He gave his only begotten Son

'He gave his only begotten Son'

— John 3:16

The Lord God gave us his Son. We did not earn him. We did not even desire him. And when he came we despised him, rejected him, nailed him up on a piece of wood and mocked him as he died. Yet for all of this, the love, mercy and grace of God were not abated! The purpose of his love was not thwarted. God’s love towards fallen, guilty sinners, scattered throughout the whole world, was so great that ‘He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’

God gave his Son to be our Savior in the covenant of grace before the world began. Before all worlds, in the mind and purpose of God, he took his own beloved Son, laid him upon the altar of his strict justice as the Substitute of that vast multitude whom he had determined to save and killed him as a sin-atoning, propitiatory sacrifice. In that sense Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God ‘slain from the foundation of the world’ (Rev. 13:8).

God gave his Son in the incarnation. In the fullness of time the divine purpose must be fulfilled. God sent forth his Spirit to prepare a body for his Son in the virgin’s womb and Immanuel came, God in our nature! ‘God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law’ (Gal. 4:4-5).

God gave his Son to die in the place of sinners at Calvary. The death of Christ was not the work of Satan, nor even the work of men, for neither Satan nor men had the power to kill God the Son. The death of our Lord Jesus Christ was the work of God the Father, the greatest work ever done by God. It was that work which God had purposed from eternity, for which he created this world. In the crucifixion of his Son by the hands of wicked men God gave his Son up into the hands of his own holy law, to suffer the wrath and vengeance of the law in the place of sinners. Being fully satisfied with the sacrifice of his own dear Son, God now gives salvation and eternal life to every sinner who trusts his Son. Truly, Jesus Christ dying in the place of sinners is the gift of God’s love!