Praying Pint

 

She has done a beautiful thing to me… she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. — Mark 14:6, 8

There are two kinds of love in the story of Jesus’ death, and both of them are real. But only one of them couldn’t wait.

After Jesus died on the cross, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus stepped forward. Both men were members of the ruling council, both with public reputations to protect, and yet Joseph found the courage to go directly to Pilate and ask for the body of Jesus (Mark 15:43). He gave up the new tomb he had prepared for himself, so that Jesus would have somewhere to lie (Matthew 27:60). Nicodemus, who had once come to Jesus only under the cover of night (John 3:2), came this time in broad daylight, carrying a remarkable weight of spices, myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds, the kind of quantity reserved for royal burials (John 19:39). Together they wrapped His body and laid it in the tomb with their own hands.

This was real love. Costly, courageous, and given at no small risk to either man’s reputation. After everything was over, they served Him with everything they had.

But six days before the Passover, while Jesus was still very much alive, another kind of love had already shown up.

Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, took an alabaster jar of pure nard, expensive perfume worth nearly a year’s wages, and poured the entire thing on Jesus. Not a careful amount. Not a portion held back for later. The whole jar, broken open and emptied out (John 12:3). The fragrance filled the house.

Judas objected. The cost, he said, could have fed the poor (John 12:4-5). Many readers through history have understood this and the anointing recorded in Mark’s gospel as the same event, and on that reading, Jesus’ response to her becomes even more remarkable. She has done a beautiful thing to me, He said. She has anointed my body beforehand for burial (Mark 14:6, 8).

And then He went further still:

That last line should stop us. Of everything Jesus could have chosen to attach to the spread of the gospel itself, He chose this. Not a sermon. Not a miracle. A woman breaking a jar and pouring out everything it held, with nothing calculated about how much to keep back.

Because what Mary did with that jar is a small, fragile picture of what Jesus was about to do with His own body. She poured out something costly, without holding back, for a love that made no obvious sense in the moment. Days later, on a cross, Jesus would do the same thing on a scale Mary could not have imagined. Extravagant love that saved us, poured out completely, withholding nothing, for people who had done nothing to earn it. The gospel is this same pattern, written first in small, breakable jars, and then written once, completely, in the body of the Son of God. Mary’s act wasn’t only devotion to Jesus. It was, without her fully knowing it, a preview of the gospel itself.

This is why it would be told wherever the gospel went. Not because it was sentimental. Because it was the same shape as the gospel. Reckless. Disproportionate. Apparently wasteful to anyone counting the cost. And it is exactly this kind of giving, poured out before it makes sense, that moves the kingdom of God forward. Not strategy. Not careful stewardship calculated to maximize return. A broken jar, given all at once, to a love that gave everything first.

This is the sacrifice God delights in. Not the careful, measured offering kept safely within reason, but the one poured out completely, because the One it is poured out for is worth more than the math could ever justify.

Both kinds of love are real. But there is something about love offered before the outcome is certain, before the story has resolved, before it is safe, that costs something a later love cannot.

Joseph and Nicodemus loved a Jesus who had already finished His work. Mary loved a Jesus who was still in the middle of His. One love responded to what had already happened. The other love trusted what hadn’t happened yet, and in trusting it, became a living picture of what was about to happen on the cross.

Most of us are far more comfortable being Joseph and Nicodemus. We love generously once the outcome is clear, once we can see what the sacrifice accomplished, once it is safe to be associated with the cause. We are willing to give greatly in hindsight. What is harder, much harder, is giving everything while the story is still unfolding, while we do not yet know how it ends, while loving costs us something with no guarantee of what it will produce.

There is likely someone in your life right now, a person, a calling, a work God is doing, that needs exactly this kind of love. Not the love that arrives after everything is settled and it is finally safe to be generous. The love that breaks the jar now, in the middle of the uncertainty, before anyone can promise you it will be worth it.

Love is not only what we offer in hindsight, once we can see the whole picture. Love is what we are willing to give while the picture is still being painted. It is not a feeling we wait to confirm. It is an action we take before we have all the proof, because we have already seen what that extravagant love cost the One who gave it first.

Joseph and Nicodemus loved Jesus well. But it was Mary’s jar, broken open while He was still breathing, while the cost made no obvious sense, while no one else in the room understood what she was doing, that Jesus said would be remembered everywhere the gospel was preached. Because in that broken jar, the world got a glimpse of the broken body that was coming. (Bibal Portal)

 

Genesis 37:3-11  Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him. Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers they hated him even more. He said to them, “Hear this dream that I have dreamed: Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright. And behold, your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf.” His brothers said to him, “Are you indeed to reign over us? Or are you indeed to rule over us?” So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words. Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, “Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, “What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you?” And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind.

