« And who can describe the love of God for His only begotten Son ? A human father loves an only son especially. But what a difference between the love of God for his only Son and the love of the best human father for his only son ! Here, too, comparison is impossible.
(…) God so loved sinful men that for them He gave that Son of His love. Let no one think this merely means that the Son was a present of God to sinful humanity. Much more is implied in the word « gave ». It means surrendered, sacrificed. And to what did God sacrifice His Son ? To a life of deepest humiliation, and to the bitter, shameful, and accursed death of the croiss ; that is to say, to nothing less than the anguish of hell. The crucified Christ was smitten with the curse of God, for it is written : « Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree » (Gal. 3.13) (…) When He cried with a loud voice : « My God ! My God, why hast thou forsaken me »? (Matthieu 27.46). He was at the very bottom of the bottomless pit. »
John 3.16 makes the amazing, incomprehsnible, unfathomably profound, well-night unbelievable, declaration that the holy God sovereignly loves hell-deserving sinners and that He loves them so much that He was willing that His only begotten Son, whom He loves with all the love of His infinite heart, should go to hell in their stead » (God-centered evangelism, R.B Kuyper)
Makarios 