The World's Most Wanted Words - John said, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9).

  

 Several years ago Vital Ministry—a preacher’s magazine—printed the results of an unusual Gallup poll in which the participants in the poll were asked, “What word or phrase would you most like to hear sincerely uttered to you?” Here are the words people most want to hear sincerely spoken to them: “I love you”; “I forgive you”; “Supper is ready.”
Vital Ministry said those words are “the most wanted words in any language.”
Everyone needs to hear God speak those words. The gospel message is embedded in the world’s most wanted words. The gospel says the very things humans long to hear.
God says, “I love you.” The gospel is first and foremost the grand message of God’s love. William Barclay said, “All great men have had their favorite texts; but [John 3:16] has been called “Everybody’s text.” Someone famously said this verse is the Mount Everest of the Bible. This north-star verse of the Bible points us to several crucial things about God and about salvation. For one thing, God took the initiative in our salvation. John said, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (I John 4:10). John also said, “God is love” (I John 4:8) and “We love him, because He first loved us” (I John 4:19).
Our salvation started with God. Before a person takes his first halting, hesitating, faltering step toward God, God has already taken the first step toward him. John Wesley called this “prevenient grace.” Prevenient grace is grace that goes before any human action.
Paul said, “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life” (Romans 5:6-10).
Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, was one of the most brilliant intellectuals of the twentieth century. A reporter once asked Barth if he could summarize what he had said in all his massive volumes on the meaning of life and faith. Barth thought for a moment and said, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
John said, “God so loved the world.” Not just a nation. Not just the good people.
Not just those who love Him. An encyclopedia of meaning is packed into the little two-letter, one-syllable word so. So in this context means “to such a great extent, extremely, very much.” Augustine said, “God loves each one of us as if there was only one of us to love.”
Love is more than a mere characteristic of God; love is the very essence of His substance, the core of His being, the reality of His existence. Jesus said, “I love you” on the cross, and He’s still saying it two thousand years later.
God says, “I forgive you.” John said, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us” (I John 1:8-10).
The story of the woman caught in adultery is one of the most beautiful stories in the Bible. I was disturbed when I heard several years ago that this story was not in some of the early manuscripts. The omission of this real-life story is regrettable.
I discovered the reason for its omission was that some of the post-apostolic church fathers were afraid its inclusion in the canon of Scripture would encourage adultery.
How dare anyone gut the gospel of this redemptive story of forgiveness! Who has the right to diminish God’s gracious forgiveness? If we start down that dangerous road, where do we stop? If we start editing out examples of mercy and forgiveness, it won’t be long before our own sin is excluded from God’s grace. The story of the forgiveness of the adulterous woman belongs in the Bible.
God is “faithful and just to forgive.” Paul said, “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Romans 3:23-26).
I awoke one Sunday morning several years ago with the words, “the evidence of forgiveness” on my mind. Throughout the day I pondered the possible meaning of that incomplete sentence: “The evidence of forgiveness …” I asked myself, “What is the evidence of forgiveness?” I eliminated my own human feelings as the evidence that I have received God’s forgiveness. And then I eliminated human forgiveness as the evidence that God has forgiven me. Before the end of the day, I knew that the proof of forgiveness is the promise of forgiveness.
John said, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9).