Joseph’s first dream was vivid and unambiguous. The brothers were binding sheaves of grain in a field when his sheaf rose and stood upright, and theirs gathered around it and bowed down. He told them. Then came a second dream: the sun, the moon, and eleven stars bowing to him. He told that one too, this time in front of his father. Jacob rebuked him for it. His brothers hated him all the more.

His brothers’ reaction is worth reading slowly. They hated him all the more (Genesis 37:5, 8). And when he told the second dream, his brothers were jealous of him (Genesis 37:11), though his father kept the matter in mind. But the hostility did not begin with the dream. It had been building for years, ever since Jacob gave Joseph a robe unlike anything his brothers had received, a garment that, many scholars suggest, carried the weight of the firstborn’s inheritance. Jacob gave it to his eleventh son. Every older brother understood what it meant. The resentment had taken root long before Joseph ever closed his eyes and dreamed. The dream did not create what was in their hearts. It made visible what they had been carrying in silence. When his sheaf rose and theirs bowed, he was not telling them something new. He was telling them something they already knew and had refused to accept. (Bible Portal)

 

Reactions to something that seems unfair to our own expectations and self-worth need to be recognized and repented of. Scripture gives clear warning against; envy, jealousy, pride, self-worth, boastful, greed, arrogance and thinking more highly of ourselves than others. It happens in families, workplaces, and as well with neighbors.  The two greatest foundational commandments:

1. Love God with all your heart, mind, and soul.
2. Love others as yourself

When these manifest in and throughout our lives these attributes will be seen; love, peace, joy, gentleness, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control.

The problem is that we don’t always see our blind spots. We might not say or do what Joseph’s brothers did but they can still harbor in our hearts and minds.

What can expose these hidden wrong thoughts?
God’s Word.
Meditating and thinking about God’s Word and things of God.

Keeping our hearts and minds open to the leading and instruction of the Holy Spirit.
Prayerfully asking God to expose what we are blind to.

Having a heart and mind that desires in all thoughts, words, and actions, Jesus be honored and glorified.

 

And [God] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 2 Corinthians 12:9 Paul wrote, “The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you” (Philippians 4:9). One example of imitating Paul was when he dealt with “a thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7).

Paul does not say what this “thorn” was, but he surmised that God allowed it as an antidote to pride. In the Old Testament, “thorn” was used to describe the Canaanites who irritated the Israelites when they moved into Canaan (Numbers 33:55-56). Perhaps Paul’s thorn was a false apostle trying to undermine his ministry in Corinth (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). Whatever the thorn was, Paul asked God three times to remove it. Instead of removing the problem, God gave Paul grace to endure it and to manifest Christ’s strength in his own human weakness. If you are in a moment of weakness that God is not solving, imitate Paul by relying on God’s grace to give you strength. (Dr. Jeremiah) Many are taught with the briars and thorns of affliction that would not learn otherwise. Matthew Henry

 

Ephisians 3:20-21  Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Jeremiah 32:17  Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.

Jeremiah 32:27    “Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?

Daniel 3:17    If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.

Daniel 6:20     As he came near to the den where Daniel was, he cried out in a tone of anguish. The king declared to Daniel, “O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions?”

John 10:29-30    My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.

Romans 4:21    fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.

Hebrews 7:25     Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

Hebrews 13:20-21     Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

Jude 1:24    Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy,

 

We constantly create expectations—of ourselves and of those around us. Sometimes, what we hope for exceeds our abilities, current situation, or the time we have. Yet, expectations can inspire us to push our limits and accomplish things we never thought possible.

However, setting expectations for other people comes with its own set of challenges. Others may not be aware of what we want or expect from them. Their values, ethics, or sense of integrity might differ from ours. They might lack motivation or the resources to fulfill those expectations. At times, they could simply be having a rough day, or perhaps God is using them to encourage us to rely more deeply on Him.

When we set expectations, our minds become filled with beliefs, trust, assumptions, hope, anticipation, eagerness, and excitement, all focused on the outcomes we desire.

Sometimes, we place expectations on outcomes that are beyond our control. These expectations can lead us down two very different roads: one positive, one negative.

Negative expectations can give rise to emotions such as fear, anger, confusion, division, hatred, jealousy, envy, pride, rage, self-reliance, a false sense of worthiness, isolation, and loneliness.

On the other hand, positive expectations can bring about joy, hope, trust, assurance, confidence, peace, certainty, clarity, and a deeper reliance on God.

Regardless of what we encounter, God remains in control. Nothing happens to us unless He allows it, and not only does He allow it, but He is also abundantly able to do far more than we could ever ask or imagine.

Am I in a state of rejoicing and praise or worry and fear?

Am I reading His Word with expectation?

Am I relying on Him fully without any reservation or doubt?

Have I asked God for clarity and wisdom in assessing what I am facing?

Am I desiring, seeking, and listening for the quiet whispers of the Holy Spirit speaking?

Am I having doubts?

Do I trust God fully?

Do I believe He wants the best for me?

Do I trust in God’s perfect plans and purposes for my life?

Have I fully surrendered a situation or circumstance to Him alone?

How many times must I shut those negative thoughts off in my head per day?

 

I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live. — Deuteronomy 30:19

Into the Word

Here is a question worth sitting with: why does choice exist at all?

God could have created us already loving Him. Pre-loaded, pre-set, incapable of wandering. No commands needed, no garden at risk, no cross required. One word from Him and every heart on earth would turn. The God who spoke galaxies into existence could speak devotion into us just as easily. So why the slow way? Why a command that can be refused? Why a door that can be walked out of?

The answer begins with what love actually is.

A Doll That Says I Love You

Press the button on a child’s doll and it says “I love you.” It says it every time, without fail, forever. And it means nothing, precisely because it cannot say anything else.

Love that cannot refuse is not love. It is playback. And God did not create the universe to hear playback. The world He designed runs on real love, love that is chosen, and choice requires the genuine possibility of walking away. This is the staggering risk at the heart of creation: to make creatures who could love Him, God had to make creatures who could leave Him.

He measured that risk in full. He saw Eden’s broken gate, the wilderness rebellions, the cross. And He judged one freely given heart worth all of it.

Set Before You

Now listen to how God speaks at the edge of the promised land. Moses is old. Forty years of wandering are ending, and this is his final sermon. If ever there were a moment for God to simply install obedience in His people, to spare them the centuries of failure He could already see coming, it was this one.

Instead, He lays out two paths like a parent setting two roads before a child: I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. He does not hide the stakes. He does not soften the danger. And then comes the sentence that should stop us: therefore choose life.

The Almighty pleads. He who could compel, entreats. He stacks every reason on the side of life, points to it with both hands, and then steps back and waits for a decision He refuses to make for us. And in the very next breath, He tells us what choosing life actually means:

There it is. Choosing life was never about picking the safer road. It is choosing Him. There may be no stranger sentence in Scripture than a sovereign God saying choose, and no sentence that tells us more about what He wants. Not compliance. Communion.

The Law Came Before the Fall

Notice something easy to miss in Genesis. The commands appear in chapters 1 and 2. The fall happens in chapter 3. Law existed in paradise, before sin, before shame, before anything went wrong.

That single observation quietly dismantles one of our deepest assumptions. We tend to think law entered the world as punishment, the way a prison appears after a crime. But Eden had law while Eden was still perfect. Why? Because law is what freedom looks like on paper. A robot needs no commands; it cannot disobey. A stone needs no commandments; it cannot wander. The very existence of a command is proof that the one receiving it is free.

Every “you shall” in Scripture is therefore a quiet coronation. It assumes we can hear, weigh, and answer. It treats us not as machinery to be operated but as persons to be addressed. God’s law is not the evidence that He distrusts us. It is the evidence that He dignified us, lifting dust to the level of dialogue.

The Father Who Waits

This is why the father in Luke 15 looks so strangely powerless. He does not stop the son from leaving. He does not send servants to drag him home. He divides the inheritance with hands that must have trembled, and then he waits. He scans the road. The almighty God, as Jesus paints Him, chooses the posture of waiting, because the only homecoming worth having is the one the son chooses himself.

A forced return would have brought the body home and left the heart in the far country. We know this is true, because the parable shows us exactly that man: the older brother. He never left the house, yet he stood outside it in the end, as far from his father’s heart as his brother had ever been in the pig pens. Presence is not the same as love. The father wanted more than his sons’ obedience or their proximity. He wanted his sons. So he endured the silence of one and the coldness of the other, holding open a door for both. God has the power to compel us and has never once used it. That restraint is not weakness. It is the cost of wanting real love instead of an echo, and He has been paying it since Eden.

