John 15:13 – Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
I believe we all crave to be loved dispite our wrong doings. It’s easy to love when there is no difficulty or bad baggage from someone’s past or even present. Its simple to love when all the good parts are on display all day.
Let’s look at a hypothetical scenario. Let’s say you meet a stranger and you want to make a good impression of course; they just met you, you just met them and you know to put your best foot forward. So after you introduce yourself, you immediately tell them about your drug addiction. How hard it is for you to forgive. You tell them about your abandonment issues and how you have an eating disorder and arent happpy with yourself and how you use people for your own selfish gain. Then you ask, if they want to meet up with you again. What do you think they’ll say? Most likely no, right.
Now, lets look at another scenario. Same stranger and again you tell them all your flaws. The good, the bad and the ugly. Then again you ask if you can meet up again. Only this time they agree to meet up again. How would you react to such a positive response? Not what you expected, right?
That’s how Jesus is with us. He knows we are full of sin and are flawed in many areas, yet he still wants us and loves us, embraces us despite our wrong doings. He loved us so much that he even died for us. Now thats some great love. Being loved while knowing our flaws.