Common Misconception about John 3:16

This is from D.A. Carson...

"...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. The same lesson is learned from many passages and themes in Scripture. However much God stands in judgment over the world, he also presents himself as the God who invites and commands all human beings to repent. He orders his people to carry the Gospel to the farthest corner of the world, proclaiming it to men and women everywhere. To rebels the sovereign Lord calls out, As surely as I live ... I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel? - Ezek. 33:11"
(D.A. Carson, Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God)




 This is from John Piper...

How many of you have ever in your life at one time or another learned John 3:16 by heart? One of the reasons this verse is so widely memorized and so deeply loved is that it is such a remarkably full summary of the gospel.
The Four “D’s” of the Gospel
I am dividing it into four parts that make a natural presentation of the gospel. Four “D’s.”

1. The first “D.” The verse talks about the danger that we are in without Christ—” . . . that we might not perish.” All human beings are in danger of perishing, which is not merely dying, but is the opposite of eternal life. Eternal perishing.
2. The second “D.” The verse talks about the design of God to rescue us from perishing, namely, the design of love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” It’s the love of God giving his Son in incarnation and death that rescues us from perishing.
3. The third “D.” The verse talks about the duty that we must fulfill if we are going to be a part of the love of God in rescuing sinners from perishing. The duty is faith, or trust, or believing in the Son that God sends. ” . . . that whoever believes on him might not perish.”
4. Finally, the fourth “D.” The verse talks about the destiny of those who believe, eternal life. ” . . . that whoever believes on him might not perish, but have eternal life.”

Not everything important is mentioned in this verse (the glory of God; election, calling, regeneration, justification, sanctification, the atoning death of Christ, etc.), but what is here is so basic and so precious and so powerful in its straightforwardness that not many verses are more important as summaries of the gospel.

1. The danger: perishing.
2. The design: love.
3. The duty: faith.
4. The destiny: eternal life.