I am blessed to be the mother of five children, two of whom are sons. During this time of year, when we are supposed to think about one Son in particular, I’ve also been thinking about my two. I’ve discovered some definite similarities between God’s love for His Son and my love for my sons. But there’s one important difference.
First, the similarities. I love my sons deeply, as God loves His Son. I’m proud of my sons, as God is of His. I desire a close relationship with my boys, as God does with His. Admittedly, my best efforts to love and develop a relationship are but shadows of what God is able to do. But still, there are similarities.
There’s also an important difference. You see, there’s nobody on this earth that I would sacrifice one of my sons to save. I simply wouldn’t do it. Yet God, despite His infinite love for His Son, sacrificed Him on behalf of people who hated Him. Why? To further God’s glory. But also because He loved us.
Usually we look at the crucifixion from Jesus’ perspective. Today, let’s look at it from the Father’s point of view.
How the Father must have suffered as He watched His Son be arrested, tortured, and crucified (further torture). Even though the Father knew that some of those watching would eventually come to love His Son, it still must have been agonizing for Him to allow them to put Him to death, and then to have to turn His back on Jesus as He suffered.
Yes, it was all within His perfect plan. Yes, He knew this would happen since before the foundation of the world. But what agony it must have been to see it come to pass.
I can’t even imagine something like this happening to one of my sons. My mind recoils from the possibility before it can even envision the worst parts. Yet each Easter, I think about it, at least to the extent of reminding myself what the Father went through. Why? Because it gives me a glimpse of the magnitude of Father’s love for me.
I want you to see His love for you, too. That’s how much the Father loves you—enough to watch His Son be tortured and killed on your behalf. Yes, He loves you. You, with all your failures and imperfections. You, despite all the sins you’ve committed. You, regardless of the fact that you’ll never be perfect until you reach heaven.
You.
And me. Praise God, He loves me too. I’m no more worthy than anybody else to be loved by God. In fact, Scripture makes it clear that without Him, we’re all nothing but miserable sinners with no hope of ever entering His presence. But despite who I was, God loved me so much that He made a way for me to spend eternity with Him, beginning here and now on earth.
We don’t have to wait until heaven to come into God’s presence. We can enjoy Him here and now. Our eternity with Him begins now, because His love for us began before the creation of the world.
That is love: not that we now love Him, but that He loved us while we were yet sinners and sent His Son to die on our behalf.
It’s amazing, incomprehensible love.
I wouldn’t do it. You wouldn’t either. But He would and did.
Praise be to God.
1 John 4:10—In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Romans 5:8—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.