Manton:

The love of John 3:16 antecedent to electing love:^1:

1) The ground of all that love God beareth to us is for Christ’s sake. There is indeed an antecedent love showed in giving us to Christ, and Christ to us: John iii. 16, ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son That whoso ever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ The first cause of Christ’s love to us was obedience to the Father ; the Son loved us, because the Father required it ; though after wards God loved us because Christ merited it. All consequent benefits are procured by the merit of Christ. The Father, that is first in order of persons, is first in order of working, and can have no higher cause than his own will and purpose. And besides, there is an obligation established to every person. Absolute elective love is the Father’s property and personal operation; but then his eternal purpose is brought to pass in and through Jesus Christ. Thomas Manton, “Sermon 40″ in Works 11:76.

The love of John 3:16 is the love of benevolence:

1) Strictly, it is taken for our complacency and delight in God. Divines distinguish of a twofold love; a love of benevolence and a love of complacency. The love of benevolence is the desiring of the felicity of another; the love of complacency is the well-pleasedness of the soul in a suitable good. God loveth us both these ways; with the love of benevolence: ‘For so God loved the world. &c., John iii. 16 ; with the love of complacency, and so ‘ The upright in the way are his delight.’ But we love God with but one of these, not with the love of benevolence; for he is above our injuries and benefits, and needeth nothing from us to add to his felicity ; therefore we cannot be said to love him with the love of benevolence, unless very improperly, when we desire his glory; but we love him with a love of complacency when the soul is well pleased in God, or delights in him, which is begun here, and perfected hereafter. This is spoken of, Ps. xxxvii. 4, ‘Delight thyself in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.’ And it is seen in this, when we count his favour and presence our chiefest happiness, and value an interest in him above all the world, Ps. xvi. 6. 7, and Ps. iv. 6, 7 ; and when we delight in other things, as they belong to God : Ps. cxix. 14, ‘ I will delight myself in thy commandments, which I have loved.’ Thomas Manton, Sermons on 2 Corinthians 5, in Works, 13:141.

The love of John 3:16 is a love to the creature:

3) There fore, ‘herein is love;’ that is, this is the highest expression of God’s love to the creature, not only that ever was, but can be; for in love only God acteth to the uttermost: he never showed so much of his power and wisdom, but he can show more; of his wrath, but he can show more; but he hath no greater thing to give than himself, than his Christ. At what a dear rate hath the Lord bought our hearts I He needed not; he might have made nobler creatures than the present race of men, and dealt with us as he did with the sinning angels; he would not enter into treaty with them, but the execution was as quick as the sin; so the Lord might utterly have cast us off, and made a new race of men to glorify his grace, leaving Adam to propagate the world to glorify his justice; or, at least, he might have redeemed us in another way, for I suppose it is a free dispensation, opus liberi consilii. But, John iii. 16, ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son.” He took this way, that we might love Christ as well as believe in him. God might have redeemed us so much in another way, but he could not oblige us so much in another way; he would not only satisfy his justice, but show his love. It was the Lord’s design, by his love, to deserve ours, and so for ever to shame the creature, if they should not now love him. Oh ! think much of this glorious instance, the love of God in giving Christ, and the love of Christ in giving himself. Thomas Manton, “An Exposition with Notes, Upon the Epistle of Jude,” in Works 5:80-81.

Read the rest of this entry »

Saurin:

