Reena Wilms
Puritan Board Freshman
I was reading through : D.A. Carson - "The difficult doctrine of the love of God". And as far as i know he is reformed, but when i was reading through the next part of his book, i was surprised what he wrote about John 3:16, that would would not only for the leceted : read ;
"God's salvific stance toward his fallen world. God so loved the world
that he gave his Son (John 3:16). I know that some try to take kosmos
("world"
here to refer to the elect. But that really will not do. All the
evidence of the usage of the word in John's Gospel is against the
suggestion. True, world in John does not so much refer to bigness as to
badness. In John's vocabulary, world is primarily the moral order in
willful and culpable rebellion against God. In John 3:16 God's love in
sending the Lord Jesus is to be admired not because it is extended to so
big a thing as the world, but to so bad a thing; not to so many people, as
to such wicked people. Nevertheless elsewhere John can speak of "the whole
world" (1 John 2:2), thus bringing bigness and badness together. More
importantly, in Johannine theology the disciples themselves once belonged
to the world but were drawn out of it (e.g., John 15:19). On this axis,
God's love for the world cannot be collapsed into his love for the elect.
Your vieuws please !
Ralph
"God's salvific stance toward his fallen world. God so loved the world
that he gave his Son (John 3:16). I know that some try to take kosmos
("world"

evidence of the usage of the word in John's Gospel is against the
suggestion. True, world in John does not so much refer to bigness as to
badness. In John's vocabulary, world is primarily the moral order in
willful and culpable rebellion against God. In John 3:16 God's love in
sending the Lord Jesus is to be admired not because it is extended to so
big a thing as the world, but to so bad a thing; not to so many people, as
to such wicked people. Nevertheless elsewhere John can speak of "the whole
world" (1 John 2:2), thus bringing bigness and badness together. More
importantly, in Johannine theology the disciples themselves once belonged
to the world but were drawn out of it (e.g., John 15:19). On this axis,
God's love for the world cannot be collapsed into his love for the elect.
Your vieuws please !
Ralph