The message of Easter is giving new life and God’s love shown through Christ’s sacrificial death, burial and resurrection. The human mind may never fully grasp the love of God. It is uncaused, uninfluenced, spontaneous, and sovereign.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes on Him shall not perish but have everlasting life,” John 3:16 tells us.

I stumbled upon this story that is somewhat painful to read, yet makes it easier to understand and illustrate the sacrificial type of love.

On the afternoon of May 12, 2008, a 7.9-magnitude earthquake hit Sichuan Province in Western China, killing about 70,000 people and leaving more than 18,000 missing. About 15 million people lived in the affected area, including almost 4 million in the city of Chengdu.

When the rescuers reached the ruins of a young woman’s house, they saw her dead body through cracks in the structure. They thought her pose was somehow strange in that she knelt, leaning forward, and her hands were supported by an object. The collapsed house had crushed her back and her head.

Despite many obstacles in the way, the leader of the rescue team put his hand through a narrow gap in the wall to reach the woman’s body. He was hoping that she could be still alive. However, that was not the case.

He and the rest of the team left this house and were going to search the next collapsed building. The team leader seemed driven by a compelling force to go back to the house of the dead woman.

Again, he knelt and put his hand through the narrow cracks to search the little space under the body. Suddenly, he screamed with excitement, “A child! There is a child!”

The whole team worked together. Carefully, they removed the piles of ruined objects around the woman. Beneath her, they found a 3- month-old little boy wrapped in a flowery blanket. Obviously, the woman had sacrificed her life to save her son. The little boy was sleeping peacefully when a rescuer picked him up.

A doctor came quickly to exam the little boy. After he opened the blanket, he saw a cell phone beside the infant. There was a text message on the screen. It read, “If you can survive, you must remember that I love you.” These words have echoed in my mind for days.

Stories touch our hearts and imaginations. At the heart of the Christian gospel is a love story.

Jesus Christ is the supreme example of demonstrated sacrificial love. His motivation was pure. His purpose was clear: to exchange His life for your life and mine.

In Romans 5:7-8, Paul said, “Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”

There is another story I recently read that also took place in China this past week. The headline instantly caught my attention: “Chinese man killed catching suicidal girlfriend.” Here is how the press account put it:

“A man has died after catching his girlfriend as she jumped from the seventh floor of an apartment building in China. The young Chinese man, identified only by the surname Wang, held out his arms to break the woman’s fall as she plummeted from an apartment in Quanzhou in south-eastern China.

Wang was killed but the woman suffered fractures and other injuries; however, she was in good condition, the newspaper said.

The attempt to win back the beloved resulted in the death of the suitor. Pure love is sacrificial love.

Wang died for the sake of a woman. But Jesus, who seeks to win our love, came and died for every one of us, even those who do not receive Him. The Bible says in 1 John 1:10. “This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

Many of us have spurned the love God has for us. Still, He seeks to woo us back to himself. My prayer is that you experience His love more than ever before during this Easter season.

God bless you.