An Easter Romance

Romance softens our hearts. Women love to be given flowers and to be tenderly kissed. More than anything, we love to be loved. There is nothing more romantic than this. But sometimes the love we receive is a half-measure, and sometimes we don’t know we are loved.

This is how we know what romance is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. The Easter cross with its dead man hanging, bruised and bloody, is the most romantic thing in all the world - because he did it for us.

If we were absolutely lovely, beautiful and admired women, then its romance might be less remarkable – “for a good [wo]man someone might possibly dare to die” (Romans 5:7). But only one man cared enough to die for women who hated him, who did their own thing even when they knew it hurt him. Such was God’s romance that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

We are more ugly than we have ever guessed, and more cherished than we could ever dream. That man was whipped and mocked for us. He hung on that cross and it was for us that he cried “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). He did it for us: to make us holy, to cleanse us and present us radiant, “without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Ephesians 4:27). “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” (1 John 3:16).