Dedicated To The Men of God Who Preach the Word of God As It Is To Men As They Are

"Preach The Word"

Sermon by
Dr. R.A. Torrey

THE MOST WONDERFUL
SENTENCE EVER WRITTEN

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.--John 3:16.

MY TEXT IS, "THE MOST WONDERFUL, SENTENCE THAT
WAS EVER WRITTEN." Of course, that sentence is in the Bible.
All the greatest sentences that were ever written are found in one book,
God's Word, the Bible. The Bible is a book that abounds in
illuminating, stirring, startling, marvelous, bewildering, amaz-
ing, and life-transforming utterances, utterances with which
there is absolutely nothing to compare in all the other litera-
ture of the world. But I am inclined to think that the one we
are to consider to-night is the most remarkable of them all. I
think that after we have given it careful thought to-night you
will agree with me that this sentence is the most wonderful
that was ever written.

You are all perfectly familiar with it. I doubt that there is a
person in this audience who has not heard it again and again.
Indeed our very familiarity with it has blinded many of us to
the wonderful character of it and the stupendous significance
of it. But we are going to look at it steadily and closely, turning
it around and around, as one would turn around and scrutinize
a diamond of unusual purity, beauty, brilliance and play of
prismatic colors, until its beauty, its profundity, its glory, its
sublimity, and its amazing significance are more fully seen
and appreciated by us.


The sentence is found in John 3:16, "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."
There are whole volumes of incomparably precious truth
packed into that one sentence. Indeed, many volumes have
been devoted to the exposition of that one verse, but it is not
exhausted yet and never will be. These marvelous words of
God never become hackneyed or worn out or wearisome. We
are always beholding new beauty and new glory in them.
When all the millions of volumes that men have written in
many languages throughout the many centuries of literary his-
tory have become obsolete and are forgotten, that imperishable
sentence shall shine out in its matchless beauty and peerless
glory throughout the endless ages of eternity. Let me repeat
it again, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not per-
ish, but have everlasting life." God Himself has used that state-
ment to save thousands of souls, to lift men out of the sad, yes,
appalling, ruin which sin had wrought into the glory of like-
ness to Himself. I trust that He may use it to-night to save
many more.
 

The verse tells us five exceedingly important facts: first,
God's attitude toward the world; second, God's attitude to-
ward sin; third, God's attitude toward His Son; fourth, God's
attitude toward all who believe in His Son; fifth, God's atti-
tude toward all who refuse or neglect to believe in His Son.
 

I. GOD'S ATTITUDE TOWARD THE WORLD
First of all, this verse from Gods Word tells us what God's
attitude is toward the world. What is God's attitude toward
the world? LOVE. The sentence reads, "God so loved the
world." Love is the most wonderful thing in the world, and
love is one of the most uncommon things in the world. There
is in the world to-day much that is called love, but most of
that which is called love is not love at all. We speak often-
times of a young man's love for a young woman, and all we
cost. "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten
Son." Oh, men and women, stand and wonder! Oh, angels, and
archangel, cherubim and seraphim, stand and wonder! "God
so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son."

Some men tell us that they cannot believe the Bible to be
the Word of God because there are so many incredible state-
ments in it. But that is the most incredible statement in the
whole Book, and yet we know it is true. If I can believe that
statement I ought not to have any difficulty with any other
statement in the whole Book, and I can believe that statement,
I do believe that statement. I know that statement is true. I
have put it to the test of personal experience and found it true.
"God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son"—
that has been God's attitude toward the world from the be-
ginning. That is ,God's attitude toward the world to-night.
God 'eves the world. There are men and women and chil-
dren in this world whom you and I love, but God loves the
whole world. Not a man in it, not a woman in it, not a child
in it whom God does not love. From the intellectually most
rarely gifted and morally most saintly man and woman down
to the most apelike and ignorant naked African in the heart
of the Dark Continent, and the morally most degraded and
brute like man or woman in the slums of a great city or in the
jungles of some cannibal island, God loves each and every
one. "God so loved the world."
 

There are hundreds and hundreds of people who gather in
this church about whom you care absolutely nothing. You
never saw them before, you will never see them again. If you
should read in your paper to-morrow morning, "John Jones,
who was at the Church of the Open Door, as he was going
home from the meeting, got in front of a Sixth Street car and
was instantly killed," you would hardly give it a second
thought. John Jones is nothing to you. But John Jones is some-
thing to God. God loves John Jones, and John Smith, and John
Johnson, and every other man and woman and child. You may
be a very lonely stranger in a great city's crowd. Perhaps you
have been unfortunate and are penniless and friendless, per-
haps you have gone down into some black depth of sin and
you say to yourself, "Not one person in this great crowd has
the slightest interest in me," and that may be true.

