What Does Love Look Like?

What do you think is the greatest demonstration of love? Is it giving someone an unbelievably expensive gift? Or is it spending time with them, especially when their sick or dying? Or is it something else? Well, Jesus helps us answer that question in John 15:12-13 when He says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another even as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Now what’s amazing is that at this point in John’s narrative, Jesus is just hours away from His death on the cross. So He’s saying that My death on the cross for your sins – My willingness to become a man and die in your place – to be your substitute is the greatest demonstration of love ever seen. Now why is that? Because it required the greatest price; God dying in our place. Charles Wesley captured it well in his famous hymn “And Can It Be”. In one of my favorite verses of all time, he says this about Jesus, “He left His Father’s throne above; so free, so infinite His grace! And emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race. Amazing love, how can it be, that thou My God shouldst die for me?” Do you see? Christ’s death on the cross is the greatest demonstration of love ever given. In fact, it's amazing love! The question is, will you receive it?

Something to think about from the Proclamation point of view.