The Text of Texts

[Dr Denis O'Callaghan]

"He gave His only-begotten Son."- John 3: 16.

We have reached December. Christmas draws near again, with all its tender associations and mighty meaning. Over against the saddening spectacle of our war-scarred, sin­strangled, twentieth-century world, let us reflect again, with simple-hearted gratitude, on the wonder of wonders, in the text of texts, John 3: 16.

"He gave His only-begotten Son." The measure of love is always its willingness to give; its capacity for sacrifice. If we would measure the
love of God, we must measure it by Calvary. Someone has thus written of love:

Love ever gives, forgives, outlives; And ever' stands with open hands;
And while it lives it gives;
For while it gives it lives;
And this is Love's prerogative­
To give-and give-and give.

This is certainly true of the love of God. It is revealed in its giving, and is thus seen to be beyond all measure. We can never know the costliness of Calvary to God, nor can we ever measure the love that lay behind it. AIl we can do is to fall back on that elastic particle, "so":

God so loved. . . that He gave His only-begotten Son."

This we know: such is the oneness of the Father and the Son, that, in giving the Son, the Father gave Himself; for" God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself" (2 Cor. 5: 19).

The Lord Jesus is not merely an agent through whom God sends the message that He loves us. He is God Himself actually come to earth loving us. He does not merely declare or expound the love of God: He is the love of God incarnate.

What adverbs we may unite with that particle "so"! God so loved" -so fully, so freely, so sublimely. But when we proceed to the counter­part of that particle" so", in the words, "that He gave His only-begotten Son ", and when we reflect on the mysterious fact that the Father gave up the eternal Son, not only to the fathomless woe of Calvary, but to the incorporating of our human nature itself into His divine being, by a real human birth, so that He is now the Son of Man for evermore, as well as God the Son, we can only exclaim, "God loved so unutterably. .." Language indeed breaks down. We are lost in wonder, love and praise.

Yes, Christmas draws near again. In our thinking of it, we must never isolate Bethehem from Golgotha. or the Cradle from the Cross. Apart from the Incarnation there never could have been the Atonement; and apart from the Atonement there never would have been the Incarnation; and apart from the infinite love of God there neither could nor would have been either. Orion and Pleiades may be wonderful to us, in their flaming magnificence and immensity; but the greatest thing we know about the Creator is just this: "God so loved. . . that He gave His only ­begotten Son."