But there is One who has an interest in you. There is One who so loved
you that He "gave his only begotten Son" to die for you, and
that One is God. God loves the world and every one in it. God
loves the world in the purest, deepest, and highest sense of that
word "love." Yes, God loves you. "Whom do you mean by
you?" someone asks. I mean every man, woman, and child.
There is nothing about the world why God should love it.
It is a sinful world, it is a selfish world, it is a corrupt world.
The more I get to know the world of which I am a part, and
the more I get to know myself, the more I am humbled. John
was entirely right when he said, "The whole world lieth in the
evil, one" ( John 5:19). I am an optimist, but I am not an opti-
mist by painting a black world white. Look at the rich world.
What a cruel thing it is. How it marches on, trampling down
everyone that lies in its path to greater wealth. How are great
fortunes usually built up? You know. I know. By the trampling
of human hearts under foot. But look at the poor world. It is
nearly as cruel as the rich world. One day in Chicago two men
were working hard to make an honest living for themselves
and families just four doors north of the church of which I
was pastor. Four other poor men sneaked in and chopped their
heads open with hatchets„ and ran. Why did they do it? Simply
because they wanted the jobs of these two men. The two men
struck down by the four heartless cowards were guilty of no
crime and no wrong against the ones that cut them down.
They did not belong to the union, that was all. If you wish to
know the spirit of the rich world look at some of the greedy,
conscienceless trusts. If you wish to know the spirit of the
poor world, look at the present-day methods of the trades
unions. The spirit of both is essentially the same, greed for
gold; money must be secured at any cost, even the cost of
murder of others by the slow process of starvation on the part
of the rich, or the rapid process of hatchet and bullet and
dynamite on the part of the poor.

A cruel, selfish, bloodthirsty world is this. What the world
really is, we saw in the late war. But God loves it. God loves
those four cowards who cut down their fellow laboring men.
God loves those millionaires who, already having more than
is for their own good or for the good of their families, are
trying to increase their wealth by crowding competitors to the
wall and their families to the poorhouse. God loves those moral
monsters that made Europe flow with blood and gasp with
poison gas. God loves the world. As I come to know more
and more of the cruelty, the greed, the cupidity, the selfish-
ness, the falsehood, the villainy, the lust, the vileness, and
beastliness there is in this world, in the social world, high and
low; in the business world, in all its departments, and in the
political world, I sometimes almost wonder why God does not
blot out this whole world as He did Sodom and Gomorrah of
old. Why does He not do it? I will tell you why. God loves the
world. In spite of all its cruelty, in spite of all its greed, in
spite of all its selfishness, in spite of all its lust, in spite of all
its vileness in thought and word and deed, God loves the
world. Is it not wonderful, is it not amazing, that a Holy God
should love a sinful world like this? But He does!
 

There is not a man whom God does not love. There is not
a woman whom God does not love. There is not a thief whom
God does not love. There is not a woman who has forgotten
her modesty and her true womanhood that God does not love.
There is not an adulterer whom God does not love, not a sin-
ner, not an outcast, not a criminal of any kind whom God does
not love. "God so loved the world."
 

Years ago I said to a woman, in deep despair because of the
depths of iniquity and infamy into which she had fallen, "God
loves you." "Not me, Mr. Torrey. God doesn't love me. I have
killed a man," she cried. "Yes, I know that, but God loves you."
"No, not me. I have murdered innocent, unborn babes."
"Yes, I know that, but God loves you." "Not me. My heart is
as hard as a rock." "Yes, but God loves you." "Not me. I have
prayed to the devil to take away all my convictions, and he
has done it." "Yes, I know all that, but God loves you." Then
I made that woman get down on her knees, and she came to
believe in God's love to her, and she found a great peace. I
saw her again last month when I was in Chicago. She came
down to the platform to speak to me at the close of one of
my meetings, with others who crowded around me. She said,
"Do you know me?" I replied, "Of course, I\ know you," and
called her by name. Her face was wreathed with smiles. "Oh,"
she said, "Mr. Torrey, I am still at the old work of winning
others to Christ." Ah, some of you self-righteous skeptics hold
up your hands in holy horror and disgust and say, "I don't
want to believe in a God who welcomes sinners so vile as
that." You miserable Pharisee, you old hypocrite, you are
essentially as bad as she once was and infinitely worse than
she now is. But God loves you, even you. God's attitude to-
ward the whole wide world is love.

