• God’s Immeasurable Love (Part 3)

    by B.B. Warfield

    This is the last in a 3-part series presenting Dr. Warfield’s sermon. Part 1 is available here. Part 2 is available here.
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    God’s All-Conquering Love

    At the same time, however, although we cannot permit the passage to be interpreted in the terms of the debate in question, it would not be quite true to say it has no bearing upon that debate.

    One thing, for instance, which the passage tells us, and tells us with great emphasis, is that the love which it celebrates is a saving love; not a love which merely tends towards salvation, and may – perhaps easily – be defeated in its aim by, say, the unwillingness of its objects. The very point of the passage lies, on the one side, in the mightiness of the love of God; and, on the other, in the unwillingness not of some but of all its objects. Read the rest of this entry »

  • God’s Immeasurable Love (Part 2)

    by B.B. Warfield

    This is part 2 of a 3 part series presenting this sermon from Warfield. Part 1 is available here.
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    What Does John 3:16 Actually Say?

    Neither of the more common interpretations of the text, therefore, appears to bring out quite fully its real significance. The one fails to rise to the height of the conception of the love of God embodied in it. The other appears to do something less than full justice to the conception of the world which God is said to love. The difficulty in both cases seems to arise from a certain unwillingness to go deeply enough. A surface meaning, possible to impose upon the text, seems to be seized upon, while its profundities are left unexplored. Read the rest of this entry »

  • God’s Immeasurable Love (Part 1)

    by B.B. Warfield

    The following article was originally a sermon preached by Dr. Warfield in chapel at Princeton Theological Seminary. It will be re-printed here in multiple parts due to its length. A one-page version is available here.
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    John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

    To whom we owe this great declaration of the love of God, it is somewhat difficult to determine: whether to our Lord himself, or to that disciple who had lain upon his bosom and had imbibed so much of his spirit that he thenceforth spoke with his Master’s voice and in his Master’s words. Happily, it is a matter of no substantial importance. For what difference does it make to you and me whether the Lord speaks to us through his own lips, or through those of his servant, the apostle, to whom he had promised, and to whom he had given, his Holy Spirit to teach him all the truth (John 16:13)?

    What concerns us is not the instrumentality through which the message comes, but the message itself. And what a great message it is – the message of the greatness of the love of God! Let us see to it that, as the words sound in our ears, it is this great revelation that fills our hearts, fills them so full as to flood all their being and wash into all their recesses. The greatness of the love of God, the immeasurable greatness of the love of God! Read the rest of this entry »