In yesterday’s Good Friday post, I talked about God’s amazing grace. Grace that brought about the most beautiful good from the most violent evil. In addition to that amazing grace, I’ve also been thinking about God’s amazing love. The purest love that can exist is the love God has for us. Nothing we can ever do can separate us from that love. It’s always there for the taking. Amazing, isn’t it? Truly, it is. I don’t say that lightly either. I am in absolute awe of the way that God is the full and complete definition of love. God is the fount and source of all love.
The most incredible way God showed His love for us was to send His only begotten Son, Jesus, to this earth to save us all. Jesus came to this world as a fulfillment of God’s unending and unbending love for us. When you think about it, we really don’t know that much about Jesus’ life, but the most important parts to our salvation are contained within what we DO know. His birth fulfilled God’s promise to send a Savior. His teachings are the very foundation of how we should live and the truth of His lessons will always remain. His death and resurrection fulfilled His place as the one and only Messiah. Everything Jesus did within the course of His earthly life was done out of love. Love poured out from God the Father and love that Jesus Himself carried for everyone – even those who would beat Him, mock Him and eventually kill Him. His love was so great for man, that He even revealed it to the thief hanging on a cross near Him when Jesus Himself must have been in unthinkable pain and agony at that moment. His love is so great that He bore every single minute of undeserved punishment on behalf of mankind. He took on all of our sin at that time and took it to the grave with Him when He breathed His last breath and died. He left our sins in the grave when He arose from the dead. Want to talk about amazing love? There it is. That is amazing love.
We cannot even fathom the depth of that kind of love. We just can’t. As much as we know that the love is there and believe in its infinence, we simple cannot begin to comprehend it fully because we can’t love that deeply ourselves. That kind of love is only of God. As a parent, I cannot even begin to imagine letting my child be punished, let alone be made to suffer and die, for the sins or misdeeds of another. Can any one of us imagine doing THAT?! God did. God sent His own Son to save every one of our lost souls. The world was and is so full of sin that God in His infinite grace sent Jesus to preach, teach and to save. Then Jesus endured absolute torture to the point of death all for the sins of every.single.person on the earth when He Himself was sinless and blameless. And, here’s what really moves me, personally…He didn’t have to do it. Jesus was fully-God and fully-man and as He lived upon this earth, His every motive, action, thought and deed was pure and true for the Glory of God. He didn’t have to allow Himself to be tried, beaten, tortured, mocked, spit upon and hung on a cross. God didn’t have to allow it to happen either. It could have all ended in the blink of an eye and all of humanity could have been destroyed right then and there. (Or worse) But, because of the incredible depth of the love of God that Christ Himself possessed, He did do it. He took all of our sins onto Himself and He bore what most of us can’t even begin to imagine. He didn’t do it for Himself. He did it out of love for us. Love that originates from God the Father and pours freely from Jesus Christ. There is no greater love. No greater grace. Jesus was innocent and pure and did not have to do anything for the salvation of man, but instead of doing nothing, He did it all for every one of us. Again I say…AMAZING.
As we prepare to celebrate the ressurection of the risen Christ on Easter, I want to remind each of us to be mindful of Jesus’ love every day. If we know that He loves us and we live in His love, we can give forth from that love. Pure evil and sin took Jesus to the cross, but it was love that kept Him there for the sake of our souls. Let’s not take that for granted. Let’s not forget that Jesus truly paid it all. All to Him we owe.
John 3:16-17 (NIV) really says it all: “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. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him…”