Can we really comprehend love? God is love, and God is incomprehensible. His ways are unsearchable.
Love is not based on a feeling but born of the Spirit that makes everything, so loving in the essence of God is impossible by human means and always possible with Christ. Love is obedience to the way, the truth, and the life.
John’s gospel testimony explains that the night before Jesus was arrested and crucified, “Jesus knew that the hour had come for Him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.”
We are God’s children of promise, who trust in transformation, so when we witness Jesus’ life, listen to His words, and watch His final steps to the Cross, we come close to the consuming flame of love that knows no limits, that always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.
“I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you,” Jesus said after He washed the disciples’ feet. “Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.”1
Jesus proclaimed a Kingdom in which everyone is welcome and free. He spoke of service and sacrifice, and Jesus Christ’s message was His perfect submission, for the words He was born to say – the keys to our liberation – became His persecution gospel.
“I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken,” Jesus said. “I know that His command leads to eternal life.”2
Jesus came to awaken a faith that honors the command to love God with all your heart and with all your soul. Because what can the heart understand or the soul hear but the language that flows from the Source of everything?
Christ’s words are the awakening. “Whoever belongs to God hears what God says,” Jesus said.3 This was the dangerous part of Jesus’ mission, because the truth that stirred belief in God’s children also meant that Jesus Christ would be called a blasphemer – the messenger who died in service to a greater purpose.
“And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those He has given me,” Jesus said.4
Jesus knew that He must lose His life so no one would be lost. What startles me, in reflecting on the stations of Christ’s Cross, is how His blood covers every sin. The pain, indignity, and horror that would seemingly turn us away is all overcome by the perfection of purpose and totality of love that safely draw us closer. In the presence of the Lord and His Spirit, grace and mercy are more attractive than avenging power.
And in the unsearchable judgments of God, obedience is highly exalted and lifted up, for Jesus was faithful to His Father’s will and command with every step. He gave a stern warning from Scripture to the mourning daughters of Jerusalem, prayed with compassion over His crucifiers, and rejoiced that a thief recognized the truth.5
The problem of the Cross seems to be a matter of mixed messaging. Whereas the world wants to incite fear with the nails, the blood, and the crown of thorns, the Spirit wants us to look for the meaning.
When we gaze upon Jesus, we may not come any closer to understanding love, but it is love we behold. His body died to become Love.
For God is love.
And God is spirit.
Love is the spirit that heals and restores us to everlasting life.
