To save us from eternal death, God had to give the very life of His Son, Jesus. 

God would send His Son to earth as a human baby too weak to lift up His own head. He would learn how to crawl, how to stand, how to run.

When He had grown to manhood, He would bring men back to the God whom they had forgotten. He would tell them: “The Lord our God loves you” (Cf. John 3:16), “You must love Him with all your heart and soul and mind and strength” (Cf. Matthew 22:37), and “You must love others as much as you love yourself” (Cf. Matthew 22:39).

Then He would show them, as well as tell them, what God meant by “love” when He fed the hungry, healed the sick and made the blind to see.

Finally, He would show them the greatest love of all:
He would die for them so that the way to God would
be opened.

After that, no matter how far a person wandered, no matter how big the sin, there would still be this way back to God. For love like this would be stronger than sin—stronger than death itself. ©2000 BGEA 

 

Excerpted by permission from “Love Stronger Than Death” by Ruth Bell Graham, originally published in Decision, April 2000.