CT057 - For God So Loved

In this Friday Lord's Supper reflection, Matthew Allen opens John 3:16 — perhaps the most familiar verse in the Bible — and slows down long enough to let it land. Using a four-part framework drawn from the text itself, he walks through the Danger (apart from Christ, we are perishing under the wrath of God), the Design (God's love expressed through the gift of his one and only Son), the Duty (ongoing, present-tense belief that connects us to that rescuing love), and the Destiny (eternal life that begins now and never ends). Along the way he traces Jesus' own connection between the bronze serpent in Numbers 21 and the cross, and closes with the story of John Newton — the slave trader whose near-death experiences finally drove him to look to Christ — whose famous hymn captures the whole episode in four lines. A fitting meditation before the Lord's table.