The Greatest Love

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Like villages the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, the tiny agricultural hamlet of Craigton of Airlie has its war memorial commemorating the men of the parish who fell in the 1914-1918 war.

Appallingly, for a cluster of houses that barely registers on Google Maps, this vanishingly small community commemorates nineteen local men who made the ultimate sacrifice. As the memorial stone says, “greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

The truth of these words, repeated on many another war memorial, is perhaps more vital than those who engraved them strictly intended. Whether these men gave their lives for or against the geopolitical ambitions of the politicians of the day may be less likely than that they died in solidarity with those who fought and fell alongside them.

The words are familiar to us but perhaps the context of their original application is not so well known today; although it would have been when this stone was erected. The words are those of the Lord Jesus hours, or perhaps minutes, before He was arrested and subsequently crucified. He was speaking to His disciples and seeking to comfort them ahead of the trauma they were about to face. He wanted them to know that His death was necessary for them. Shortly before He had said to them, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” He then made one of His most astonishing claims, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Don’t let anyone kid you that Jesus was just a wise teacher or a good man. He claimed to be God and to have all the authority of God. He also claimed to be the only way to God.

But was the death of Christ only for those He called His friends? The Apostle Paul, writing to Christians in Rome, told them that, “while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.” Surely this is the greatest love of all! While men can and do lay down their lives for their friends, He laid down His life on behalf of those who ignore Him, blaspheme Him, even those who nailed Him to a cross.

Are you willing to accept Him as your Saviour and become one of His friends?

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