Love: Sacrificed For
For the last two weeks I have shared from a talk I gave two years ago. If you haven’t read it yet, you can read “Love: Delighted In,” followed by “Love: Fully Known” before you read this last and final instalment.
Today’s truth is that the greatest demonstration of love is that Jesus willingly sacrificed himself for us. What love!
Enjoy.
SACRIFICED FOR
John 3:16:
“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.”
“What words does God want you to treasure in the deepest part of you?
“Be good? Do it better? Try harder?” Are those the words God wrote in the Bible for us, to rescue and free us?
No. Those words only show us what we can’t do.
The words God wants us to remember are just three small ones: “I love you”
They are the words that stop the Terrible Lie that Satan whispered to Eve in the garden: “God doesn’t love you!” They are the words that heal the poison in our hearts that stops us from trusting God.
They are the words that Jesus came to tell us with his whole life.
They are the words he died to prove.”
- “Three Small Words,” pg 24 of “Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing” by Sally Lloyd Jones
Sacrifice. Sacrifice is an act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy. Let me read that again… giving up something valued for the sake of something regarded as more worthy!
Ephesians 5:2
“[Christ] gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
Jesus gave up his life! He gave up perfect communion with His Father. The Father gave his Son! Why? Because he loves us. He loves you. He came to demonstrate that. He died to prove that to you. He considers you worthy of such sacrifice.
I John 4:10
“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
To be honest, it leaves me a bit at a loss for words. How do I even begin to respond to this ultimate love demonstrated through His sacrifice? So i’m going to leave the summarizing to a poem:
I stand amazed in the presence
Of Jesus the Nazarene,
And wonder how He could love me,
A sinner, condemned, unclean.
For me it was in the garden
He prayed: Not My will, but Thine.
He had no tears for His own griefs,
But sweat drops of blood for mine.
He took my sins and my sorrows,
He made them His very own;
He bore the burden to Calvary,
And suffered and died alone.
When with the ransomed in glory
His face I at last shall see,
’Twill be my joy through the ages
To sing of His love for me.
And if you know the chorus, sing it with me:
O how marvelous! O how wonderful!
And my song shall ever be:
O how marvelous! O how wonderful!
Is my Savior’s love for me!
How do we respond? Romans 12 lays it out for us. I’m reading from The Message.
Romans 12:1-2, 9-21
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”
“Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle. Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality. Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody. Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take care of it.” Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.”
Sacrifice: giving up something valued, our own selfish wants and needs, for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy, loving God fully in return, and from that being God’s vessels of love to the world.
CONCLUSION
Delighted in. Fully known. Sacrificed for. A story of first love.
1 John tell us that God is love. And if we were created in His image, we then were created in love, with the purpose of returning that love in perfect relationship with God. It’s why He delights in us. He loves us. It’s why he takes such intentional care to truly see and know us. He loves us. It’s why he died and sacrificed everything. Because he loves us. At the core of each of us is a desire and need to turn back to Him and declare “You are my love. All that I am praises and delights in you. I want to know you more intimately. I am willing to sacrifice all I am for you, my first love.”
Let’s pray: Jesus, our Saviour and our love, my prayer is that each woman would know intimately the wonderful, never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love that you have for us. And that it would so deeply permeate our hearts that we would see a radical change in how we live and love you and the world.
As we head towards “Loving’s Day” as Elizabeth calls it, it is my hope and prayer that these last few posts have encouraged your heart towards the love that will never let you go.
Me. He sacrificed himself for me. If I’m honest, this is the hardest part to wrap my mind and my heart around. So re-reading this truth today spoke straight to my heart.