The power of sacrifice comes in two forms: the first, that sacrifice makes life possible, and the second, that sacrifice makes love real.
The arrival of a new baby soon proves the first point, because along with the joy of a newborn baby comes the realization that this little creature is utterly helpless. Without the sacrifice of a parent’s time and attention – and sleep – a baby won’t survive. And yet we still have babies, knowing the sacrifices needed to keep our children alive until they’re capable of looking after themselves.
That’s a long but totally acceptable sacrifice to most parents, though, because it’s through sacrifice that love is made real. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:58 that our “labour is not in vain,” and that fits the sacrifices parents willingly make year after year for their growing children, because that’s how children become aware that they’re loved.
It’s the single parent who works three jobs so a son or daughter can get a decent education, or the Dad who bails his child out of jail for a lapse in his child’s judgment, that builds that vital picture in a child’s mind that he or she is loved.
But how does God make us aware that we’re loved? John answers that in 1 John 4:9, “This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” And how do we “live through him”? By God in his love “sending his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (10).
So it’s in sacrifice that God not only makes life possible, but makes love real too. And it’s in Jesus that he builds that picture in our minds, because Jesus is just like a parent who sacrifices his life and personal dreams and ambitions for his child. Jesus gave up his life as God to become human like us so he could die to save us from death. And now he lives to intercede for us, just as parents live for their kids.
So, just as “We love because God first loved us” (4:19), our children become loving humans because we loved them. That’s the power God gave to sacrifice, not only in his Son’s sacrifice for all of us, but also in a parent’s sacrifice for a child. Because in sacrifice not only is life made possible, love is made real too. But why does love need to be made real? Because “Life is love”….(next blog)
