The Inconvenient Love of Christ

Tucked away in the record about the crucifixion of Jesus is a touching, intimate moment that includes a little-known statement by Jesus (John 19:25-27). This statement is the third saying of Christ on the cross, and though it may be the least familiar, it deserves our careful attention. This brief moment and unfamiliar statement teach us that the truth about Jesus reveals the nature of true love. This moment shows us the love of Christ in a way that encourages us today to rest securely in his loving care and it inspires us to love one another in the same way, even when such love is not convenient.

During his greatest moment of suffering, Christ provided for his mother’s needs.

From a theological standpoint, this moment during the crucifixion of Christ gives us an example of the active obedience of Christ. The active obedience of Christ refers to how Jesus did everything that a holy, righteous and just God requires (Rom 5:12-19). The equally important but opposite reality to this is the passive obedience of Christ, which refers to how Jesus submitted to rejection, suffering, injustice and – eventually – crucifixion as he died in our place, for our sins (1 Pet 3:18).

Most of the crucifixion story (and it is a true story) describes the passive obedience of Christ. Yet in these three verses, the active obedience of Jesus shines through. This is especially remarkable because this obedience shined through at this moment of Christ’s greatest suffering. In what way did it shine through? In what way did he fulfill the righteousness of God? The Old Testament law clearly teaches that a child should honor his or her mother and father (Exo 20:12).

If Christ had failed to honor his mother as he did in this instance, he would have failed to do the right thing for the first time in his earthly life and at the most critical moment in his ministry, when he was about to finish his work of dying for our sins. Yet even this righteous behavior he fulfilled perfectly, something which you and I – no matter how sincere – have failed to do as we should. In this way he once again proved to be the one man, the one Messiah, the one person whom we can trust to deliver us from sins and give a relationship with God.

Now, as one pastor and a medical doctor observed, at this point in the crucifixion “Jesus was in limitless pain. Hour after hour he desperately strained for another breath, strained tendons like violin strings, experienced joint-rending cramps and intermittent asphyxiation, ‘searing pain as tissue was torn from his lacerated back as he moved up and down against rough timber; then another agony began. A deep crushing pain … in the chest as the pericardium slowly filled with serum and began to compress the heart.’”¹

At this greatest moment of suffering, when he was at his lowest, weakest point, Jesus displayed an extraordinary depth of love beyond comprehension. When he suffered most, he did not fail to show compassion most intensely and thoughtfully for those loved. Though large crowds of people viewed Jesus on the cross that day, few drew near to him. Of all the people in Jerusalem passing by at a distance, only five people stood nearby:

• Mary, the mother of Jesus
• An unnamed sister of Mary (an aunt of Jesus)
• Mary, the wife of Clopas
• Mary Magdalene (which means Mary “from Magdala”)
• The disciple “whom Jesus loved” (which was the Apostle John)

Of these five people, John draws our attention to two of them – the first one mentioned and the last. The first was the mother of Jesus.

As Mary observed the suffering of Jesus, imagine the suffering she endured. She had already suffered greatly. As a young lady with a sterling reputation, she risked her engagement to Joseph by accepting the role of being the mother of Jesus through a miracle of the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:38). Thankfully, Jesus did not cancel their engagement or request her execution (which he could have done on the grounds of adultery).

Even so, Mary lived the remainder of her life under the public shadow of “seeming” to be unfaithful before she had married (John 8:41). To make matters worse, while she was pregnant, she had to make a long and arduous journey to Bethlehem by foot or donkey. (This would be 80 miles / 120 km and would have taken approximately one week – all while being at full term in her pregnancy.) One she arrived in Bethlehem, no hotel would receive her. With no place to stay, she gave birth to Jesus in the place where the animals slept at night (Luke 2:7).

Days after Jesus was born, Joseph and Mary dedicated him to God at the Temple in Jerusalem. An elderly man named Simeon greeted them there with a prophecy. In this prophecy, he said to Mary, “A sword will pierce through your own soul also” (Luke 2:35), and indeed it would, for we read no further mention of Joseph, her beloved and caring husband, after this event. Though we know he lived long enough to father some children, he seems to have died not long after they were born. Now, at the cross on Golgotha, Mary was about to lose Jesus, too, in the most awful manner possible. He was her eldest son, the one for whom she had suffered so greatly. As only a mother could understand, when the sword pierced Jesus’s side, it would pierce her soul as well.

Even so, Mary did not suffer alone and forgotten. As she suffered at the foot of the cross, Jesus, her divine Savior and beloved son, reached out to her from his own agony. When the Jews had arrested him in the olive grove at Gethsemane, he had spoken up to protect his disciples from harm. To the soldiers he had said, “If you seek me, let these go their way” (John 18:8). Now once again, and in a more touching and intimate way, he spoke up to meet the needs of his mother when his crucifixion suffering had reached its peak. From the beginning to end of his suffering – as he prepared to die for the sins of all people – he did not fail to show compassion for the people he loved.

