God is classically understood as a self sufficient Being who needs nothing from us humans; but let me ask you a question, If God is love, and Jesus said that there is no greater love than the laying down of ones life for another, doesn’t that mean that God needed to die on our behalf  in order to experience the greatest form of love?  I’m not trying to be heretical, I just want to ask the question, because a loving God that empties Himself and dies on behalf of sinful man is what sets Christianity apart from every other religion. No matter how you answer this question, you are still confronted with a God who loves mankind so much that He payed the ultimate price by offering His life on our behalf.

We can intellectually agree that God is Omni-this and Omni-that but when it comes to the cross we are witnessing an act of divine emptying unparalleled by any other religion. We can admire God’s mind at a distance but if we are to accept God’s love we must stand at the foot of the cross and be cleansed by the blood that flows from His pierced heart. Jesus loved us so much that He fell on the hand grenade of sin in order to save our lives. If Christianity is true then sacrificial love is of cosmic significance; it is therefore not the cross we wear around our necks that sets us apart but rather the one we carry one on our backs.

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants,  for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. (John 15: 13-15)

The world has a very difficult time understanding God’s love; we say suffering servant and they say cosmic child abuse, we say no greater love and they say God’s wrath. Why the disconnect? I would suggest that the reason is found in the way they perceive of “God.”  Most people prefer to flirt with a vague divine essence rather then get personally involved. They want beatific butterflies but not the unsettled stomach that comes with the thought of cross commitment. Jesus gave us the ultimate demonstration of  “no greater love” so I have to ask you, “will you let His love go unrequited?” Love can never be an intellectual assent; it must be a personal commitment. Accepting Christ is not a matter of checking a box but rather of saying, “I do!”

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life? (Mathew 16: 24-26)

It is said that the moment when Jesus cried out “My God, My God” was the moment when the Son was most separated from the Father, but I would also argue that it was at this moment that God most became Himself and offered love in all of its cosmic fullness.

The ultimate manifestation of the original sin of trying to be like God would be to kill God and assume His throne. It is fascinating to think that this Garden coup was actually accomplished on the cross. God, however, transformed this mutiny into a bounty. God took the ultimate cosmic hate crime and transformed it into the ultimate act of “no greater love.”

Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  (1 John 4: 8-11)

Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash