How much love did Christ have for you when He chose to follow His Father's will and lay down His life for you on the cross? How much love for you was in Jesus to make Him decide to suffer for you?
I'm venturing to guess that you are grasping to find a numeral large enough to quantify that amount of love. I'm guessing your answer is something like a lot or a ton. And that is a wonderful answer.
After reading "The Heart of Christ" by Thomas Goodwin I am convinced that Jesus loves you more today than on that Friday that He allowed Himself to be crucified for your sins and for your redemption. I feel confident that Jesus loves me more after He went to the cross than He did before He went to the cross.
I remember the night before my son Joshua was born. My wife, Christine, was very pregnant and ready to give birth as soon as possible. The day before our oldest was born we walked literally miles on the bike path, she ate spicy foods, she pumped. She did everything that books told her would induce her labor (let the reader understand).
Before we went to bed after 11:00 that night she said, "None of this is going to work."
I fell asleep quickly. The next thing I knew I was awakened by three sobering words: "I'm in labor."
My wife was in labor and I knew next to nothing about what to expect. She labored for a long time. We went to the hospital too early. We spent 12 hours at the hospital after spending 5 hours at home. She was in excruciating pain for a lot of that time as she sat on the edge of giving birth for hours.
Christine wanted no medication, but at the end she said she would take an epidural. The doctor said it was too late. The time to push come.
Christine pushed and screamed and squeezed my hand. I cheered for her like a mat girl at the Iowa State Tournament. She pushed and pushed and pushed but the baby was stuck.
I looked at the head of my son and then looked at the opening he was supposed to come out of. I said, that won't fit out. Then I looked and the doctor had forceps. Now, I don't know if you've seen those things but they are way bigger than I ever imagined they would be. I said in my head, that won't fit in and the baby won't fit out; I don't know what you're going to do.
Well, the doctor fit the giant salad forks in and grabbed my son and yanked him out as my wife pushed as hard as she could. 17 hours after she announced her labor had begun, the baby was in my arms.
If you're a parent you know how much hard work that was. And you know that is only the beginning. I was exhausted that night. I slept hard, but every time I woke my wife was awake too, feeding our baby. For the next nine months my wife was awakened by Joshua every night multiple times because he wanted to eat. Her body was at times chapped and sore and she was always more tired than she ever knew she could be.
Did Christine love Joshua more when she decided to have a baby? When she earnestly desired to go through the pain of childbirth just so she could hold her own child? Or does my wife love Joshua more now? Now that she has suffered to birth him, that she has experienced lack of sleep and bitten nipples and blowouts on airplanes?
Of course she loves him more now. In fact, the love of a mother for the child is likely stronger than the love of a father for a child in those early years. Suffering for someone deepens the love for them.
"Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you." Isaiah 49:15
We see this in the world of foster care. Very rarely are there single dads, though there are some. Most often the mother is the one left with the children. Where a dad may desert, a mom is much more likely to stay. Suffering increases love.
So it is with Christ. Jesus, as He is now seated in Heaven, loves us more after suffering for us than He did when choosing to suffer for us.
Let this encourage you. If He suffered for you in such an agonizing way He will not soon desert you. If He experienced the pains necessary to adopt you He will not cease to love you.
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword.
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:35 & 37-39
Meditate on this: Jesus loves you more now today than He did on the morning of Good Friday. He loves you as a mother loves her nursing infant. Think on this truth today.
* the illustration in the above is borrowed heavily from "The Heart of Christ" by Thomas Goodwin p. 29
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