What Is Love?
It wasn’t the kind of love that’s polished or pretty. Not the kind that shows up with a bouquet of roses or a perfect playlist playing on the boombox. Not the kind in the movies, in fairytales, or a post with a cute caption.
No- this love willingly carried the weight of countless souls—bled with great drops of blood in Gethsemane under the agony of it all—and paid the ultimate price as His hands and feet were nailed to a cross.
It wasn’t glamorous.
It wasn’t easy.
It was pain.
It was messy.
It was surrender.
It was sacrifice.
And it was love.
Not just the kind of love we talk about in passing—“Jesus loves you”—but a real, costly love. One that bled. One that hurt. One that chose suffering so that you and I wouldn’t have to face the darkest parts of this life alone. Where we can come back home.
Sometimes I sit with that thought, and it honestly wrecks me, because we say it so often, almost casually.
“He loves us. He died for us.”
But when we really slow down and think about what that meant—what it actually looked like—it stops being something soft and sentimental and becomes something that shakes you to your core. His love wasn’t poetic in the way we might expect a love story to be.
It was brutal. It was violent. It was heartbreaking.
And it was entirely voluntary.
A choice.
He didn’t flee.
He didn’t fight His way out.
He didn’t call down angels when He had every right to.
He stayed.
He endured the betrayal, the mocking, the beatings, and the nails—because you are the joy that was set before Him.
That’s what gets me.
Not that He had to. But that He CHOSE to.
That kind of love—the kind that sees you at your absolute worst and still says, “She’s worth it. He’s worth it”—it’s overwhelming. The kind of love that doesn’t count the cost, a selfless love. It’s not a love that waits until you have it all together. It’s not a love that only shows up on your good days.
It’s a love that looks at every part of you—every failure, every heartbreak, every wound—and says, Still. I will go. Still. I will carry this. Still. I will bleed for you. That kind of love doesn’t make sense in a world where most people walk away when things get hard. But Jesus didn’t walk away. He didn’t retreat. He didn’t stop halfway through.
He went all the way to Calvary—and He stayed. And I don’t think we talk enough about what that really means. We hear about the cross. We’ve seen the paintings. We know the story.
But do we understand that every whip that tore into His back carried your name?
That every thorn pressed into His scalp bore the weight of your worries and burdens?
That every mocking word was endured so He could learn how to run to you to be your relief? Your peace?
That the nails hammered through His hands were the literal price of your redemption? Restoration? Healing? It wasn’t symbolic. It wasn’t just a grand gesture. It was real.
Real blood. Real pain. Real love.
And He did it knowing exactly who He was doing it for.
You.
Sometimes we treat the cross like a polished artifact. Something to remember. Something to revere. But the truth is, it was messy. It was horrifying. It was raw.
It was love, in its most honest and holiest form.
And that’s the Jesus I follow. The Jesus I spend my life trying to emulate. Not just the glorified, risen King—though He is that, and so much more. But the Jesus who was willing to suffer. The Jesus who chose agony over escape. The Jesus who stayed on the cross, not because He had no power to stop it, but because love wouldn’t let Him leave.
So if you’ve ever felt unworthy of love—
If you’ve ever wondered whether God could really forgive you—
If you’ve ever sat in the middle of your mess and thought, “Surely I’ve gone too far this time”—
Look at the garden. The Cross. The empty tomb.
Because He didn’t die for someone more righteous.
He didn’t endure that for the ones who had it all together.
He did it for the broken.
For the ashamed.
For the weary.
For the ones who feel forgotten, too far gone, or too unlovable.
He did it for you. He lives for you.
And that kind of love?
It changes everything.