II. GOD'S ATTITUDE TOWARD SIN
But what is God's attitude toward sin? Our text tells us,
God's attitude toward sin is hate. God loves the world with
infinite love! God hates sin with infinite hate! How does our
text show that? Listen. "God so loved the world, that he gave
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should
not perish, but have everlasting life." How does that show that
God hates sin? In this way: If God had not hated sin He could
have saved the world He loved without an atonement, with-
out the atonement that cost Him so much, the death and
agony of His only begotten Son, who died as an atoning sacri-
fice on the Cross. But because God was holy and therefore
hated sin, hated it with infinite hatred, His hatred of sin must
manifest itself somehow, either in the punishment of the sin-
ner and the banishment of the sinner forever from Himself
and from life, and from hope, or in some other way. But God's
love would not permit the just punishment of the sinner.

So God in the person of His Son took the penalty of sin upon
Himself and thus saved the world He loved. "All we like sheep
have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way;
and Jehovah hath made to strike on him the iniquity of us all"
(Isaiah 53:6, exactly translated from the Hebrew). In this way
God made possible eternal life for every sinner who would
accept the salvation that He Himself purchased for them by
the atoning death of His only begotten Son.
 

The Cross of Christ, declares two things: first, God's infinite
love of the world; second, God's infinite hatred of sin. Oh,
wicked man, do not fancy that because God loves you He will
wink at your sin. Not for one moment. He hates your sin, He
hates your greed, He hates your selfishness, He hates your
cruelty, He hates your dishonesty, He hates your lying, He
hates your drunkenness, He hates your impure imagination,
He hates your moral uncleanness, He hates your beastliness,
Be hates every sin, great and small, of which you are guilty.
The hatred of a true man for all falsehood, the hatred of honest
men for all dishonesty, the hatred of a true, pure woman for
the unspeakable vileness of the woman of the street and gut-
ter, is nothing to the blazing wrath of God at your smallest sin.
Nevertheless, God loves you.
 

III. GOD'S ATTITUDE TOWARD HIS SON
This wonderful verse also tells of God's attitude toward
His Son. What is God's attitude toward His Son? Listen. "God
so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." God's
attitude toward His Son, "his only begotten Son," is infinite
love. The Lord Jesus is the only Son of God. We become sons
of God through our faith in Him, but He is the only Son of
God by eternal and inherent right. He was the object of His
Father's infinite love in the measureless ages before any one
of the worlds was created; yes, before there was angel or arch-
angel or any of the heavenly beings. Let me speak to you
fathers. What is your attitude toward your son? How you love
him. And if you have only one son how intensely you love him.
have but one son. I have longed for more, but God in His
wisdom has seen fit to give us but one son. How I love him!
God only knows how I love him. But my love to my one son
is nothing, nothing at all to God's love to His only begotten
Son.

I sometimes think of my boy and fancy I know something of
God's love for Jesus Christ, but it is only a little, a very little
that I know. But though God thus loved His Son, God gave
that Son whom He so infinitely loved, that Son who through all
eternity had been the object of His delight—God gave that
only begotten Son for the world, for you and for me. He gave
Him to leave heaven and His own companionship to come
down to earth to live a lonely stranger here. ,He gave Him to
be spit upon and buffeted and "despised and rejected of men."
He gave Him to be crowned with thorns, and mocked at and
derided. He gave Him to be dragged through the streets be-
fore a howling, yelling, jeering mob. He gave Him to be nailed
to the Cross. Yes, to a cross! and to hang there in misery, and
pain, and agony, for hours, the object of the rude jests and
jeers of the merciless mob. He gave Him to die of a "broken
heart," a heart broken by the reproach of the men He loved
(Psalm 69:20), and by grief over man's sins, which He had
taken upon Himself. Yes, God gave Him, His only begotten
Son, thus to be separated from Himself, to suffer, and to die.
Why? Because God loved you and me and that was the only
price that would purchase our salvation. And God paid that
price, that awful price.

Oh, it is wonderful! I can think of but one other thing that
is anywhere near as wonderful as the love of God for sinners.
What is that? The way we treat that love. The way men treat
it. The way some of you despise it. The way you reject it. The
way you trample it under foot. The way you even try to doubt
it and disbelieve it and deny it and discredit it, and try to make
yourself think that you have "intellectual difficulties about the
Doctrine of the Atonement." Men, at least be honest. Your real
difficulty is not intellectual, you want to save your pride, and
excuse the enormity of your ingratitude. And to do that you
do not hesitate at the gross sin of "even denying the Lord that
bought" you, bought you by His atoning agony and death ( 2
Peter 2:1).

