It’s All About God’s Love
An Easter Message from President Millard
“This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. … I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.” – John 15:12-13, 17
Why did Jesus voluntarily lay down his life and allow the religious and political authorities of his day to crucify him?
The Gospel of John clearly answers this question: Jesus gave his life on the cross all because of his love for us.
When Jesus says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” he is talking about himself and the time to come when he would lay down his life out of love for us.
One of the most familiar verses in the Bible is John 3:16, in which John tells us that, “God so loved the world [all people in the world] that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”
Jesus loved us so much that he gave his life on a cross so that we might be forgiven of our sins and live in harmony with God and others. When Jesus was dying on the cross, he prayed for those killing him—indeed, for all of us—with these words: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
The only way to understand the major events of Holy week, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Jesus, is to focus on God’s incredible love, amazing grace and compassionate forgiveness for all of us.
Jesus gave his life so that we might know the depth of God’s love and forgiveness for us. God raised Jesus from death to life so that the Living presence of Christ would be with us, always continuing to share God’s love and forgiveness for all of us.
Some people think love is simply a temporary feeling or emotion we may or may not feel for another person. But the sacrificial love that Jesus demonstrated on the cross is not temporary; it is a deep, compassionate commitment to all people, even when they are being most unlovable. That is the way God loves us and calls us to love each other.
Jesus made it perfectly clear: “This is my commandment, that you love one another [sacrificially] as I have loved you [sacrificially].”
The only proper response to Christ’s sacrificial death because of his love for us is to bow down in humility and confession to God and then to stand up and joyfully sing to God:
CHRIST THE LORD IS RISEN TODAY, ALLELUIA! ALLELUIA! ALLELUIA!
Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift of Christ’s sacrificial love and eternal life!
Grace and Peace,
President Kent Millard