Before We Move On

We sometimes wish faith were easier, that God would simply override our doubts and make belief automatic. But an automatic faith would be the doll’s voice, and God has too much love for us to settle for it. Every morning we wake up free to ignore Him is a morning He has renewed His risk. Every command He gives us is another act of trust, another crown placed on creatures who keep proving unworthy of it, another choose life spoken in hope.

The question His restraint asks of us is gentle but piercing: He has given us the freedom not to love Him. What are we doing with it?

He could force the whole world to bow in three seconds. Instead, He sets life before us and says, choose. (Bible Portal)

 

As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. (John 17:18)

John 17 is the majestic prayer of Jesus to God the Father, prayed only a few hours before He was arrested, tried, beaten, and crucified. Jesus prayed for Himself (1-5), for His disciples (6-19), and for us – those who would believe through the preaching and testimony of His disciples (20-26).

Verse 18 tells us one thing Jesus recalled in His prayer, that the Father had sent Him into the world. Jesus then declared that He was sending His disciples in the same way (I also have sent them into the world).

Think of the first aspect: that Jesus Christ is the ultimate “sent one,” whom the Father sent to bring salvation to lost and needy humanity. This makes Jesus the first and greatest missionary the universe has ever seen. A missionary is a “sent one,” and Jesus was sent, and He was sent into the world.

Consider how the Father sent the Son into the world:

– Jesus was not sent as a philosopher like Plato or Aristotle, though He knew higher philosophy than them all.
– Jesus was not sent as an inventor or a discoverer, though He could have invented new things and discovered lands unknown to His people.
– Jesus was not sent as a conqueror, though He was mightier than Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar.
– Jesus was sent to teach.
– Jesus was sent to live among us.
– Jesus was sent to suffer for truth and righteousness.
– Jesus was sent to rescue lost humanity.

Connect all that with how Jesus sends His disciples. Remember, Jesus said that it was in the same manner: As You sent Me…I also have sent them. It’s certainly true that Christians can be great philosophers, inventors, and even conquerors. But those terms do not fundamentally describe the work of God’s people in a general sense.

As believers, as followers of Jesus Christ, our greatest contribution to the world is to teach and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, to identify with and draw near to lost humanity, to suffer for truth and righteousness as God appoints us, and to be God’s instruments in bringing His salvation to the world. It’s not bad to help humanity in other ways, but being sent as Jesus was sent is our unique calling as God’s people.

Interestingly, earlier in this prayer, Jesus said He was not praying for the world, but for His people (17:9). Yet, this prayer has great and true concern for the world. Jesus wanted to reach the world, but He would do it through disciples who would be so transformed that they would go forth even as Jesus was sent.

Jesus told His disciples that He was leaving them and would soon return to His Father (John 16:5). But Jesus wasn’t abandoning them; He was sending them. There’s a big difference between the two.

As the Father sent Jesus, so Jesus sends us. (Guzik)

 

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. — Matthew 11:28–30

Into the Word

Notice what actually happens in these three verses. Jesus does not simply tell the weary to put their burdens down and walk away unburdened. He says: come, and I will give you rest. Then, in the very next breath: take my yoke. There is an exchange happening here, not a removal. We arrive carrying something heavy. He takes it from us completely. And then He hands us something else to carry in its place.

This is easy to miss if we only hear the first half of the invitation. Rest, in what Jesus offers, is not an empty-handed life. It is a hand that has set one burden down in order to take up another. And the strange thing Jesus promises is that the new burden, though real, will somehow be light. Not absent. Light. He does not just give us a new weight. He teaches us how to carry it.

The Burden He Takes, The Burden He Gives

What we bring to Jesus is, at its root, the weight of sin, and that weight runs deeper than what we ourselves have done. Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin (Romans 5:12). We were born into the wreckage of that, and onto it, year after year, we have added our own. Fear, guilt, the quiet pressure to prove ourselves worthy of a love we are not sure we already have. The inherited and the added, fused into one weight no human being has ever been strong enough to carry.

Jesus does not simply lighten this burden. He takes it. Fully. He carries our sin, all of it, to the cross and leaves none of it for us to manage on our own. And in its place, He gives us a different one entirely, the burden of His yoke, the burden of love, the weight of laying our lives down for others the way He laid His down for us. We did not choose this trade in order to be burden-free. We chose it because the new weight, somehow, is not the same kind of weight at all.

