The Gospel Is For Everyone

LET US begin with a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer (p. 257):

The Gospel is for everyone! That certainly is crucial. To paraphrase Archbishop William Temple, "If the Son didn’t die and rise for everyone, he didn’t die and rise for anyone." You may say, "Isn’t that obvious?" But if it were, we would be living it out — living out its truth and its mandate. Even more painfully, there are many in our culture (some even in the Church) who deny both the universality and the urgency of the Gospel. So our task at this point is to get God’s perspective, for until our hearts and God’s are one in this matter, we will continue to do a halfhearted and failing effort.

God is for everyone
I have taken as our text John 3:16, which appears in the midst of Jesus’ dialogue with Nicodemus. The topic, as Jesus guides the conversation, is new birth. The key point of this dialogue is that everyone is beyond self-help — everyone. To become a Christian is quite simply impossible to all people in their fallen state. Therefore God’s rescue is not a matter of His giving advice for our self-improvement. We are beyond self-improvement. The flesh is opposed to the Spirit; the natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit, for they are foolishness to him.

But that which is impossible to us becomes real in us when and where the Spirit of God blows upon us, raising us from spiritual death to life through a new birth from above. Just as we cannot program the wind, we cannot program the Spirit of God. But the incredible news is that the Spirit of God has been poured out and He is on a mission in this world. God is committed to global, evangelistic renewal throughout the world. People are being regenerated and raised up to living, spiritual life — rescued, redeemed — and we are the ones that the Spirit uses to be His acolytes in this gracious work. The Gospel is for everyone because God is for everyone.

I wonder how many of us, in our attempts to commend the Gospel to others, have taken seriously this reality that only God can raise the dead. I think back to my early ministry, dashing out from seminary with my new collar, ready to change the world, thinking God certainly was blessed in getting me. All was dependent upon my cleverness and my hard work. I had little humility, little patience, little prayer, and also little effect. Of course, I was pleased to see that those who were already believers could sometimes take comfort in some of the things I said. Even when we are in such a poor spiritual state, God is gracious to use us to encourage one another. But when something good happens, we often take credit for it ourselves.

I am reminded of the story of the woodpecker on the telephone pole. Just as he took his first peck, lightning struck the pole and split it from top to bottom. The woodpecker spent the rest of his life boasting about the power of his beak. But slowly, by grace, one grows wiser. Humble prayer is our rightful posture — the power to give new birth belongs to God alone.

The condition of mankind is utterly hopeless except for the work of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit’s work rests upon the person and work of Christ. We need to be set free as much as we need to be forgiven. Remember the old hymn, "Be of sin, a double cure," both from our bondage and from our guilty rebellion.

Some of us learned John 3:16 in the King James Version. It goes as follows: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." The RSV says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." I hope we will use this text as a window to look through: to look at God, to look at ourselves, and to look at people in general.

Beginning to quake
John 3:16 begins: "For God" (and already I begin to quake). Everything is decided at this point. Everything about the world, our lives, our mission. For if God be God, it is He then who calls the plays in our huddle. God is not one factor alongside other factors. He is the One — He is the Lord of All. To say "God" is to place everything else in subordination to Him. The true greatness of God is beyond our comprehension. Did He not tell us through His prophet Isaiah that there is nothing in all creation with which we can liken Him or to which we can compare Him; that His thoughts are not our thoughts; that His ways are not our ways; that all the nations of the world together are but as a drop in a bucket in His sight?

Now think of that. I sometimes (under the helpful prodding of my wife) water the flowers in the yard. I fill a bucket and take it around and pour it out on the different flowers. At the very end, there is one very tiny drop in the bucket. It is almost as nothing compared to the full bucket. The bucket itself is almost nothing compared to Him who fills it and pours it out. And he is but as nothing compared to the greatness of God who created him and the water and the flowers. In fact, the whole of creation is but a drop in the bucket, says the prophet, or as dust on the scale that doesn’t even cause the weights to move. God forgive us when we take His name on our lips and have so little sense of His greatness, His goodness, and His sovereignty. Through our familiarity with the word, we tend to devalue the greatness of God and fail to take off our shoes for we are on holy ground. My brothers and sisters, take off your shoes. Our text begins, "For God."

Now if God is this God who has revealed Himself in the creation and in Israel and supremely in Christ, crucified and risen, the gracious and majestic God, then when He speaks, we must listen. Remember how in the old TV ads, "When E. F. Hutton speaks, people listen," every body became silent so they could hear? May it be so for us. When God speaks, let His people be silent and listen.

