Within Christian theology, the Easter weekend is one of reflection, celebration and hope. It reminds us of the cost of sin and the immense cost God was willing to pay to redeem sinners into the Kingdom of God. This season ought to bring us to prayer in gratefulness and praise.
Within the Easter story there is also a profound statement of the nature of love.
‘Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.’ - John 15:13
Throughout our Australian society, we are exposed to various qualities of love. The romance of love written in books and in screen plays. The endurance of love in our celebration of anniversaries. The excitement of first love we see play out each and every day around us.
Christ tells us that of all the qualities of love, the greatest of them is love that is sacrificial. True love is able to put the beloved above themselves. We see this on the cross, where Christ revealed the depth of God’s love for humanity by being sacrificed on the cross, so that we may be called into a new life with Him.
So in our life as a church, let us be reminded of how to live out love in our daily lives. Whether it’s in the simple things like serving our community, in our willingness to sacrifice our consumeristic desires for the sake of others in the world or even in the deeper things, in reflecting and building self-awareness of our arrogance and selfishness, so that we may be free of their motivations. Let us journey to build sacrifice into how we love God, one another and the world around us.
在基督神學傳統中，復活節週末是我們反思、慶祝和盼望的時間，它提醒我們耶穌基督為了救贖我們這群罪人，而付上他寶貴生命這個沉重的代價來換取我們進入神國度的機會，就讓我們在這個季節懷著感恩和讚美的心來禱告—
復活節的故事裡有對「愛」本質的深刻陳述：
“人為朋友捨命，人的愛心沒有比這個大的。”-約翰福音15:13
在澳洲日常生活中，我們會接觸到各種不同本質的愛：書本和影視劇中的「浪漫的愛」，紀念日慶祝活動中的「永恆的愛」，以及感受到「初戀的愛」的興奮每天都在我們身邊上演。
耶穌基督告訴我們，在所有愛的本質中，最偉大的是「犧牲的愛」，真正的愛能使人把心愛的人放在首位，看得比自己更重要—我們在主的十字架上看到了這一點，耶穌基督通過在十字架上的犧牲來揭示神對人類的愛有多麼的深，因著他「犧牲的愛」我們得以蒙召與神同行，展開新的生活。
弟兄姊妹們，讓我們時刻緊記如何在日常生活中活出愛，無論是簡單如彼此服侍時，當我們願意為了捐獻幫助有需要的人而犧牲個人消費欲望時，甚至在更深層次的事情上，如不斷反思我們的行事為人是否不夠謙卑和不夠關懷別人，從而建立不被個人欲望控制的自我意識。讓我們今天開始，以基督「犧牲的愛」來學習如何愛神愛人。
