Jesus' Love and Ours

As Love Month comes to an end, I think it's prudent to reflect on what kind of love we're celebrating and how we ought to celebrate it. Jesus said "A new commandment I give unto you [His disciples], That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." John 13:34

We are celebrating the kind of love Jesus has, and we celebrate it by expressing the same kind of love for others. That's why I've been blogging about what sort of love Jesus has and how He shows it. He is our exemplar. We are to follow His example, and the greatest example He gave us is His pattern of love. Jesus Christ was motivated almost entirely by His love of God and His love of others. We should be, too.

We should exercise Christlike love toward everyone, even those whom we don't understand or agree with. We should even exercise Christlike love toward those who require justice and judgement, when such judgement is ours to pass. We should try to be like our Savior in everything we do and say, and nearly everything He did and said was motivated by love. We should follow in His footsteps and motivate most, if not all, of our actions with love.

Jesus' Love - Resurrection

Shortly after Jesus Christ died for us, He rose again from the dead. His was the first resurrection, and because of His resurrection, we will all be resurrected as well. Some time after we die, our spirits and our bodies will be reunited, and our bodies won't just be healed up as good as new; they'll be perfect. Our bodies will be immortal, perfect, and fully intact. We won't have any injuries or deformities. We will no longer get sick or tired. We won't have any of the problems our mortal bodies currently have. It'll be great.

And another great thing about resurrection is that it's a free gift from Jesus Christ to everyone who has ever lived. Everyone who has ever had a body, even if only briefly, will get a perfect, fully restored, immortal body, which they can keep forever. That's part of what makes this gift such a great act of love. Jesus is giving everyone such a tremendous gift, just because He loves us, regardless of whether or not we've earned it or deserve it. It's not a payment for services rendered. It's not a reward for good behavior. It's purely a gift of love.

I'm thankful for the gift of resurrection. I know several people who will benefit greatly from receiving a perfect, immortal body. I may be one of them. It's a great gift! But I'm especially grateful that it's a free gift for everyone. Jesus must really love us to offer us all such an amazing gift and not ask for anything in return for it.

Jesus' Love - Sacrifice

John 15:13 reads "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Jesus did that for us. As the ultimate expression of His love for us, Jesus Christ accomplished the Atonement, in which He suffered tremendous pain, took upon Himself all our pains, afflictions, and sins,  and ultimately died for us. He loved us enough to sacrifice His safety, His well-being, and ultimately His life, for our sake. Granted, His suffering was temporary. His suffering ended with His death roughly three days after it began, and His death ended with His resurrection roughly three days after that. Yet, regardless of how long His suffering lasted, His pain was infinite. He endured all the pain that all mankind would experience over the collective courses of all our lives, and He suffered it all in one night. He exercised an immeasurable amount of dedication, self-sacrifice, and, of course, love. Only a being with infinite love would have willingly gone through something like that. And Jesus Christ did that for us. Jesus' great sacrifice for us proves that He loves all of us more than any of us could comprehend. His love for us is as great as His sacrifice was: infinite.

Jesus' Love - Advocacy

I'm stepping out of chronological order again with this one, but tonight, I want to blog about how Jesus shows His love for us by being our advocate at Final Judgment. We know that, after we die, we will be judged to determine whether we're worthy to live in God's presence, and we know that we've all done things that would make us unworthy. Yet, Jesus, who paid the price for our sins, asks God to forgive and forget them. Granted, neither God nor Jesus can ignore the demands of justice, but Jesus satisfied those demands, and He advocates for our punishment to be waived on account of His. Jesus paid a great price to make it possible for us to live in God's Kingdom, and He does everything He can to help make sure we get there.

Jesus' Love - Other Miracles

Besides healing, Jesus performed many other miracles, though in some cases, it might be tricky to figure out how those miracles are manifestations of Jesus' love. For example, Jesus turning water into wine could arguably an act of love toward those who received the wine or perhaps toward His mother, Mary, since she asked Him to help, and feeding the multitudes loaves and fishes miraculously was certainly an expression of love for the multitudes, but how was Jesus showing His love for others in walking on water or cursing the fig tree? Maybe Jesus walking on water was a sign of love for Peter, since it gave him an opportunity to test his faith, learn a lesson about faith, and have a once-in-a-lifetime experience. As for the fig tree, I'm almost at a loss. Cursing the fig tree didn't really help anyone directly, but maybe it helps us by forming a powerful object lesson against the danger of hypocrisy? That's a bit of a stretch. Some miracles don't really fit the mold of manifestations of divine love.

But maybe that's okay. People, including Jesus, are allowed to do things just because they want to. Not every act a perform performs has to be an act of love for someone else. Maybe Jesus walking on water was just a semi-practical way to get onto the boat after it had already launched. Maybe Jesus cursed the fig tree just because He felt like it. As long as doing so didn't hurt anyone, I don't see anything wrong with it. Granted, it wasn't His fig tree. One can assume that the fig tree belonged to someone else, who now has one fewer productive fig trees. Then again, that fig tree wasn't producing figs anyway, so maybe there was no actual loss.

But regardless of whether certain miracles were acts of love or not, other miracles certainly were. Jesus showed His love for us by granting us the miracles of creation and of deliverance from evil, He continues to show His love for us by healing our souls and hearing our prayers, and I'm sure we can expect more loving miracles from Him in the future. Jesus is a God of miracles and a God of love. Even if a few of His miracles weren't expressions of love, I'm willing to bet that most of them are.

Jesus' Love - Healing

Throughout Jesus' mortal ministry, Jesus performed countless miracles. Of these miracles, I believe that most of them were healings, healing specific individuals of specific ailments. He healed the sick, cured blindness and diseases, including leprosy, restored mobility to the lame, cast out devils, and even raised the dead. These were all very clear and direct manifestations of Jesus' love for those people.

Yet, Jesus' healing power reaches far beyond the limits of mortal bodies and temporal lifespans. Long before He was born, and long after He died, Jesus continued to heal people, spiritually, if not also physically. I suspect that all of us have been healed by Jesus in some way or another, if only by virtue of the fact that He forgives sins.

Jesus is the Great Healer, healing people physically, spiritually, and even sometimes mentally and emotionally, and in all periods of time. And I believe that the reason Jesus heals so many people of so many afflictions is because He loves us and wants us to be happy and live well. Sometimes, there are obstacles to our happiness, and sometimes, Jesus heals us of them.

Granted, not all afflictions get healed in this life, and that it not evidence of a lack of love on Jesus' part. Quite the opposite. Jesus loves us enough to do what's best for us, eternally, even if doing so hurts us and him in the interim. Jesus wants to heal us from everything that afflicts us, but there are lessons that need to be learned, and God often allows afflictions to persist until after those lessons are learned. Sometimes, one of those lessons is patience, particularly patient endurance of affliction. Rest assured that Jesus, who felt all our pain and suffering, isn't any happier about allowing suffering to persist than we are. Jesus wants to heal us.

Thankfully, in certain ways, He often can. Jesus continues to heal wounded hearts and souls, minds and bodies, as our various circumstances allow. Healing us (eventually) of our various infirmities must be one of His greatest joys, and it's one of the many ways in which He shows His love for us.

Jesus' Love - Listening

I'm stepping out of chronological order for this one, partly because I'm not sure where to put it, but Jesus Christ also shows His love for us by listening to us. Whenever we want to pray, He's willing to listen. I find it comforting that we always have Someone up there we can talk to, about anything. Because of that, we never need to feel alone or unheard. Jesus is always there to listen to us, no matter what we have to say. I'm glad that Jesus listens to us, and I also love that regular people also take the time to lovingly listen to others.