Looking to the world and to God
So our text continues, "For God so loved the world." Now here our eyes are directed in two directions, to two relationships: one looking toward the world and one looking toward God. So first, the world: this world is the world that God loves. It is this fallen world He loves. Amazing. God’s love is unconditional. Salvation may be conditional in the sense that one must respond. God does not save the world simply in love, but rather love moves on into grace and takes a specific path so that people might respond. The foundation of this grace is this incredible love God has for the world.

In our experience, things partly derive their preciousness from being desired and appreciated and treasured by others. Here is a world that is treasured and desired by God. If God treasures all the people, if our Father treasures and loves the world and the inhabitants therein, then so must we. For we are his children in Christ, we are imitators of our heavenly Father and of our Lord. His loves are our loves; his concerns, our concerns. Jesus both shows in His life and teaches in His word that our love is to be as perfect, that is, as embrasive as our heavenly Father’s love, who makes His sun to shine on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45). Not to love in this way is to depart from the heart of God. It is sin. It is to continually fall short of the glory of God.

Now to be sure, as finite creatures, at any given moment our energies are limited and focused, but in principle our love is to include all and to be directed by God in His focused way as He guides and directs us, for it is the world that God loves. The very catholicity of His people, the catholicity of the Church rises from this. Does this not begin to touch you in the heart and to challenge you as it does me? How often we limit our affection, our love, our willingness to be concerned for others. Have you written off someone, some group, some people group, some class, some race, placed them out of the bonds of your love? Then let us hear these words, "God so loved the world."

Bishop Alfred Stanway used to say, "You’re going to have to forgive them sooner or later — why not sooner?" What an amazing and surprising people we are when, in any real sense, we get hold of this, or the Lord gets hold of us, and we begin to reflect in this fallen world this wideness in God’s mercy, this love of the Father for the world. For in the midst of the walls and the fences and the barriers and the hatreds of the fallen world, God’s people recognize no boundaries, no exceptions, for there are no boundaries or exceptions to our Father’s love. "God so loved the world." But if it is a world God loves, it is also God who loves the world. It’s not just that he loves the world but that He so loves the world, that is, He loves it in this fashion — to this degree and in this particular concrete way.

To apprehend the path and the intensity of God’s love, we need to look at our text from the other end and ask, "What does God see in this world? When He looks upon us and sees us apart from Christ, what does He see?"

I weep as I think about this and certainly this is one of the places it my preparation where the Lord spoke to me most powerfully. I suspect each of us will need to repent deeply here. I certainly do. I mean by "repent" to think differently; to change our way of thinking, and hence, our way of behaving, to see things with God’s eyes and not as the world sees and, most particularly, not as our culture sees.

Apart from Christ, God sees that we have not eternal life. He sees us moving toward a terrible and final judgment, with no ability to make restitution or to change our hearts. He sees them perishing — not merely perishing because they lack food or safety or are engaged in warfare, though that would be horrible enough (indeed, as horrible as we see it is on the television) — but as perishing eternally: lacking eternal life and heading toward eternal loss, the banishment from fellowship with God and from fellowship with each other as well. Here is a sight that breaks our Father’s heart. Our Lord Jesus looked at Jerusalem and cried out, "How often would I have gathered you to myself as a hen gather her chicks under her wings, but you would not."

As horrible as the sign of judgment can be on sin in this life, it is to the final accounting and separation that our Father looks and beholds. He does not want to see us perish because we lack eternal life. He does not want to see us moving toward the second death, to that condition where the Savior himself says there is "weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth." We can’t fully picture it or entertain it. As a matter of fact, we repress it. Jesus said, "It would have been better if he had never been born." What a thing to say! It is our awful guilt He sees. God is moved to take the path that His love will take — the path of grace.

Let me put a question to each of us bluntly. If we really believed that those around us and throughout the world were perishing and moving toward eternal death, and if we believed that there were an alternative given by God and that God would use us to rescue the perishing — would we not act? As one person once put it to a Christian, "If I believed what you Christians claim you believe, I would crawl over cut glass, in love, to warn and to rescue those who are perishing."

When have you last climbed over cut glass to share the Gospel with anyone? God says they are perishing and lacking eternal life. God have mercy on us all. We have cried "Peace, peace" when there is no peace, and we have said of the fallen and of the unconverted, "I’m okay and you’re okay." I am reminded of that story where the one fellow says, "if I’m okay and you’re okay, why is he up there on the cross?" When we should say, "Because he’s up on the cross, you can be okay and I can be okay" in relationship to God through him!