Oh, be honest with the wondrous love of God, even
if you are determined to spurn it. Your pretended "theological
difficulties with the atonement" that Jesus Christ made on the
Cross are simply your dishonest attempt to excuse your abom-
inable ingratitude and damnable rejection of infinite love. Bear
with me for talking thus plainly about your sin. I do it in love
to you. You may not be willing to admit that to-night, but you
will have to admit it in that day when you stand in the light
of the Great WhiteThrone, where all lies and pretexts and
deceptions and hypocrisies will be burned up.
IV. GOD'S ATTiTUDE TOWARD BELIEVERS IN CHRIST
Now let us look at another thing, what our sentence teaches
about God's attitude toward believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.
What is God's attitude toward all who believe in Jesus Christ?
It can be put in a few words. God's attitude toward all be-
lievers in Jesus Christ is to give them eternal life. "God so
loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that who-
soever believeth in him should-not perish, but have everlasting
life." The death of Jesus Christ has opened for all who believe
in Him a way of pardon, and made it possible for a Holy God
to forgive sin and to give eternal life to the vilest sinner, if
only he will believe on Jesus Christ. "The wages of sin is
death," and these wages must be paid, but Jesus Christ paid
the price and so life and not death is possible for you and me;
"the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord"
(Romans 6:23). "Whosoever" believes on Jesus Christ, whom
God gave to die for him, can have eternal life, yes, does have
eternal life. Anyone can have eternal life. There is but one
condition, just believe on Jesus Christ. You ought to do it, any-
how, even if there were nothing to be gained by your believing
on Him; you owe it to Jesus Christ to believe on Him. He is
infinitely worthy of your faith.

But there is something to be gained by believing on Him,
something of infinite worth, eternal life. Do you wish eternal
life? You can have it. Anyone can have it, no matter what his
past may have been. "God so loved the world, that he gave his
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not
perish, but have everlasting life." Oh, if I offered you great
honor it would be nothing compared with this. If I offered you
enormous wealth it would be nothing compared with this. If
I offered you exemption from all sickness and pain it would
be nothing compared with this. Eternal life! That is what God
offers. And God offers it to each one of you. Oh, how it makes
the heart swell and throb with hope and joy and rapture, Eter-
nal life!
 

V. GOD'S ATTITUDE TOWARD ALL THOSE WHO
WILL NOT BELIEVE IN JESUS CHRIST
There is just one thing left to mention, and that is God's
attitude toward all those who will not believe on Jesus Christ.
What is it? Listen. "For God so loved the world that he gave
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should
not perish, but have everlasting life." God's attitude toward
those who will not believe on Jesus Christ, those who prefer
sin and vanity and pride to the glorious Son of God, is simply
this: God, with great grief and reluctance, withdraws from
them the infinite gift He has purchased at so great cost, and
which they will not accept. God leaves them to perish. There
is no hope for any man who rejects God's gift of eternal life,
obtained by simply believing in His only begotten Son. God
has exhausted all the possibilities of a saving love and power
in Jesus Christ's atonement on the Cross of Calvary. Reject
Him, neglect to accept Him, and you must eternally perish.
God's attitude toward the world is infinite love;- God's atti-
tude toward sin is infinite hatred; God's attitude toward His
Son is unutterable love, but He gave that Son up to die for
you and me; God's attitude toward the believer is to give him
eternal life, regardless of what his past has been; God's atti-
tude toward those who will not believe is to leave them to
the perdition they so madly choose. Men and women, what
will you choose to-night, life or death? Some of you will de-
cide that question in a few minutes, decide it for all eternity.
God help you to decide it right.
 

One night in Minneapolis, years ago, I knelt in prayer be-
side a young woman who was having an awful struggle. A
fearful battle was going on in her soul between the forces of
light and the forces of darkness. She heard God calling her
to accept His love, and to accept the eternal life that that love
had purchased by the atoning death of His own Son. But she
heard other voices, too, voices of the world, and the voice of
Satan himself, luring her to turn her back on Jesus Christ and
choose the world. It was awful to watch the battle, and my
heart ached as I watched the battle, and I kept crying to God
that the Holy Spirit might gain the victory. Now and then I
spoke to her. Finally, I took out my watch and said, "This bat-
tle cannot last much longer. Continue to resist the Holy Spirit
as you are resisting Him now and you will seal your doom. I
believe if you do not yield to God in the next ten minutes that
you will never yield but will be lost forever." Then I prayed
but said nothing more to her, but now and again looked at
my watch. The fight went on. Which way would she decide?
Before the ten minutes were up she yielded to God.
 

