What Will Sacrificial Love Cost You?

1 Peter 2:21

To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.

"My very dear Sarah: Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more"…So begins a letter written by a soldier to his wife during the Civil War. He went on, "And I am willing — perfectly willing — to lay down all my joys in this life..." He had dedicated himself to a cause bigger than his feelings, or his personal ambitions. He was willing to die for something that was so compelling to him and he trusted God to determine when his last day would be.

We should be grateful to live in a country that was founded on individual liberties unlike many Christians under oppressive governments around the world, but the overwhelming outcry in our society today has not been on how I can sacrifice for others, but on my rights, even to the insistence that I should be able to gratify my wants and desires and no one should be allowed to get in my way.

Many will not even let the baby growing in their womb get consideration or protection. "What about MY life?" screams the pregnant woman quoted in the headlines. Is that the example that Jesus left us? He never taught that we should fight for our rights, rather, that we should lay down our lives…first for the glory of God, then for the needs of others. Rather than encourage his disciples to rally against an oppressive government and fight a political battle, Jesus taught us to love sacrificially…to love God, our neighbors, and even our enemies. He surrendered himself to die on the cross because He trusted in the Father, showing ultimate love because He knew that his sacrifice would benefit you and me.

The soldier whose words were quoted at the beginning of our devotion, Sullivan Ballou, was killed in battle a week after he finished that letter in 1861. Will you love others sacrificially today?