I. A difficulty arises in considering this text. If God so loved the world, why did He allow the fall of man. I answer, Never was a kinder act in God's whole government than that fall of man. For, from what did He fall? A garden. To what does he rise? A heaven. But how can a loving Father permit so much pain, and sin, and misery among His creatures? Two keys unlock that mystery. (1) One is Christ. This world of ours was made to be a platform for the manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ. You will never read rightly the history of this earth till you adopt that as your first principle this world was made to be a platform to show Christ. To that manifestation of Christ in His redeeming work, pain, and sin, and misery were absolutely essential. (2) The other key is eternity. We do not yet know how that world will explain and rectify this. We do not yet know how the discipline of this world is bringing out the joy of another; and how the rough and noisy quarry of this Lebanon is giving effect to that temple which is now rising in its calmness upon the hill of Zion. When we behold all its balanced action, and its perfect unity, and its grand results, I am quite sure that we shall say of it all, "God is love."
II. God does not give many things. He lends many; and what He lends, He recalls. He lends everything that has not Christ in it; and therefore He recalls everything that has not Christ in it. But Christ, and what has Christ in it, He never recalls. A Christian affection a Christian union a Christian peace He never recalls! Christ fills it. God gave Christ; therefore that affection, that peace, that union is for ever and ever. You will observe that the promise is twofold one negative and the other positive. (1) The negative we owe, strictly speaking, to the death of Christ. Our punishment having passed on to Christ, it would not be just in God to punish us also, for that would be punishing the same sin twice. (2) The positive boon, our admission into heaven, we owe to the meritorious righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is imputed to us. And when in that righteousness, we have an actual claim, even the same claim that Christ has, of admission into the heavenly kingdom, because we carry Christ's own claim His righteousness imputed to us.
J. Vaughan, Sermons,1865.