What Did Jesus Do?
Jesus Made A Selfless Choice To Grow And Love
“You did not choose me, but I
chose you…”
John
15:16
While the context of the quote from John 15 is the Lord’s address to
the eleven remaining apostles (Judas by that time had absented himself in order
to go and “do quickly” what the Lord knew his betrayer was going to do.)
regarding their calling and appointment to “go and bear fruit,” I believe it is
quite legitimate to expand Christ’s declaration to describe the manner by which
all who will be saved come to the knowledge and love of Jesus as Savior and
Lord—It’s His choice. And we can hardly begin to grasp just how
costly a choice it was.
The choice was, is, all about love.
And love, agape love, always
involves choosing to let go, to sacrifice, to give up something of the self
for the sake of the beloved. Any
selfish choice in the name of love, isn’t love at all, and in truth arrests,
rather than contributes to the growth of, the self. Jesus, in choosing us, made a selfless choice,
determining to go all the way for us, to so abandon himself, to deny himself completely
for our salvation. In choosing us, in
choosing you, in choosing me, the Lord consciously and
unreservedly chose the cross.
In return, Jesus asks each of us who would follow him to deny our selves, to lose ourselves in him, to
go all the way for him, and to take
up our own cross. (Matthew 10:38-39).
It is choice, you see, to take up
or not take up, our cross. And Jesus
would not have anyone fail to understand how costly it is to follow him. To follow Jesus we must be prepared to set
aside even the closest of our relationships, with mother and father, husband or
wife, son or daughter, should they come between us and the Lord. The Lord would even have us choose to
sacrifice the one we love most, our self
to follow him. Only faith in Jesus, only
trusting that he has, and will, take care of us, permits us to let go of
others, of our self. In the end, it is the selfless choice which
permits the self to grow, to love.
That’s what Jesus did, and that’s what he calls all who follow him to
do—grow and love.
Jim
Marion, NC
PS 37.4
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