Your Love Is…Pt II
John 3:16 (New Living Translation)
16 “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
One of my favorite movies is “The Brothers.” The first time I saw this movie, I found myself drawn in by the part of the movie when the mother of the main character is trying to “school” (enlighten) the younger ladies about love and relationship. But it is when she gets to the part where she is relaying to the young women she is speaking with the true identifier of love, that is when it got really interesting. She said “you can tell when a man really loves you because he will give you his last bite, or piece of food.” The daughter says she loves it because it represents “sacrifice.” I laughed at first, but it dawned on me not long after, that love in its truest form is sacrificial, it will give, not what is easy but what is difficult, and challenging, it will always cost us something, and it will always be something that cost.
As I sat waiting on a friend at the doctor’s office, I thought of how much time it was taken, a strange calm washed over me, not because the wait was not long, but because, in those moments, I realized that love was in control, and although time is usually was something that I value because I have little free time, I understood that the sacrifice, of what would have normally frustrated me, was sacrificial love, in action. Not that any of these actions could compare with love that was given through sacrifice from God to us in the form of Christ, but it is representative of sacrifice through love that we give to one another. God loved us so much and wanted us so badly to be in right standing with Him, that He was willing to give us, to sacrifice on our behalf the very best and the closet person to Him, which was in the form of Jesus Christ. Who left eternity, and left the throne on the right hand of His father to come into the world wrapped in human flesh, to travel a human existence like us, and to be tempted at all points like we are, and to feel as a man, but yet be fully God and then, be called to become the sacrifice for a lost world, that had done wrong and would do wrong, when He was innocent of all wrong. But it was the Love of His Father manifested through Him that enabled Him to say “not my will but yours be done.” God’s love caused us to gain the ultimate provision, by His son’s ultimate sacrifice.
As I talked to my friend, and we discussed love and relationship, I asked why they thought love had to be so hard? They said it doesn’t always have to be, but that sometimes it was. As I sat later and thought on that, love is hard, because it causes us to have to sacrifice, if we really want it and if it is really love to begin with. If we truly love as God has loved us, we will sacrifice our way for His, Our words for His, Our will for His, Our mind for His, and Our way of loving for His. Love is an action that causes us to if not desire, but to understand the need for sacrifice, and to understand that love is sacrificial, in nature and its responses. If God could sacrifice because He loved us so deeply, why can’t we?
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