Jesus, as his mother’s oldest son, had the responsibility to meet his mother’s needs in the absence of her husband. Now that Jesus was about to pass away, it was his responsibility to ensure that she would receive the care she needed following his death. Technically, his remaining brothers (esp. the next oldest) should have assumed this responsibility in his absence, but they were not present to receive these charges. To ensure his mother’s protection, Jesus assigned her care to the only man who was present at the cross and the only man he could trust at that time – the disciple whom he loved.

It is assuring to know that the God you serve and the Savior you love – he loves and cares for you without ceasing and without interruptions. His love never fails. His care never ends, for even in his most excruciating moment of pain and suffering, he cared for those he loved. Knowing this, you can rest assured at night that if you know Jesus Christ as your Savior, he cares so deeply for you that he will meet your needs in this life and will keep on doing so for all eternity. You have nothing to fear. That’s why the disciple Peter would later say to all who believe on Christ, “Cast all your care upon him, for he cares for you” (1 Pet 5:7).

Knowing this, what is it like to experience the love and care of Jesus in our daily lives? We can think about it in a strictly spiritual way and envision how Jesus (who is seated at the right hand of God in heaven) loves me and cares for my daily needs – and he does. On the other hand, we can realize that we should experience the love of Christ in a more tangible and recognizable way.

We experience the love of Christ through the love that we show to one another.

To meet the needs of Mary his mother, Jesus did not send a caravan of money from heaven or provide her with a magical treasure chest at home that would never run out as long as she lived (though he could have done these things and so much more). Instead, Jesus provided her with another human caregiver, a close friend and follower of his called “the disciple whom he loved.”

Who was this disciple? All evidence throughout this gospel points to the Apostle John as being this man, the one who wrote this book as an eyewitness. Knowing that Jesus assigned this important role to a disciple rather than a half-brother is a special and significant detail. From this detail, we learn at least two valuable lessons.

First, we learn that Christian relationships provide us with relationships that should be as strong, if not stronger, than our biological family. Notice the way that John himself refers to other believers in the letters that he wrote to them. He calls them “my little children” (1 John 2:1), “little children” (1 John 2:12-13, 18, 28; 3:7, 18; 4:4; 5:21), and “children of God” (1 John 3:1-2, 10; 5:2). He also calls them “my brothers and describes believers as “brothers” to one another (1 John 2:9-11; 3:10, 14-15; 4:20-21; 5:16).

Words like this teach us that we should develop close and trusting relationships with one another as fellow Christians. Is this how you view your relationship with the fellow believers of your church and elsewhere in your lives? Do you view them as genuine brothers and sisters? Do you treat them as such? Christianity is most healthy and strong when believers live as though they are actual brothers and sisters, not just Sunday morning acquaintances or surface friends who happen to attend the same church each week.

Yet how do we move beyond surface level relationships with one another? We do this not by calling one another “brother” or “sister” (which is not a bad practice, though not a requirement). Instead, we do this by doing the kind of things for one another – when needed – that Jesus asked John to do for his mother.

This raises a second lesson we can learn from this moment on the cross, which is that Christ displays his love for us through us. He expresses his love for you through the words and actions of other believers to you and to other believers through you. John hints at this in another letter when he said this, “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves him who begot also loves him who is begotten of him” (1 John 5:1). The love of God flows first to the children of God and then second through his children to other believers as well. Is the love of God for other believers flowing through you in real, actual ways, from God to them? How?

As John wrote about the way that believers should love one another by meeting one another’s needs as brothers and sisters do in a family, he wrote from a firsthand perspective. He knew what it meant to love this way for he had taken the responsibility to care for the mother of Jesus. He had given Mary shelter under his own roof and provided for her needs from his own resources. This was no small commitment, yet he did it out of love for Christ and out of love for his fellow believers. Would you have done the same?

Today, you cannot care for the mother of Jesus, but you can build close relationships with one another and you can care for the believers that you know. As brothers and sisters in Christ, we should love one another through words and deeds. When a church loves this way – even when it is not convenient, as Jesus exemplified and John practiced – then they experience both the love of God and the truth about Jesus in a real and powerful way. Not sound doctrine alone makes a church strong and Christianity a powerful force in the world. Rather sound doctrine coupled with loving one another as family strengthens the church and her testimony.

Thomas Overmiller serves as pastor for Faith Baptist Church in Corona, NY and blogs at Shepherd Thoughts. This article first appeared at Shepherd Thoughts, used here with permission.

1. C. Truman Davis, M.D., “The Passion of Jesus Christfrom a Medical Point of View,” ArizonaMedicine, Vol. 22, No. 3, 1965. [↩]