Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. Romans 6:8

I remember a story that a brother pastor told me many years ago. It was from a time before cars were equipped with air bags and seat belts, and child-safety seats weren’t even a dream. He had been driving home when he came upon an accident. The first thing he saw was a little girl, about five years old, covered in blood. The blood had come from her mother; the little girl had hardly been scratched.

Mother and daughter had been on a two-lane gravel road when a drunk driver veered into their lane and hit them. In the last moment before the cars collided—in the final split second when the mother knew avoiding the calamity was impossible—she had thrown herself across her daughter. It was the mother’s body that slammed into the car’s dashboard. It was the mother’s head that smashed into the windshield. It was a mother’s instinctual love that made her willing to give her all, even her life, so her daughter could be saved.

In this world, that kind of love is unique. It is the kind of thing that we might expect to see in a mother or father, but seldom in anyone else. Yet, it is exactly that kind of love, an even higher form of love, that motivated the Savior.

Let me tell you what I mean. There is a tremendous bond between parents and children. Scripture tells us, with great sadness, that the perfect bond which had once united humanity with the Lord in the Garden of Eden, was broken by our sin. Try as we might, there was no way we had the ability to restore that bond. Then, motivated by grace, the Lord did something that can never be understood by us. In His grace, He sent His Son into this world to take our place. Born in Bethlehem, crucified on Calvary, Jesus came to a world that didn’t want Him, that refused to acknowledge Him as their Savior.

This He did so that all who believe on Him might be forgiven. Between the two events of His birth and death, He fulfilled every law we had broken and carried every sin we had committed. There can be no question that it was a noble thing for that mother to sacrifice herself for her child. But it was a Godly thing for Jesus to lay down His life for those who denied Him and demanded His death. Still, by that love, we are saved.

Excerpt from The Lutheran Hour sermon preached on March 16, 2003

THE PRAYER: Dear Lord, You laid down Your life for those who denied you and demanded Your death. It is by that loving action that we are saved. Thank you, Jesus. In Your Name. Amen.

Today's Bible Readings: Psalms 20-22    John 10:1-21

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