But are we really worth dying for? We've all been told (whether overtly or sub-consciously) that aren't worthy of anything. Some of us have endured this message of worthlessness from parents, ex-boyfriends/girlfriends, abusive spouses, and bad teachers. Some of us have heard this message preached to us from the pulpit for years in church. You hear so much about your sin and you walk out feeling so crappy that you aren't sure if Jesus really died for you and you can't really see why he would want to anyway. So all of this (that we've all endured in some way) leads us to seriously doubt whether we are worth dying for anyway.
Most people walk around with a profound sense of the fact that we are ugly, unlovable, too fat, and possibly worthless. This isn't in any way true, especially when you study the word "love" in the Hebrew and Greek languages (which are the biblical languages). In English, we have one word for love. What this leads to is me saying that I love my wife, but then I'll say later that I also "love" pizza. That is patently ridiculous. Because we have only one word for love, we express the fact that we like something by throwing around the word love. Greek and Hebrew both have three words for love, each of which speaks of a different aspect of love. The word that Jesus used for love, and the word that the rest of the New Testament used to describe his love, is the Greek word agape. Here is how Rob Bell describes the meaning of the word agape.
"Agape doesn't love somebody because they're worthy. Agape makes them worthy by the strength and power of its love. Agape doesn't love somebody because they're beautiful. Agape loves in such a way that it makes them beautiful. There is love because, love in order to, love for the purpose of, and then there is love, period. Agape doesn't need a reason."
Think about that for a minute. The answer to the question, "Why does God love me?" is "Ummm, he just does." That doesn't make much sense to us, because very few of us have ever experienced that kind of love from those around us. Most of the love we experience is purely conditional ("I'll love you if...I'll love you until...).
The question that this kind of love begs is: what do you do with a love like that? There has to be a way to respond to agape, but what is it? Jesus says this, "If you love me, you will obey my teaching." On first reading, that statement seems to be saying that our love for him will never be anything but conditional. But what is his teaching? Someone asked him once what he thought were the two greatest commandments. He says to agape God, and agape people. So what Jesus is really saying is this, "If you agape me, you will agape God and agape people."
How do we respond to a love like that? With love like that.
One of the central messages of the cross is that people are worth dying for. This means you, no matter how unworthy you think you are, no matter how messy you are...you're worth dying for. So is that person that hates you. So are terrorists. So is Ann Coulter (that was hard for me to type). The only proper response to love, period, is love, period. Jesus doesn't need a reason to love you, he just does. There are many people who give us no reason to love them, but we should anyway.
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