I hope that you will never be able to hear this verse again without this word "perishing" suddenly blinking at you and asking you to look no longer after the flesh — to see people as man sees on the outside — but to see with the eyes of your heavenly Father.

Everyone needs the Gospel
The Gospel is for everyone because everyone needs the Gospel. For those who are well and those who are sick; rich and poor, near and far; male and female; educated and ignorant; our race, whatever it may be, and those of any other race; religious and secular; short and tall; thin and fat — for all have sinned and continually fall short of the glory of God, and unless they are given birth from above, they can neither see nor enter the Kingdom of God. Perishing. Man looks upon the outside, God looks upon the heart.

Will you repent with me for refusing to take seriously what God sees and tells us what He sees; tells us consistently through the entire New Testament? The third chapter of John’s Gospel ends with these words: "He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him."

The Gospel is for all because God loves all and because all are perishing and lack eternal life and are headed for eternal death. Now I think we can understand the path that God’s love takes. God so loved that he acted appropriately. He took the path of grace. He gave his only Son. God gave his best. In his loving identification with us he humbles himself, he teaches us, he models for us, he takes our place on the cross and bears our sins in his own body on the tree. On him, the Father placed the iniquity of us all: "and not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world."

Love in grace plumbs the depths, but it also climbs the heights. In love, the Father raises the Son, victorious; exalts Him to His right hand; and the Father and the Son, in love, pour out the Spirit — the Spirit of love — to open our hearts to Christ, to give us the new birth, to conform us to Christ, to bestow that love from which nothing shall be able to separate us. We are in His love — not that we first loved Him, but that He first loved us and gave His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

There is salvation in no one else for there is no other name given under heaven whereby men must be saved. So God’s love, His Son and His Spirit meet us in the Gospel through the body of Christ, through believers who commend the Gospel in their life and in their witness, and tell the story. It is whosoever believeth that has eternal life, therefore Paul’s words are addressed to us: "but how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed; and how are they to believe in him of whom the have never heard?" — heard in both the sense of hearing with the mind and heard in the sense of having received it in the heart through the witness of someone who knows Him and gives testimony to Him, that the Spirit might use both mind and testimony to touch the heart. How are they to hear without a witness, a proclaimer; how can they proclaim they are never sent? The Lord Himself says to us, "As the Father has sent me, so send I you."

The Gospel is for all and we are sent to all. Must we not weep for our negligence and ask the Spirit to move us deeply and free us for this great service.

The applications
My brothers and sisters, let me conclude with two very simple and brief applications. Should there be anyone here who has never personally taken Jesus’ Gospel to heart, accepted Christ’s love in their own heart, accepted Him as the one who bore your sins personally on the tree (as the Apostle Paul says, "The Son of God loves me and gave himself for me"; and Luther says, "The secret’s in the pronoun ‘for me’") — if there is anyone here who has not personally, consciously claimed all was signed and sealed at baptism; not cashed the check on Christ’s account, I beg you to do so tonight. Tell the one praying with you that you would like to pray to receive Christ as your personal Lord and Savior — to open your heart for the Spirit is, even now, touching and drawing you to Christ.

I think most of us are going to have to ask the Lord for forgiveness; forgiveness because we have looked upon the outside and failed to look upon people as the Father looks upon them. "Lord, give us the eyes, pray, give us the eyes to see people as perishing. Let our heart break with your heart. Let us see truly and honestly and faithfully as you see. We pray to have the eyes of Christ."

Second, pray for a new freedom in the Spirit to bear witness to Christ, in your life and with your lips, no longer to be ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ — free and bold and yet sensitive. (I don’t think the Lord would have us drive people away, but rather, lead them to Himself.) Pray for the freedom to go where the Lord would have you go. Would He have you go across cultural lines to far places where the Gospel is not yet heard or where a church might be assisted by your gifts? Are we free to speak our families? Are we free to speak in our parishes? Pray for the renewal your heart and of your passion for the Gospel.

For the truth of the matter is, God so loved the world that He literally gave His only Son, that whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but actually receive and have eternal life. In God’s heart the Gospel is for everyone. May it be so in our hearts as well.

The Rt. Rev. Dr. John H. Rodgers, a retired missionary bishop of the Anglican Church of Singapore serving in the United States with the Anglican Mission in America, served as Trinity’s founding professor and then the second dean and president. He has come out retirement to serve as Trinity's Interim Dean and President for the 2007-2008 academic year. 

"The Gospel is for Everyone" was preached at the 2000 New Wineskins for Global Mission conference. Copyright John H. Rodgers 2000. Posted 25 September 2000.