01/21/2022
We read scripture which speaks of giving our lives to Jesus, and as Christian’s we thrill at the prospect, we count this thought as pure joy, and our doing so as the greatest accomplishment in life, but to the unbeliever this sounds a lot like imprisonment, bondage, and pure torture. However, forfeiting one’s life for another isn’t giving away our most precious possession, no, it is actually acquiring it because it isn’t sacrifice, but an act of love.
“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”
John 15:13 ESV
Having our lives taken from us, or our being thrown unwillingly into prison, are not the same thing as giving up our lives for someone, or yielding our own desires out of love for them. Yielding our lives in service to God, and Jesus Christ, are examples of the latter. We do this as an act of love, and a desire to please them.
If we marry because we want to possess another’s love, then that marriage will be a travesty, and filled with misery, but if both husband and wife marry with the same desire to please, and give themselves wholeheartedly to the other, and for the other, then they will have captured the essence of true love, and their lives will be full of joy in one another. It isn’t by accident that the Bible calls the church the bride, or that so many scriptures compare faith with marriage. Giving our life up in love is one of the most incredible experiences we can know, but especially if one’s partner in this transaction feels the same way. Listen to these two verses… the first describes the love of man for God, and the second describes God’s love for man.
Man’s Love for God:
“And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.””
Luke 10:27 ESV
God’s Love for Man:
““For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
John 3:16 ESV
The life, suffering, death, and resurrection, of Jesus Christ was not the price He paid to own us, but the price He paid to win our love back. We often hear it preached, or taught, that by His death He bought us, but that is not so. God gave His Son, and Jesus suffered and died, to redeem us… or in other words, to pay our debt so that we could love God perfectly once again without encumbrance. Oh that we will see the difference between ownership, and relationship, and likewise between condemnation, and salvation.
“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
John 3:17 ESV
So as believers, and faithful servants, we give up our lives without reservation. We offer ourselves in love, obey in love, bear our crosses in love, forgive others in love, and will even die in love. We are men and women who were once owned by Satan, and imprisoned by sin, but through Jesus, and the love of God our bondage has been redeemed, and the gates of sin’s prison have been thrown wide open… we are free.
“But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.”
Acts 20:24 ESV
Do we look to possess eternity with God, or to lovingly be in eternity with God? How do we answer this very important question?
Prayer:
Father, thank you for offering your Son Jesus to redeem us from sin and death. Thank you for giving Him as an instrument of your boundless love for us. Thank you for showing us how we are to love you by demonstrating so perfectly in His life your love for us. Holy, Holy, Holy, are you our God who loves us without reservation, and accepts our love for you through Jesus our Lord. Praised be your name Holy Father, for not abandoning us to sin, but for redeeming our sin debt, and breaking the chains of death, so that we might be in relationship with you for all eternity. Merciful are you whose grace covers our shortcomings, and allows you to see us made perfect in Christ. Wash us clean in the blood of your son Jesus, and find us worthy in judgement. Seat us at your table forevermore, and let us love one another snow, and for all eternity.
“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 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.”
Romans 5:6-8 ESV
Rich Forbes