SACRIFICIAL LOVE

“And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.”

(1 Cor.13:3)

If our text teaches us anything, it teaches one can sacrifice without love but cannot truly love without sacrifice (see context).  Costless love is foreign to the Bible. To truly love our fellow man or our God there must first be some type of sacrifice connected with it. In our everyday vernacular, “I love you” has come to be a threadbare cliche; and it is usually said to someone very easy to love. And without any price paid.

At the foot of the Cross, you find the Blood of His sacrifice. Generally speaking you will look in vain for any such evidence in our displays of love. In the Old Testament we’re told two and a half tribes, on the other side of Jordan, built an altar. “Reuben and the children of Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh built there an altar by Jordan, a great altar to see...not for burnt offering, nor for sacrifice,” (Josh. 22:10,26,28). Bloodless!

It’s recorded that Jesus loved the rich young  man, Lazarus, and those He chastens; but nowhere did He ever actually tell anyone He loved them— He showed it with His sacrificial living and dying. As John tell us in his first epistle, “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth." (3:18) When Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved Him, it was followed by asking him to show it. It was a, SHOW-ME LOVE.