The Sacrificial Love of Christ

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor 13:13)

On Valentine's Day, it seems appropriate that we talk about love. But with such a broad topic, where to go with it or what to say in a short space seems daunting. Just listing the options seems overwhelming. For instance, we could look into:

• 1 Cor 13 and Paul's definition of love (plus love being greater than the gifts)
• How John uses the love relationship between the Father and the Son to display that Jesus is truly God and that everything He is accomplishing is born out of that love.
• The deep, passionate marital love (and picture of Christ w/ his bride) found in Song of Solomon.
• The sisterly and familial love of Ruth and the tender love of Boaz
• The brotherly love of David and Jonathon
• The creative, sustaining love of God in Gen 1&2, followed by the grieving love of God in Gen 3.

Each these would worthy of a post, but I'd like to reflect for a moment on the sacrificial love of Jesus. This is probably best summed up in John 15:13 "Greater love has no than this, that he lay down his life for is friends." Combine that with Rom 5:7-8 "For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." and we have the heart of the gospel.

The essence of God's salvific love is not that He loves us because we are so lovely or even that we are so potentially lovely. The incredible, awesome, unimaginable saving love of Christ is that He loves us because we are unlovely. Remember the rebellion, remember the sin, remember the self-love. The picture of the Bible and our own lives is that, left to ourselves we always go the wrong way. And God loves us anyway.

We must also remember that God doesn't just leave us as He finds us. His love rescues us, redeems us, restores us. But it does so at cost. Just like everything else in life, salvation isn't free. Oh it is free for you and for me, but is was not free for Christ. The debt had to be paid. Our debt had to be paid.

I want to add one more layer to this awesome picture. If you are a follower of Jesus, you've been called to be a disciple. One of the aspects of being a disciple is hanging out with, living with, interacting with your master so that you become more and more like the master you are following. Isn't that what the disciples did in Jesus' day? The question becomes, is what we are doing today? Especially as it comes to sacrificial love. We will never die for anyone's salvation. Precious few us of will be called on to die for our faith. But as followers of Christ, as disciples of Jesus aren't there small, but very real ways for us to "die" for our friends. Think about it. In the church, in our homes at our jobs. What kind of revolution would we see if we decided to seriously be loving disciples of Christ?

To God Alone be the Glory