The Secret Inside the Word “Easy”

Here is where the passage holds its real secret. My yoke is easy, Jesus says, and my burden is light. But anyone who has loved someone deeply knows that love does not subtract effort. The secret is not that the new burden requires less. The secret is how it is meant to be carried.

In the city of Keelung, Taiwan, a sixty-five-year-old woman named Liu Kuei-lan carried her thirty-two-year-old son on her back, every day, for thirty years. Hu Jen-chuan had fallen from a table at the age of two and slipped into a six-day coma. He never spoke or moved again. Liu weighed barely 88 pounds. Her son, grown into a full-sized man, weighed 181 pounds, more than twice what she did. She carried him anyway, to keep him from developing bedsores, and fell more than once under his weight, breaking bones in the process. When a reporter asked how a woman her size could carry a man twice her weight, she answered simply: He ain’t heavy, he’s my son.

No one required this of her. She could not afford a nursing home, but even if she could have, it is hard to imagine she would have chosen it. For thirty years she carried a weight that should have broken her, and somehow, in her own words, it was never heavy at all. Not because it was light. Because it was love.

This is the pattern hidden inside Jesus’ words. The thing that determines whether a weight crushes us or simply wearies us is not its size. It is whether we are carrying it in love, or carrying it because we have no other way of proving we are worth something.

The Paradox of Love

This is the strange territory Jesus is leading us into: a burden that is genuinely heavy, and genuinely light, at the very same time. Not light because it has been made smaller. Light because love has changed what it means to carry it.

But where does a love like that come from, the kind that carries impossible weight and somehow still calls it light? Before Jesus ever asked us to carry anything, He carried us first. He carried the weight of every sin we would ever commit, every burden we could never have borne ourselves, all the way to a cross. And Scripture does not describe Him doing this with resentment, or gritted teeth, or the silent martyrdom of someone counting the cost. It describes Him doing it for the joy that was set before him (Hebrews 12:2). Joy. Not despite the weight. Through it.

He did not complain under the weight of us. He rejoiced. And it is that same joy, His joy, poured into us, that becomes the strength by which we now carry what He places on our shoulders. We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19). We did not invent this secret ourselves. We inherited it from Him. The joy that carried Him to the cross is the same joy that teaches us how to carry our own.

The Joy We Didn’t Expect

This is why people who have given the most for the sake of others rarely describe their lives using the language of burden, even when the cost is plainly visible to everyone around them. Without always being able to explain it, they have learned to carry their burdens the way Christ first carried His: not gritting through the weight, but finding, somewhere inside it, a joy that does not make sense from the outside. Tired and full at the same time. Pouring out and somehow not empty. Carrying a cross and somehow also resting.

This was always the joy Jesus intended to pass on. On the night before His arrest, with the cross only hours away, He told His disciples:

Not joy as the absence of suffering. Joy given in the very shadow of it, meant to remain even after He was gone, meant to become ours the way it had been His.

This is the rest Jesus actually promises. Not a life with nothing on our shoulders. A life where what is on our shoulders has been transformed by the way we are carrying it.

Before We Move On

We were never meant to carry life unburdened. We were meant to carry it in love. Jesus does not simply remove our weight and send us away light. He takes what we carried out of fear, completely, and exchanges it for what He carries out of love, and then He teaches us, patiently, how to carry it the way He does. Heavy, and somehow light. A cross, and somehow rest.

Bring what is breaking you. Leave it at His feet. And discover the weight only love knows how to carry. (Bible Portal)

 

And He, bearing His cross, went out to a place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha, where they crucified Him, and two others with Him, one on either side, and Jesus in the center. (John 19:17-18)

On that day at Calvary, Jesus wasn’t the only one to die on cross. There were two others with Him, one on either side, and Jesus in the center.

Yes, Jesus was in the center. This was literally true; of the three crosses, Jesus was in the middle. Yet as a concept, there are many ways that it could be said that it was Jesus in the center.

Jesus was centered among humanity. From His incarnation, through His whole life, Jesus lived as one of us. Jesus died among men and women, Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, high class and no class, the educated and the uneducated, the religious and the secular, the guilty and the innocent, the weepers and the mockers, those deeply moved and those indifferent, those who hated Him and those who loved Him.

Jesus was centered among sinful men. His enemies thought this would make His sufferings worse. They thought it would bother the Savior to see the low company He died with. In His death the righteously religious mocked Him and His disciples forsook Him; yet Jesus was centered among sinners to the end.

