When you think about love, who or what comes to mind as your greatest love?
Maybe it’s your spouse, your child, or maybe even your parents or grandparents. Some might even say their dog or pet is their greatest love.
Let me ask you another question. How do you measure love?
Is it the simple satisfaction of being loved back by the person you love so much?
Or is it your ability to consistently love someone even though that individual has brought you much pain and rejected your love?
I’m sure there are different responses based on varied experiences.
For this post, I would like to focus on one love that we all have been given, and it is the greatest love we could ever experience.
Greater love has no man than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13
This verse in the Bible is Jesus speaking to his apostles and it is the very thing that Jesus did for them and for all of us.
He willingly laid down His life for all mankind—past, present, and future.
He died for us on a cross—one of the most humiliating ways a person could die. He was crucified, a death that was normally reserved for criminals.
Jesus died for us because…
He was obedient to His Father.
He was sent to this world for this very reason.
He was the ultimate sacrificial lamb.
He told the truth about who He is.
He challenged and exposed the evil and lies of those in religious authority.
He socialized with the so-called outcasts—the lower class, the sinners, and the sick.
He had a large following which caused fear and jealousy by the religious “elite.”
He loved us—all of us—past, present, and future, even though we are sinners.
He knew He was the only way for us sinners to reunite with our heavenly Father.
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.
John 14:6
I believe Jesus loves us because He knows that we are deceived by Satan, just as Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden.
He sympathizes with us in our failed condition, but He does not want to leave us there.
He wants us to overcome this world’s lies and ways.
He wants us to be like Him, and He has shown us how to respond and act in every circumstance that we could encounter.
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their wrongdoings against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. . .He made Him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
2 Corinthians 5:17-21
A very good dramatization of Jesus’s life is The Chosen by Angel Studios. If you haven’t yet seen the episodes of The Chosen, I encourage you to do so.
My husband and I just saw The Last Supper at the movie theater this past Saturday evening. It is a great rendering of Jesus’s last days. I admired His strength to speak truth to the religious authorities, even though it meant His demise.
Jesus could have avoided such controversy by succumbing to the threats against His life, but He did not because He had a greater mission to complete—death on the cross for all mankind.
He is the propitiation for our sins, He is the ultimate sacrifice, and He is active in our lives, waiting for all those who surrender their lives to Him to rejoin Him in Heaven with our Father.
Why Heaven?
Some may say that life in the here and now is good enough, so why desire Heaven?
The answer is simply that we were not intended to live separated from God. We were always supposed to be with God just as Adam and Eve walked and talked with God before they sinned against Him.
Their sin separated them from Holy God and caused them to be cast out of the Garden of Eden.
Our sin also separates us from God, so we need The Perfect Lamb to restore us to God. This Lamb is Jesus.
A Better Life on Earth
This life on earth may be all we have ever known, but there is a better life waiting for those who follow Christ, now and for eternity.
Life as we know it on Earth will be gone one day.
We are told this by God Himself in the Bible, narrated by the apostle John.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among the people, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.” Then He said to me, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give water to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life, without cost. The one who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son.
Revelation 21:1-7
Now this is something to look forward to!
We will be with the Father and the Son, Jesus Christ, who are righteous and just!
No more lies or being maltreated!
No more tears, no more pain, no more illness, no more death!
And a new healthy earth to live on!
As we approach this Easter season, let’s turn our hearts and minds to the true meaning of it all.
Jesus Christ was crucified AND resurrected back to the Father where He is waiting for all of those who will choose Him over this world.
He paid for all our sins by dying for us and paved the way back to our heavenly Father.
This is the greatest love of all time.
Let’s praise our Savior Jesus Christ with the beautiful song below.
The Lamb (Alleluia) – John Wilds
The Goodness of God 