The life he laid down was a sinless life. It was a life of beautiful balance, joy and sorrow,

tenderness and toughness, justice and mercy, grief and anger, speech and silence, prayer and action.

He was living the life that was the most valuable life that had ever been lived, and that's the life he gave for you.

What was the cost of Christ's love for you? Not for a generic you, but for you specifically?

That's the question John Piper answers from Ephesians 5.1 and 2 in this episode of Light and Truth.

This sermon was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on March 26, 1995.

If love is going to flourish and deepen among us, then we will have to be rooted more deeply in the love of Christ for us.

We want love to abound among us. And to that end, we must experience the love of Christ for us.

For that to happen, we have to be somehow in the love of Christ so that it surrounds us and holding us and getting into us.

I get that from 1 John 4.16 that says, we have come to know and have believed the love that God has for us.

Have you ever noticed that phrase? We have believed love. It doesn't say believe on love or believe in love, believe on Jesus or believe in Jesus.

Jesus says, we have believed direct object. Love. We believe love. That's the root. Now I'm shifting to the picture.

That's the root of our life that has to go down into the soil of the love of Christ or the love of God for us.

That's what is being described in 1 John 4.16. We have known and have believed the love.

Believing is to get down into it, to sink the root of your life down into it and start absorbing it up and depending on it and living in the strength of it and tasting it every day and making it the energizing thing in your life.

So the picture, we're the tree and on the branches is fruit because love is the fruit of the Holy Spirit and the ground on which the tree is planted is the love of God or the love of Christ.

It falls off the bottom of your page because there's no bottom to it and then draw roots down underneath the tree and that's your face that's going down in there.

Drawing up nutrient everlasting and powering love producing nutrient from being loved by Christ.

Sometimes we can feel jealous of people, hundreds of people who live when Jesus lives and they saw him with their eyes, they touched him with their hand, they saw him do love.

They saw him touch lepers, they saw him take little children in his arms, they saw him wisely, parry the opposition so that they couldn't make him look a fool to those who really had eyes to see.

They saw him lay his life down, they saw him rise again, at least 500 of them did.

They saw the whole thing and they believed on him and we can look at that and say, well I would too if I saw him.

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