjoy a relationship with Him. It also tells us this God has sent His Son to repair that relationship which was broken as a result of our rebellion against Him.
Again, by reading further in the New Testament we discover that the rescue plan centred on the death of God’s Son on a cross for our sins, and His subsequent resurrection. The verse concludes by telling us that God offers salvation [deliverance from “perishing”] to all who will put their faith in His Son. That means trusting in what has been accomplished on the cross, the result being freedom from sin’s consequences, and the prospect of living with God forever.
What a wonderful, life-giving message! It is the message of the whole Bible, condensed into twenty-four words. Some have aptly described it as “the gospel in a nutshell”. But what about the central character of the verse, this Son of God, Who is He?
When we meet God in the early chapters of Genesis there are some hints, in the original language, that there is more than one Person involved when we are speaking about God. This is most clearly seen when we hear a conversation about the creation of humanity which involves God speaking in the plural: 'let Us make man in Our image' (Genesis 1:26).
As the Bible unfolds, we will meet God repeatedly throughout the Old Testament as Someone who takes a human or angelic appearance, but who speaks as God and accepts the worship of men. One example of this would be when God speaks to a man called Abraham (or Abram). We read: “Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him” (Genesis 12:7). This bodily manifestation may seem to give us a problem when we read in John 1:18 (NIV) that "No one has ever seen God . . .", but the explanation is found in the next clause: this Person who speaks as God in the Old Testament is: “the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father” and “has made him known”.
As the New Testament opens, it becomes clear that the Person who has taken on human appearance, spoken as God and accepted worship that only God deserves is, in fact, Jesus Christ. We don’t have to scramble for a way to describe this Person, as over forty times in the New Testament He will be described as “the Son of God”. For example, Mark begins his record of Jesus’ life with these words, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark1:1).
When an angel appears to a young woman called Mary in Luke chapter 1 to announce that she will have a son, she is told several things that will mark Him. One of those things is what name He is to have. According to the custom of the day, a child would be given a family name to maintain the strong tribal and national links across generations. That wasn’t to be the case for this child. Instead, He was to be given a Name which would match, exactly, His identity and His purpose in coming into the world.
“And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus” (Luke 1:31 ESV) is what Mary is told, with her intended husband Joseph receiving a slightly fuller explanation as to why this Name was chosen: “. . . Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21 ESV). The name means “Jehovah [is] our Saviour”, and that tells us exactly who this coming One was: God, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, the Creator of the Universe, come to save.
The picture builds further over the course of the New Testament. When the Lord Jesus asks His disciples who they understand Him to be, we read that the spokesman of the group, Simon Peter, replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16 ESV). This statement, which set him apart from all other humans as uniquely the Son of God was one which the religious leaders of the day considered blasphemy, yet how does Jesus answer? “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 16:17 ESV).
The Lord Jesus doesn’t rebuke the disciple, nor will He ever rebuke anyone who uses divine titles to describe Him. For example, after the resurrection of the Lord Jesus a disciple called Thomas, amazed at the sight of Jesus risen from the dead, will say: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28 ESV). Here is how Jesus responds to this: “Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:28 ESV).
So why does that matter? It matters because of the message of the verse we referred to at the beginning of the article. The Son who is sent into the world isn’t a subordinate or secondary Person – He is equal with God the Father. He is not a Person who was created for this purpose, but He is someone who has no beginning and who will have no end. That makes His sacrifice of Himself on the cross unlike any other sacrifice that has ever been offered.
We have sinned, and continue to sin, against an eternal, infinite God and that will require eternal and infinite punishment. For countless men and women to be saved from that punishment requires a substitute to stand in their place who is Himself infinite, eternal and sinless. It matters Who Jesus is, because He was able to become our substitute.
The question is: how will I respond? John chapter 3 verse 16 is often used to emphasise the availability of the “gospel” to everyone, but there is a single condition on which my enjoyment of the blessing offered, and my eternal destiny, hinge. It is that word “believes”. God has sent His Son, and that is immeasurably more than humanity deserved, but to come into the good of that I must put my faith in “‘the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me’” (Galatians 2:20).