VII. But finally, the goodness of God must agree with his veracity. I mean that although the many Scripture-images of the goodness of God are imperfect, and must not be literally understood, they must, however, have a real sense and meaning. Moreover, I affirm, that the grandeur of the original is not at all diminished, but on the contrary, that our ideas of it are very much enlarged, by purifying and retrenching the images that represent it; and this we are obliged to do on account of the eminence of the divine perfections. And here, my brethren, I own I am involved in the most agreeable difficulty that can be imagined; and my mind is absorbed in an innumerable multitude of objects, each of which verifies the proposition in the text. I am obliged to pass by a world of proofs and demonstrations. Yes, I pass by the firmament with all its stars, the earth with all its productions, the treasures of the sea and the influences of the air, the symmetry of the body, the charms of society, and many other objects, which in the most elegant and pathetic manner, preach the Creator’s goodness to us. Those grand objects which have excited the astonishment of philosophers, and filled the inspired writers with wonder and praise, scarcely merit a moment’s attention to day. I stop at the principal idea of the prophet. We have before observed, that the term which is rendered pity in the text, is a vague word, and is often put in Scripture forth the goodness of God in general; however, we must ac knowledge, that it most properly signifies the disposition of a good parent, who is inclined to show mercy to his son, when he is become sensible of his follies, and endeavors by new effusions of love to re-establish the communion that his disobedience had interrupted: this is certainly the principal idea of the prophet. Now who can doubt, my brethren, whether God possesses the reality of this image in the most noble, the most rich, and the most eminent sense? Wouldst thou be convinced, sinner, of the truth of the declaration of the text? Wouldst thou know the extent of the mercy of God to poor sinful men? Consider then, 1. The victim that he has substituted in their stead. 2. The patience which he exercises towards them. 3. The crimes that he pardons. 4. The familiar friendship to which invites them. And 5. The rewards that he bestows on them. Ah! ye tender fathers, ye mothers who seem to be all love for your children, ye whose eyes, whose hearts, whose perpetual cares and affections are concentred in them, yield, yield to the love of God for his children, and acknowledge that God only knows how to love!

Let us remark, 1. The sacrifice that God has substituted in the sinner’s stead. One of the liveliest and most emphatical expressions of the love of God, in my opinion, is that in the gospel of St. John. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,” ch. iii. 16. Weigh these words, my brethren, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.” Metaphysical ideas begin to grow into disrepute, and I am not surprised at it. Mankind have such imperfect notions of substances, they know so little of the nature of spirits, particularly, they are so entirely at a loss in reasoning on the Infinite Spirit, that we need not be astonished if people retire from a speculative track in which the indiscretion of some has made great mistakes. Behold a sure system of metaphysics. Convinced of the imperfection of all my know ledge, but particularly of my discoveries of the being and perfections of God, I consult the sacred oracles, which God has published, in order to obtain right notions of him. I immediately perceive that God, in speaking of himself, has proportioned his language to the weakness of men, to whom he has addressed his word. In this view, I meet with no difficulty in explaining those passages in which God says, that he has hands or feet, eyes or heart, that he goes or comes, ascends or descends, that he is in some cases pleased, and in others provoked.

Yet I think, it would be a strange abuse of this notion of Scripture, not to understand some constant ideas literally; ideas which the Scriptures give us of God, and on which the system of Christianity partly rests. I perceive, and I think very clearly, that the Scriptures constantly speak of a being, a person, or if I may speak so, a portion of the divine essence, which is called the Father, and another that is called the Son.

I think I perceive, with equal evidence in the same book, that between these two per sons, the Father and the Son, there is the closest and most intimate union that can be imagined. What love must there be between these two persons, who have the same perfections and the same ideas, the same purposes and the same plans? What love must subsist between two persons, whose union is not interrupted by any calamity without, by any passion within, or, to speak more fully still, by any imagination?

With equal clearness I perceive, that the man Jesus, who was born at Bethlehem, and was laid in a manger, was in the closest union with the Word, that is, with the Son of God; and that in virtue of this union the man Jesus is more beloved of God than all the other creatures of the universe.

No less clearly do I perceive in Scripture, that the man Jesus, who is as closely united to the Eternal Word, as the word is to God, was delivered for me, a vile creature, to the most ignominious treatment, to sufferings the most painful, and the most shameful, that were ever inflicted on the meanest and basest of man kind.

And when I inquire the cause of this great mystery, when I ask, Why did the Almighty God bestow so rich a present on me? Especially when I apply to revelation for an explication of this mystery, which reason cannot fully explain, I can find no other cause than the compassion of God.

Let the schools take their way, let reason lose itself in speculations, yea, let faith find it difficult to submit to a doctrine, which has always appeared with an awful solemnity to those who have thought and meditated on it; for my part, I abide by this clear and astonishing, but at the same time, this kind and comfortable proposition, ” God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.” When people show us Jesus Christ in the garden, sweating great drops of blood; when they speak of his trial before Caiaphas and Pilate, in which he was interrogated, insulted, and scourged; when they present him to our view upon mount Calvary, nailed to a cross, and bowing beneath the blows of heaven and earth; when they require the reason of these formidable and surprising phenomena, we will answer, It is because God loved mankind; it is because ” God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.”

