A Love Like No Other

            The love Jesus showed at Easter invites us to conceive of a love far beyond the boundaries of the universe.  It’s a love worth exploring.  It is a love you must really want if you have any hope of recognizing it.

            The cross is the most obvious place that we see the love of Easter.  But something struck me about the love of God from one small phrase Jesus said to His true disciples during Easter.  It was a part of what is known as the Olivet Discourse.  During Holy Week Jesus followed a specific pattern.  During the days He openly taught at the Temple; then in the evenings he would travel with His close companions back to the Mount of Olives to spend the night.  At the Mount of Olives Jesus taught differently than at the Temple.  He focused on encouraging the disciples for the weeks after Holy Week.  Jesus’ work was the most important for that week, but He has left Christians to finish His work.  He gave them encouragement about how to live through the coming ages of persecution and trials.  He emphasized that living your life for His unexpected return was the only way to live.

            Jesus had a lot to cover.  He spoke about future events that His audience barely understood.  None of them had in mind that Jesus would be crucified on a cross—the most hideous death known at that time.  It wasn’t even a consideration though He had plainly stated it to them several times.  He didn’t talk about His work on the cross and the necessity of it.  He knew they had to experience it to understand that it was for the cross that He was sent to live as a man.  Instead He focused on their work which is now our work.  He talked about the future.  There will be the day when He returns from the clouds; but before that day, all Christians have work to do during their human lifetimes.

            Throughout Jesus’ efforts to explain the way it is, He threw in subtle but profound statements describing His love and care for His Christians.  He knew that God wasn’t allowing the mistreatment of Christians because God didn’t care.  He wanted them to know it too.  He wanted them to understand that God’s perfect love for His Christians was far beyond any love they ever experienced or any love they could ever imagine.  God’s love for all human beings involved a care for our flesh that no human could ever express.  Earlier in the gospels when Jesus taught about anxiety, He told us that God know the very number of hair on our heads.  Matthew 10:30: And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. If God knows the number of hair on your head, why should you worry?  We can love others, we love ourselves but we definitely don’t know what is best for us because we cannot know ourselves like God knows us.  He knows something we cannot easily know about ourselves.  Unless you are bald, it’s not easy for you at any moment to know the exact number of hair on your head.  It changes daily, some coming in and some falling out.  Yet God makes the effort to even know that about you.  My friends, the reason we face hard realities during our lifetimes is not from a lack of care from God.  It is from the destructive power of sin.  Sin is powerful, but it is not more powerful than God’s love.  Easter proves that to us. 

            Luke 21:17-19 tells us: Everyone will hate you because of me.  But not a hair of your head will perish.  Stand firm, and you will win life.  Not only does God know how many hairs you have on your head but also He will not allow one single hair to perish!  That is a love like no other love. 

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