For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life — the Gospel's theological center affirms God's cosmically-scaled love and the sacrificial gift of the Son as love's expression. "The world" (kosmos), though often opposition to God in John, here becomes the object of divine love, resolving apparent contradiction. The sacrifice ("gave") and substitution ("so that") establish atonement's logic. The universal scope ("whoever believes") negates ethnic or status limitations.

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