You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Deuteronomy 6:5
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16
This is My commandment, that you love one another as I loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends John 15:13

It is Easter morning. Christians, rejoice because Christ has risen! The tomb is empty for death has lost its sting forever. Christ the Lord is alive. Alelluia. Alelluia. Praise God. For us Jesus’ resurrection is the core and the culmination of our faith. He alone is our eternal hope.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.1 Cor.13:13

This week has surely been about love. It is the divine love of God for His human children. The great commandment of the Old Testament was a peek into the heart of God. He wanted man to choose to love Him, to say yes to Him. He commanded Israel to love Him with every molecule of their being – but He gave them free will, even knowing how men would rebel constantly and fail repeatedly. Nevertheless, God’s loving kindness kept Israel as His own people whenever they repented and returned to Him.

This week has been about the love of Jesus for the Father. Jesus, the only begotten Son, came to this earth in obedience and love to fulfill God’s plan of salvation for men. Jesus, full of truth and grace, epitomized God’s commandment to love: He loved God with all His heart and all His mind and all His soul and all His strength. Jesus taught his followers that God was a loving, caring Father, something unknown in the world before. He heard His Father’s Voice on the mountains as He prayed so often in the mornings. God was Abba to Jesus, a loving Papa. Surely the divine Voice speaking to His beloved Son poured love over and into Him, so that He would overflow that love into the world.

Easter Sunday testifies that Christ’s love conquers all darkness, vanquishes the grave and is the immortal light of eternal life. He who was prophesied as the sacrificial Lamb of God, who was bruised, beaten, crucified and bore the stripes of our punishment laid down His life out of love. He loved us first even as the Father loved Him even to the cross. There is no greater love. It overcomes the darkness. The empty tomb proves its power.

God’s love in Christ Jesus and in us has no equal. There is no other faith, religion or philosophy that offers what God has offered in His Son. The world does not and cannot comprehend Easter Resurrection because the world does not love God or His Son or His Spirit. Blind eyes and deaf ears reject love which is sacrificial. It is that precise kind of love which surrenders to God in love and offers mind, soul and body that faith and hope in Jesus offers everyone. For this He came into the world – so that no one would perish.

For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. John 3:17

The message of Easter is this: God’s unfathomable love offers Jesus to all who ask. What greater gift is possible?