Before Jesus Christ came into this world no one ever dreamt of saying
'God _loves_.' Some of the Old Testament psalmists had glimpses of that
truth and came pretty near expressing it. But among all the 'gods many
and lords many,' there were lustful gods and beautiful gods, and idle
gods, and fighting gods and peaceful gods: but not one of whom
worshippers said, 'He loves.' Once it was a new and almost incredible
message, but we have grown accustomed to it, and it is not strange any
more to us. But if we would try to think of what it means, the whole
truth would flash up into fresh newness, and all the miseries and
sorrows and perplexities of our lives would drift away down the wind,
and we should be no more troubled with them. 'God loves' is the
greatest thing that can be said by lips.
'God … loved the world.' Now when we speak of loving a number of
individuals—the broader the stream, the shallower it is, is it not? The
most intense patriot in England does not love her one ten-thousandth
part as well as he loves his own little girl. When we think or feel
anything about a great multitude of people, it is like looking at a
forest. We do not see the trees, we see the whole wood. But that is not
how God loves the world. Suppose I said that I loved the people in
India, I should not mean by that that I had any feeling about any
individual soul of all those dusky millions, but only that I massed
them all together; or made what people call a generalisation of them.
But that is not the way in which God loves. He loves all because He
loves each. And when we say, 'God so loved the world,' we have to break
up the mass into its atoms, and to think of each atom as being an
object of His love. We all stand out in God's love just as we should do
to one another's eyes, if we were on the top of a mountain-ridge with a
clear sunset sky behind us. Each little black dot of the long
procession would be separately visible. And we all stand out like that,
every man of us isolated, and getting as much of the love of God as if
there was not another creature in the whole universe but God and
ourselves. Have you ever realised that when we say, 'He loved the
world,' that really means, as far as each of us is concerned, He loves
_me_? And just as the whole beams of the sun come pouring down into
every eye of the crowd that is looking up to it, so the whole love of
God pours down, not upon a multitude, an abstraction, a community, but
upon every single soul that makes up that community. He loves us all
because He loves us each. We shall never get all the good of that
thought until we translate it, and lay it upon our hearts. It is all
very well to say, 'Ah yes! God is love,' and it is all very well to say
He loves 'the world.' But I will tell you what is a great deal
better—to say—what Paul said—'Who loved _me_ and gave Himself for
_me_.'
Now, there is one other suggestion that I would make to you before I go
on, and that is that all through the New Testament, but especially in
John's Gospel, 'the world' does not only mean men, but _sinful_ men,
men separated from God. And the great and blessed truth taught here is
that, however I may drag myself away from God, I cannot drive Him away
from me, and that however little I may care for Him, or love Him, or
think about Him, it does not make one hairs-breadth of difference as to
the fact that He loves me. I know, of course, that if a man does not
love Him back again, God's love has to take shapes that it would not
otherwise take, which may be extremely inconvenient for the man. But
though the shape may alter, _must_ alter, the fact remains; and every
sinful soul on the earth, including Judas Iscariot—who is said to head
the list of crimes—has God's love resting upon him.