Here we are, on Valentine's Day of 2014. Traditionally a day of chocolates, flowers, teddy bears, "I choo-choo-choose you" cards - you know the drill. But man, for a day where love is very much "in the air", I couldn't help but reflect on what I think is the Greatest Love Story Ever Told...
***WARNING: Frozen spoilers ahead***
Disney's latest animated feature, Frozen, is a "Tale of Two Sisters" - featuring the kind of music, comedy, and excessive onion-cutting we're all used to. As we progress through the 102 minutes of tried-and-proven Disney formula, meet the various characters and encounter the various stages of standard narrative, it was at a climatic moment near the end of the film where I thought, "Wow... that's pretty much Jesus and us, right there..."
Only a week or two prior to my viewing of Frozen, I had just finished my first read of C. J. Mahaney's Living the Cross Centered Life, a book that really takes us back to the very essence of our Christian faith - to Jesus and what He did for us on the Cross. Through 14 short chapters, Mahaney paints a picture of how God's love for us was displayed through Jesus' - and to help us understand the very reasons why Jesus had to die on the cross. Why would God allow his one and only precious son to die? And all for a rebellious people who don't even acknowledge Him? What would drive God, who is above all things, who needs nothing, to do something like that?
So, coming back to Frozen, near the very end - when Elsa is about to be struck down by Prince Han, and Anna, in her deteriorating state, throws herself in front of the blade to save her sister... in the movie's words - an "act of true love". It was from this scene and the dialogue following that made me think of the greatest love story ever told.
And that, my friends, is why Jesus had to die on the cross - to put an end to all our sin, to pay for our punishment that we might have new life, to reconnect us to the Father - because God loved us. It wasn't because of anything 'good' we had done, or because we deserved it, or because of who we were (e.g. "special people") - but it is because of who God is! He is LOVE itself! He wants so much to have relationship with us! The Message translation of Ephesians 2 just puts it into perspective:"You sacrificed yourself for me...?""I love you."- Frozen, 2013
It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.These lyrics from Casting Crowns' Who Am I just keeps it real:
Not because of who I amGod's love... is a love that keeps on loving, even when wronged. A love that persists and endures forever. A love that's purely unconditional - God doesn't place any "because"s or "if"s on our part. Any "because"s are on His part: because He made us, because He desires a relationship with us, because He loves us (not that other way around!). A love that we can never be separated from (Romans 8:31-39, damn son!). A love that sacrifices... that, is a true love.
But because of what You've done
Not because of what I've done
But because of who You are
And that is The Gospel: the Greatest Love Story Ever Told.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son,
that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
- John 3:16