Jesus was centered among confusion. Matthew 27:46-49 tells us that when Jesus cried out in agony to His Father, the people around Him didn’t understand and some even thought it was kind of amusing.

Jesus was centered between believing and rejecting. Matthew 27:44 told us that both robbers mocked Him, but Luke 23:39-41 tells us of a change in one of the criminals. Before His death, the last human voice to tell the truth about Jesus was a criminal converted at the last moment.

Jesus was centered between saved and perishing. The thief on the cross was the last companion of Jesus on this earth before His death – and Jesus brought Him to salvation. Not with a sermon, but with every sermon He had already preached, every righteous deed He had done before. This was perhaps the only comfort to Jesus on the cross. Still, one thief was saved, but one was lost, and Jesus was in the center between them. To pass from lost to saved, you must go through Jesus.

Jesus was centered between God and man. Jesus on the cross took all the punishment our sin deserved. At the cross Jesus was both the priest and the offering.

Jesus was centered in all God’s history and work. We do not look at Jesus in the center with pity, as if we should all feel sorry for poor Jesus. He was the winner at the cross. This was the greatest victory of all time.

On that most special of days, Jesus Christ was in the center. Is He in the center of your life? (Guzik)

 

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. — Romans 5:8

We love because he first loved us – 1 John 4:19

Romans 5:8 isn’t only a comforting truth. It’s a mirror.

Before we ask what this love means for how we treat others, we have to sit with what it means for how we love Him.

He loved us before we understood Him. Before we believed correctly, lived rightly, or even knew His name. That kind of love doesn’t just ask to be admired. It asks to be returned. Not out of obligation, but because once we truly see what it cost Him, something in us wants to give back without conditions, the way He gave to us without them.

We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19). That’s the order. His love comes first. Ours is the response. And when that response is real, it begins to change the way we love everyone else too.

He didn’t wait until we understood Him to love us. That’s where our love for Him begins.

And it’s where our love for others has to come from too. (Bible Portal)

 

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. — Romans 5:8

Into the Word

That same night Peter denied Jesus three times by a charcoal fire, Jesus was already on His way to die for him. John places these two scenes right next to each other on purpose. It is, in the plainest sense, a definition of love.

The Timing Nobody Talks About

While a servant girl was asking Peter, “You’re not one of his disciples, are you,” and Peter was answering, “I am not,” Jesus was already committed to a path that would cost Him everything.

Picture what that night actually looked like. In the high priest’s courtyard, Peter stands by a charcoal fire, warming his hands, shrinking back into the crowd. Not far away, Jesus stands before Caiaphas, being struck, being mocked, being condemned. Two scenes. Same night. Same hours. And in both of them, Jesus is moving toward the cross, not away from it, for the very man who is at that moment pretending he never met Him.

Romans 5:8 isn’t an abstract theological statement. It’s literally what happened that night. Paul wasn’t only describing a concept. He was describing Gethsemane and the high priest’s courtyard, happening in the very same hours. The love he wrote about wasn’t theoretical. It had a location. It had a timestamp.

Loved Before Understood

This story didn’t survive because anyone wanted to protect a reputation. It survived because it testified to something bigger than Peter’s failure. Jesus’ love was never contingent on being recognized, understood, or even believed in by the people He was dying for.

We didn’t know Him fully. We misread Him, misunderstood what He came to do, and scattered when things got hard. The disciples expected a king who would overthrow Rome. They got a Savior who let Rome kill Him instead. That wasn’t the story any of them thought they were in. And yet He knew exactly what He was doing, and He did it for them anyway. Not after they finally understood. Not once they got it right. But in the middle of their confusion, their fear, their denial.

He knew us anyway. He embraced us anyway.

What This Means for the Love We Give

Most of the love we offer comes with conditions attached, even when we don’t say them out loud. We love people more easily once they’ve proven themselves. Once they understand us. Once they apologize. Once they change. We tell ourselves we’re being wise, protecting our hearts, waiting for the right moment. But what we’re really doing is making love something people have to earn before we hand it over.

Jesus loved at the exact moment He was being denied and misunderstood. Not after. That’s not just a comforting fact about how God feels about us. It’s a confrontation with how we feel about the people in our own lives.

Is there someone we’re withholding love from until they finally understand us, or treat us better, or get it right? What would it mean to love them the way we were loved, before any of that happened? (Bible Portal)