There is a like battle going on in the hearts of some who are
reading these words. Some of you have been brought to realize
the wondrous love of God for you as you have never realized
it before. Some of you have been brought to see that eternal
life is possible for you to-night if you will only choose Christ.
But the power of the world and of Sin and of Satan is strong
on you still, and the world and sin and, above all, Satan will
not let you go without making a mighty effort to keep you,
to blind you, and to forever destroy your soul. Oh, men and
women out of Christ, each and every one of you look, look,
look! Look once more at the Cross of Christ. See Him hanging
there in awful agony, paying the penalty of your sin, and as
you look, listen once more, to the precious words of the most
wonderful sentence that was ever written, "God so loved the
world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

 
What will you do with that love to-night? Will you yield to
it and believe on the Saviour and obtain eternal life? Or will
you trample that wondrous love of God under foot, and say
again to-night, as you have often said before, "I will not accept
Christ," and go out to perish, perish eternally?
 

One night, many years ago, I was preaching the first sermon
I ever preached in the city of Chicago. ( It was some years
before I went there to live.) I was at the first International
Convention of Christian Workers. The morning the conven-
tion opened I entered a little late, and the nominating com-
mittee was just bringing in its report, and, to my amazement,
I heard them announce my name as nominated for Chairman
of the Convention and President of the International Christian
Workers' Association. I was not yet thirty years old, and there
were many workers there who knew far more about aggressive
methods of Christian work than I had ever learned.
However, there was nothing to do but to accept the position,
and during the days of that wonderful convention I occupied
the chairman's seat. The convention was held in the old First
Methodist Church, in the heart of the city, at the corner of
Washington and Clark Streets. When Sunday came, of course
the church held its own services, but I was invited to preach at
the evening service. There had been much prayer and the
Spirit of God was present in great power, and when I gave out
the invitation many arose to say that they would accept Jesus
Christ as their Saviour then and there, and then came down
to the altar. Among those who had arisen I noticed a beauti-
fully dressed lady near the front, an intelligent looking woman,
but I noticed, also, that she did not come to the altar with the
others. While the altar service was in progress, I stepped down
and urged her to come to the front, but she refused.
 

On Monday night, at the regular session of the convention,
I saw her come in and take a seat just a few rows from the
back of the building. When the meeting was drawing to a
close, I called Mayor Howland of Toronto ( who was Vice-
President of the Convention), to the chair and slipped down
to the back of the church, in order that I might speak with
this lady before she got out of the building. The moment the
benediction was pronounced I hastened to her side and asked
if she would remain a few moments. As the others passed out,
she sat down, and I took a seat beside her and commenced to
urge on her an immediate and whole-hearted acceptance of
Jesus Christ.

"Let me tell you my story," she replied. "I have attended a
Sunday school in this city ever since I was a little girl. I
scarcely missed a Sunday." (She told me what Sunday school
it was; one of the aristocratic Sunday schools on the North
Side.) "But," she continued, "though I have been going to Sun-
day school all these years, do you know that you are the first
person in all my life that ever spoke to me personally about
my accepting Christ?" Then she went on to tell me the story
of her life. She was unusually well educated, occupying a high
position of responsibility, but the story that she told me of her
career was so shameless that I was amazed that a woman of
sense, to say nothing of character, would dream of telling such
a story to a man. Then she hurried on and told me how she had
passed the preceding Easter Sunday. It was a story I could
not repeat. Having finished, she said, with a mocking laugh,
"Funny way to spend Easter, wasn't it?"
 

I was astounded and shocked. I did not attempt to say any-
thing in reply; I did not wish to. I simply opened my Bible to
John 3:16, handed it to her and asked her to read. It was a
diamond print Bible, and she had to hold it close to her face
to see the words. She began to read with a smile on her lips,
"For God so loved the world" ( the smile vanished, she read
on) "that he gave his only begotten Son." She choked and
broke down, the tears literally poured from her eyes on the
page of the Bible and on the beautiful silk robe she wore.

The love of God had conquered that sinful, hardened, trifling,
seemingly shameless heart. Oh, friend, I would that that love
might break your heart, break down your hardness, and un-
belief, and worldliness, and resistance to God and His love. See
the Lord Jesus hanging on yonder cross in unutterable agony,
in indescribable pain, His heart breaking for you, breaking for
your sins, and hear again this most wonderful sentence that
was ever written, "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."


 

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