SACRIFICIAL LOVE

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

“This is my command: Love each other.”

John 15:12-13, 17

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

When we use the word “love”, it can often carry with it different depths of meaning, depending on the context.

I love my wife and that love is expressed in very intimate ways, ways that God intended for married couples to share. This sexual love is not simply a means by which people procreate and replenish God’s creation with new generations of children. For it is also a way to cement and consummate a relationship between a man and a woman, a relationship that is supposed to be distinct from the relations that unmarried men and women have but unfortunately in our world today, the sexual escapades occurring have taken all the glimmer and glitter off of what God intended sex to be.

Now this special, uniquely personal and sexually engaging love is very different from the love I have for my parents, my children, or my siblings. I deeply love them all but not in the kind of passionate ways that my wife and I share love. The only physical connection would maybe be through a hug or kiss.  

Then there is a love that you would have for your friends. It’s more of an occasional acquaintance kind of love unless you happen to have a friend who you consider on the same level of family. Many people have friends who they are that close to.  

And then there is a love we should have for all people period whether we know them or not. It’s the kind of love God calls us to, the same kind of love He holds for every one of His children.

Four very distinct kinds of love but here’s the thing. None of them are as pure and perfect as the kind of love we find in Jesus. We know this because Jesus was perfect and so if we want a view of perfect love, we need only look at Him.

How much did Jesus love you, me, and every other person who has ever lived since He emerged on the scene in ministry?

One could answer the question by looking to the cross where Jesus arms were stretched out wide while nailed to the wooden beam and seeing this symbolically as a love that stretched as far as the east is from the west. Indeed, there was no greater display of love than what Jesus displayed at Calvary as He took the punishment we deserved to bring us the salvation we didn’t merit. It was an immense devotion grounded in the ultimate sacrifice as Jesus put the words we read in today’s scripture passage into action. Let’s look at those words again here:

“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

“This is my command: Love each other.”  John 15:12-13, 17

Note here what Jesus is commanding His disciples to do. They are to love one another as He loved them and as I mentioned, Jesus showed a level of love that has been unprecedented and I would say unmatched when He was alive and walking the earth. Paul puts it very well when he writes these words to the church to the Roman Christians:

God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

Think about this. We were sinners who had fallen short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23). We deserved nothing but God’s condemnation but instead we received His deepest love as expressed through His Son Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who was slain to atone for the sins of the world (John 1:29). It was a sacrificial love as God gave up the only Son He had to save His people. It was also a sacrificial love shown by a Son who was fully obedient to the Father that He was one with. This sacrifice required laying it all down to include life itself.

And so in God the Father and Jesus, His Son, we see love of the highest order, a love that saw a Father selflessly give up His only Son, and that Son Jesus give up His life so a multitude of others could find theirs.

If need be, this is the kind of love we are expected to develop and extend to others, a love evidenced by a willingness to lay down our lives sacrificially for the benefit of another.

Jesus showed us how to do it.

Jesus commanded us to do it.

It’s up to us to be obedient to His call to love others as He has loved, laying down our own lives if the cause calls for it.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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