Extracted from, “The Compassion of God,” by James Saurin in, Sermons of Rev. James Saurin, Late pastor of the French Church at the Hague, (New York: Harper Brothers, 1843), 89-90.

Musculus:

1) M. [Musculus] This the Evangelist adds because of the words of Mary and Martha which the told by the message unto the Lord, saying, “Lord, behold he whom thou loves is sick.” Jesus loved not only Lazarus but also his sisters. By that is to say all this household and family which were Godly disposed. M. [Musculus] For Christ loved all men in that he came into the world to be the savior and redeemer of all men, and not only those which were then living, but those also which should be upon the earth unto the world’s end.

Source: Augustine Marlorate, A Catholike and Ecclesiasticall exposition of the holy Gospel after S. Iohn, trans., Thomas Timme (Imprinted at London by Thomas Marshe, Anno Domini. 1575), John 11:5, p., 398. [Some spelling modernized.]

2) 4. The fourth argument of the love of God towards man, is in the death of the only begotten, whereunto he was delivered for the redemption of our kind. “For as much as children,” says the Apostle, “has to do with flesh, and blood, he was also like made partaker of them, to the intent that by his death, he might abolish him, who had the rule of death, that is the Devil,” &c. And whereupon came this? In this says John appeared the love of God towards us, that he sent his Son into the world to be the propitiation for our sins. And the Apostle: “God,” (says he) does set forth his love towards us in that when we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” (Rom. 5.). “If God be fore us, who is against us, who spared not his own Son, but gave him for us all, and how is it possible but that he should give us all things also with him,” &c. “Who shall disseaver [separate] us from the from the love of God?” And the only begotten of God himself says: “So God loved the world,” (says he), “that he gave his only begotten Son, that everyone which believes in him, should not perish, but have life everlasting,” (John. 3.). So that by the world he means all mankind. Wolfgangus Musculus, Common Places of Christian Religion, trans., by Iohn Merton (London: Imprinted by Henry Bynneman, 1578), 962-963.

[I have extracted this from his section (already posted) on the love of God to man. However, I consider this comment was also relevant and explicit enough to be posted in the John 3:16 category as well. Musculus believed that the love of John 3:16 was an expression of God’s general love and compassion to mankind as a whole; c.f., Calvin saying the same.]

Preston:

Again, this mus be marked that I say , you must take or receive him: you must not only believe that he is the Messiah, and that he is offered, but there is a taking and receiving that is necessary to make you partakers of that that. is offered, Those words, John 3 make it plain; God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, &c. Giving is but Relative, it implies that there is a receiving or taking required: for when Christ is given, unless he be taken by us, he doth us no good, he is not made ours. If a man be willing ling to give another any thing, unless he take it, it is not his. It is true indeed, there is a sufficiency in Christ to save all men, and he is that great Physician that heals the souls of men; there is righteousness enough in him to justify all the world; but, my Beloved; unless we take him, and apply him to ourselves, we can have no part in that righteousness: this is, plainly expressed in Mat. 22. where it is said the King sent forth his servants to bid men to the Marriage of his son. And so in Ephes. 5. the same similitude and comparison is used by the Apostle, where he setteth forth the union that is between Christ and the Church, by that union there is between the Husband and the Wife. Put the case, that an Husband should offer himself to a woman to marry her, and he should believe it; yet unless there a taking of him on her part, the match is not made; and for it is here and in this thing the essence of faith consists, when Christ offers himself unto you, you must believe that there is such a thing, and that God intendeth it really, but it is the taking that consummates the marriage; and when the Wife hath taken the Husband, then all that is his is hers, she hath an interest in all his goods: so also it is here; there must be a believing that Christ is offered, that he is the Messiah, and that there is a righteousness in him to save us; but that is not enough, we must also take him, and when that is done, we are justified, then we are at peace with God.

John Preston, The Breast-Plate of faith and Love, (London: Printed by George Purstow, and are to be sold in the Companie of the Stationers, 1651), 43-44.