Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
John 15:13
Love sacrifices. It lays itself down.
No-one in full charge of their faculties is enamored with the concept of sacrifice. The very prerequisites of the word require a level of discomfort that most of us would avoid given the option.
However, there is power in sacrifice. Look to the Old Testament; that the seemingly carnal act of ritual animal sacrifice could achieve even a semblance of holiness must tell us something of the nature of its capacities. What then is the secret of its power?
Sacrifice determines and declares priority.
Sacrifice determines priority. Priority is not determined by what we say are our priorities, it is determined by what we actually sacrifice and what we sacrifice toward. Because our mouths can be full of untruths but our actions rarely are. They reveal us. At times, even to ourselves. Perhaps it is because we are more transparent than we imagine (which is quantifiably true) but I also hold the view that the choices we make with our mouths tend to be more filtered (notable exceptions not withstanding) than our behavior is.
The word of God says “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”, sacrifice is an outworking of this same principal. What you give up, and what you give it towards determine your priorities. In this we also find a way to force our sometimes stubborn hearts to go in the direction we know they need to go. We sacrifice and let our hearts follow our efforts.
Sacrifice declares. This is a decidedly two-sided coin. On one hand it doesn’t matter that people are aware of our sacrifice. At all. On the other, it couldn’t matter more. We don’t do it for accolade, nor should we, yet this is how people become aware of our priorities, and most particularly our priorities as they relate to them.
My children never feel so important as they do when they are aware that I have set aside other things that I might need or want to do in preference for spending time with them. An important distinction; I’m not doing it to make them FEEL important, I’m doing it because they ARE important. The declaration that our sacrifice makes then is not the purpose of our sacrifice, it is an outworking, a secondary effect.
The manner matters.
Not only is the reason for our sacrifice important but the significance of the manner in which that sacrifice is carried cannot be overstated. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a gift grudgingly given, or made to feel indebted for the sacrifice made towards you, then you understand. If you do not, then be grateful, it is wretched. This is doubly true of sacrifices made in the name of love. A double-handed sacrifice for love is not love at all, it is manipulation. And we do not manipulate. We sacrifice for the ones we are given to love.
Greater love has no one than this church. Than they lay down their life for their friends, the ones they love, the ones God has given them. And not only in the ultimate sacrifice but every time we sacrifice something in our world for these precious people we are expressing one of the greatest forms of love imaginable. You have people in your world that need your sacrifice church. And there are people who are sacrificing for you at this very moment church. It is beholden upon us to recognize and appreciate those people.
Let’s keep moving towards greater love this week!
Praying and believing with you
Stephen