Love
Let me ask you a question. What do people think about when are about to die?
That might seem a strange question. But I think that when we're really confronted by our own death, when we know that the life we've been living is about to end, when we are about to step into eternity, at that point, things are different. We think differently.
Well, to answer the question, I think we can look at some evidence. We've seen a situation where a submarine is trapped on the ocean floor, disabled, and the crew in the submarine are waiting in the hope of being rescued. What do they do?
What they did in this particular case was write letters - they wrote letters to their wife, to their children. They wrote letters saying that they loved them. That was what they wrote.
A man is trapped upon Mount Everest and is freezing cold, he cannot be reached, he's going to die. A phone call is put through to his wife. What does he say? He says, I love you.
It seems that when people are dying, when they know their life is over, the thing that they want to speak about, the thing that they feel is most important at that time, the thing that seems to justify their life, is love.
Why would this be? Why would we not be speaking about something else? Something perhaps more practical? I think the answer is plain. We were created by God in His own image.
What does that mean?
It means that we were made to know God, to be sufficiently like Him to be able to understand something of Him. God is not, of course, physical as we are. The image is not a physical image. But the likeness we might say is in our soul. We know what love is. We long for love. We want to be loved, and we want to love. We know that to be without love in the world is terrible. For children to be unloved, for people to be lonely, unknown, forgotten, is awful. Love, they say, makes the world go round, and there are many songs, many poems, much talk about love.
In the Scripture, we read of God, that God is love. What does that mean? It means that love is so much part of His character, so much part of His nature, that we can say, "God is love".
In us, our love is corrupted. Yes, we love love. We want to love, but we know that our love is very deficient. What appears to be love can be awfully selfish. What appears to be love for another can actually just be love for oneself, using the other for our own advantage. This is the corruption of our heart. A mother loves her children. It's a gift of God, it's nature itself, loving. But then that love can be corrupted, even that love can be corrupted, and become very possessive and controlling.
There is so much that can go wrong with our love because we ourselves are not like God. Nobody will say of another man or another woman that this person is love. No. We are all sinful. We are all fallen from the way we were when God created us. His thought for humanity is not what we see around us. His thought was for a creature, a created being, that could be in fellowship with Himself, that could love and be loved. But instead, humanity rebelled, and continues to rebel, desiring to be God ourselves. Pride, this awful pride that lies at the root of so much sin - I want, I must have, all those sort of sentiments which lead to so much cruelty, and so much suffering - are in every human heart. But God still loves.
You might say, "Well, how can God love us if we are so bad? And why did God, if He loves us, make us like this?"
The answer is that He made a creature who was so high, and so good, and so free, that this creature could choose to love. And the choice, of course, is very important. Because without freedom, there can't be love. We must be free to love, we can't be programmed to love. We must be free to choose to love. That's the creature God created. But this creature turned against Him and we sought instead to be like God ourselves.
Is that the end of the story? No, of course not. Because God is love and God's purpose was that He would redeem out of humanity a people for Himself, a people that would know Him, and people knowing Him who would love Him and be loved by Him, and that, too, forever.
But how is this to be accomplished since we were fallen, in sin, rebelling against Him, enemies of God in fact? How could this situation be turned around? The answer came 2000 years ago, when, into the world, God's own son was born as a man. Jesus Christ, Jesus the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, born in Bethlehem in Israel, raised in a small village, the son of a carpenter.
This man grew up amongst us, in the midst of our sorrows and our pain, seeing, knowing and sharing the sorrow of this life. But He came not simply to watch and to look. Nor did He come simply to teach, though He taught and His teaching has remained authoritative, relevant and timeless ever since. He came to act.
He acted first in the miracles which He performed. No man in human history has ever done the things that the Lord Jesus did. The healing, the raising of the dead - so many people were healed by Him with just a word, with just a touch. Demons were taken out of people, lives were restored, broken lives were made whole. This is what the Lord Jesus did.
But He did this, not simply to give people some relief from illness and suffering, but to show that He had come for a much greater healing, a much greater healing, a healing of our souls, to deliver us from the sin which besets us and to set us free from it, to reconcile us to God.
But this couldn't be done with a word. It couldn't be done by teaching. It couldn't even be done by His touch, though His touch could heal the blind and give hearing to those who were deaf. No. The only way this forgiveness could come, and the only way we could be reconciled to God, was if He first laid down His life, if He Himself became the perfect, spotless sin offering, the sin offering that would reconcile us to God. He became sin for us. He who knew no sin, who had never sinned in word, in thought, or in deed. He who knew no sin, took upon Himself the ugliness and the stench of our own sin, and bore that sin under the wrath of God. Because He gave Himself for us, our sins can be forgiven and we can be reconciled to God.
When the Lord Jesus died upon that cross, He cried out, "It is finished." And with those words He declared the glorious end to His bearing our sin - the job was done. This great work was accomplished.
His dead body was laid in the grave, but after three days, He rose from the dead. Death could not hold Him, death was conquered by Him, and He rose again, to give new life, a righteous, holy, unfallen, uncreated life to His own people.
And we read in the Scripture, that "to as many as received Him, to them, He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name". These people are not the great people of the earth, these people who became children of God. They are not the intelligentsia, not the mighty ones, not the ones who have accomplished so much, but ordinary people - ordinary people who came empty handed, not boasting of their own righteousness, but acknowledging their sinfulness and bowing before the Lord Jesus, to receive from Him the gift of eternal life. They repent of their sins, they turn from their sins - that's what it means - and they turn to Him.
Because He loved us, and gave Himself for us, it's not surprising to know that when the Lord Jesus receives someone, when He washes away their sins and makes them His own, a transforming work begins in the life of that person. And what is the nature of this transformation? It's a transformation towards love. The person, won by the Lord Jesus, begins to learn to love and to love as He loved, to love selflessly, even sacrificially, and to love without restraint.
What a wonderful thing that men should love one another! Would not the world be utterly transformed if humanity knew this simple thing, that to love one another is to walk in the footsteps of God? This is the wonderful good news of the Lord Jesus Christ - forgiveness of sin, reconciliation to God, a transformed life, eternal glory in God's presence.
Is this not something that you desire? Don't you want to have that peace in your heart? Don't you want to know that you are loved eternally, perfectly? Don't you want to know that to die is to see God and to be welcomed into His presence because His holy and beloved Son has borne all of your sins.
This is the good news of the gospel. This is the call of the gospel. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. Most certainly you shall.
God bless you.