This Kind of Love

As we grow closer to Good Friday I am yet again bowled over by the love God has for us that was demonstrated so powerfully in every step that led Jesus to the cross. Think with me for just a moment about the reality of this scene.

Jesus set aside the joys of heaven to come to earth as a man, at once both fully human and fully God. He submitted Himself to the physical limitations of a human body, experiencing pain, joy, love, and heartbreak. God Himself, walking this earth with one primary goal in mind - to rescue those who were perishing here on this planet. Perishing because ages ago, sin had entered the world and affected every life that was to come after the garden - every man, woman, boy, and girl was bound by sin and subject to its deadly sentence. Yet God never stopped loving all the people who walked upon the earth - He saw what sin did to them in their lives, in their relationships, in the world at large and He never turned away and just started over somewhere else. Instead, He had a plan, a plan that He'd thought of before the world was created. A plan that would enable Him to once again have communion with those that He loved ever so much.

Yet that plan was unlike anything we would have come up with - it involved God sending His only son, Jesus, to pay the price for every human that was ever to live. You might then ask what that plan really looked like and I'll tell you, it was a plan that involved intense suffering, physical anguish, and finally death in the most awful way that the people could come up with doing it. However, the Lord in His ultimate goodness was willing to make the biggest sacrifice because He loved us enough to say that we're worth it.

I hope that you are able to find time to think on what God really did when you celebrate Easter this year. Know that the cross is the place where Jesus made the choice to put everything on the line to give you the ability to know God and that His resurrection on Sunday is the proof that He accomplished that which He came for. Be blessed and know that He truly is the Lord!

"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." - John 3:16