Page 35 - The Gospel of John - Student textbook

The verse begins by saying something about the love of God and the object of God’s affection. God so loved…
what? “The world.” Now let me finish the verse for you according to the contemporary understanding: “God so
loved the world that He gave His Son in order to save everyone in the world.” Some people draw from this text a
doctrine of universal salvation; they believe it teaches that God loves the world so much He saves everyone.
(Armenians use this verse to say that God loved the world enough to provide a way of salvation for everyone.
Calvinist would limit this verse to the called or elected)

At this point the Universalist would get angry when they hear that there is only one way to God. The question is
not, why is there only one way? But why is there even one way? The answer to that question is that God loved
the world enough to create a way. However, He didn’t love the world enough to say that we can ignore the way
He has provided. That would not be true love. Jesus pounds “Do Not Enter signs” on every square inch of Satan’s
gate and tells those hell – bent on entering to do so over His dead body.

Theologians have urged us through the centuries, if you know nothing of the Bible, start here. If you know
everything in the Bible, return here. Many called John 3:16 The Hope Diamond of the Bible. In this verse we
understand that He gave His Only Son for the worst of the world and the worst of you and me. Thanks to Christ,
this earth can be the nearest you come to hell. But apart from Christ, this earth is the nearest you’ll come to
heaven. Many people spend their lives telling God to leave them alone. And at the moment of their final breath,
He will honor their request: “get away from me, you who do evil. I never knew you” (Matthew 7:23). C. S. Lewis
said, “I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful rebels to the end; that the doors of hell
are locked on the inside.”

Thanks to Christ, this earth can be the nearest you come to hell. But apart

from Christ, this earth is the nearest you’ll come to heaven.

At this point I would like us to look at the…

The Soteriology of Spurgeon

“C. H. Spurgeon on Election and the universal call to repentance: In a sermon
preached on Sunday Morning February 7, 1864, titled, “Election No
Discouragement to Seeking Souls” he argued that the doctrine of election does
not oppose the free invitations of the gospel. When a sinner is anxiously
disturbed about his soul’s affairs, his chief and main thought should not be upon this subject [am I one of the
elect?]; when a man would escape from wrath and attain to heaven, his first, his last, his middle thought should
be the cross of Christ. As an awakened sinner, I have vastly less to do with the secret purpose of God, than with
his revealed commands. For a man to say, ‘Thou commandest all men to repent, yet I will not repent, because I
do not know that I am chosen to eternal life,’ is not only unreasonable, but exceedingly wicked…Do I therefore,
when I am hungry, thrust my hands into my pockets and stand still, and refuse to help myself with the well
loaded table, because I do not know whether God has decreed that the bread should nourish me or not? If I did,
I should be an idiot or madman; or, if in my senses I should starve myself on such a pretense, I should deserve
the burial of a suicide.”

At the Metropolitan Tabernacle in 1869 he proclaimed, “I am as firm a believer in the doctrines of grace as any
man living, and a true Calvinist after the order of John Calvin himself; but if it be thought an evil thing to bid the
sinner lay hold of eternal life, I will yet be more evil in this respect, and herein imitate my Lord and his apostles,
who, though they taught that salvation is of grace, and grace alone, feared not to speak to men as rational
beings and responsible agents…Beloved, cling to the great truth of electing love and divine sovereignty, but let
not these bind you in fetters when, in the power of the Holy Ghost, you become fishers of men.”
34