Last Words

I recently heard the testimony of a man who had just come through a terrible, life-threatening ordeal after being in a vehicle accident. As he described his experience, the only time he began to tear up was when he said that he had had to say his potential last words to his children and his wife. He said he wanted them to know more than anything that he loved them, that they were the first and primary vision in his mind as he was in the accident and prepared to enter a dangerous surgery. I sat and marvelled at this man, thinking, What great love a father and husband can have! And then the thought struck me, that if humans are capable of such love even in immense suffering, then several things must be true:

• First, that Jesus, as both God and Man, has a profoundly unique love.
• Second, that Jesus died on the cross out of this love so that we would have the opportunity not to lose eternity with Him through our sin.
• Third, that Jesus has 'last words' of love, so to speak, that He wants us more than anything in the world to know as true, and therefore must have revealed in His greatest act of love: His death.

Jesus' Love as God and Man

Every human has the ability to love, and that love, as shown in countless examples throughout history, as well as the testimony I heard, is a very real and passionate love. Jesus showed this love, too, when He wept over His friend Lazarus' death (John 11: 32-36). Because He was fully Man, Jesus did experience a human love, but He is also fully God, and so His love far surpasses anything that a human being is capable of. That kind of power behind a very real bond makes Jesus' love for us the one thing that can save us from sin, from ourselves.

Love's Sacrifice

One of the ladies on my team said something so beautiful once, closer to the beginning of my year with NET: "God died for you because He could not imagine an eternity without you." Because of the loving and powerful bond between God and mankind, Jesus came as both to be the sacrifice necessary to re-establish the relationship broken between them. Without His humanity, Jesus could not have suffered, but without His divinity, He could not have risen and conquered. As both, Jesus was able to give all of it away to spend an eternity with you. His love was so great that, this being the only way that Jesus could save you, He took that cost, because He weighed your eternal life as more important than His. This was truly His greatest act of love, ultimately the pinnacle of His life.

Last Words

When people die, it is said we see our life flash before our eyes. I prefer to think that Jesus didn't see His own life as He was dying for three hours on the cross; He saw your life. His hunger to have you with Him in heaven was what ultimately gave Him the strength to continue to the end of His suffering and make His sacrifice. With you as His purpose, as His vision, He not only died but rose for you. So what does He want us to know, more than anything in the world? What are His last words to humanity? to me? to you?

I don't know.

Every human has trouble believing in His love. So many people do not believe in God simply because they do not believe in Love. Perhaps what God wants us to know is that He loves us. Maybe that is all we really need to know to trust Him to love us no matter how far we are, to trust Him to run and meet us wherever we are at.

His last words are, "You are just as beautiful, cherished, and special as you were on the day I conceived the thought of you in My Mind." But it is our choice to accept that love. We can respond to these words of challenge and affirmation by choosing to live for Christ, and perhaps our own last words to Jesus will be just as beautiful and affectionate as His to us.

Peace and blessings,

Encounter Team 2