WALK IN SACRIFICIAL LOVE

“Christ also LOVED the church and GAVE HIMSELF for her" – Ephesians 5:25b

To Walk in God’s Way is to WALK IN SACRIFICIAL LOVE: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also LOVED the church and GAVE HIMSELF for her” (Eph.5:25). God’s Way is the Way of Sacrifice – the Way of Sacrificial Love. It is not coincidental that Paul defined Christ’s Love for His Church using the context of the marriage relationship. That’s where humanity’s dilemma emerged originally; and where God began to display the reality of His Love-Nature – Sacrificial Love!

When Adam and Eve sinned, God did not curse them. He cursed the serpent (Gen.3:14). But to Adam and Eve, He gave the wonderful promise of the coming of Christ as the woman’s “Seed” that shall crush the serpent's head (Gen.3:15). In the process, Christ's heel itself would be bruised: the price He would pay to save Adam's race from their sins. This is Divine love – a love that is willing to lay down its life in order to save the one it loves. This Love is so deep that without divine grace, humanity will always fall short of it. We can never produce this Love of God ourselves, even if we strive after it for a million years. It has to come from God. Praise God – the Holy Spirit has come to flood our hearts with this Love (Rom.5:5).

Only those who are willing to walk in the Way of Sacrificial Love can be truly used by God to build His Church on earth! In 2 Chronicles, we read that "Solomon began to build the house of the LORD on Mount Moriah” (2Chr.3:1a). This was the place where Abraham had offered his son Isaac to God (Gen. 22:2). There on that mountain Abraham understood God's Way as the Way of Sacrifice and submitted to it “And Abraham called the name of the place, The-LORD-Will-Provide” (Gen.22:14a). God sanctified that spot and determined that His house would be built on the very spot a millennium later. This is where God builds His Church – even today – wherever He finds those who have the Sacrificial Spirit and the faith of Abraham.

On Mount Moriah, Abraham was symbolically saying exactly the opposite of what Adam and Eve had said to God in Eden. The first couple, in a sense, told God by their action of eating the forbidden fruit, that created things that brought them pleasure were more precious to them than the Creator. And that is exactly what billions of human beings have been saying to God as they: “Worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator" (Rom.1:25). On Mount Moriah, Abraham said the opposite: that His God and Creator was more precious to him than his dearest possession on earth – the covenant son Isaac. He was willing to sacrifice Isaac in order to prove this. God will honour all who live by this principle of Sacrificial Love.

On Calvary's hill, Jesus did not only die for the sins of the world, He demonstrated the principle of Sacrifice by which God does all His work. No-one can serve the Lord acceptably in any other way. His true House will be built by those who have been gripped by this Way of Love for God and His Church. It is laudable but not enough to give our resources of money or time. We have to give OURSELVES! When God would describe His love to humanity, He used the example of the love of a mother for her newly-born child (Isa.49:15).

Paul used a similar imagery: “But we were gentle among you, just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children. So, affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us” (1The.2:7-8). The mother’s love for her baby is full of the spirit of sacrifice. From early morning to late night, she sacrifices; joyfully enduring discomfort, expecting nothing in return. That is how God loves us; and that is the nature He wants to impart to us: Sacrificial Love expressed in sacrificial service to His Kingdom and humanity!