Victorious Love
Lester Zimmerman
Easter is the greatest day of celebration for followers of Jesus around the world. It is the day we
celebrate the resurrection of our Lord. Without the resurrection our Christian religion would be
no different than any other religion whose leader died and was buried and remains in their grave
as a dead mortal man.
But Jesus proved he was God by rising from the dead and ascending to the Father in heaven in
front of many eye witnesses. We serve a living savior.
 The resurrection of Jesus validates our faith.
The religious leaders of that day who rejected Jesus tried to deny the resurrection and people
today want to deny it because it proves the divinity of Christ and if he is God then what he taught
is true and we are all accountable to him for our lives.
The Health and Human Services in South Carolina have more faith in resurrection power than
some people. – Read letter…… They send a letter to a resident in Greenville County that stated:
“Your food stamps will be stopped, effectively March 1992, because we received notice that you
passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if your circumstances change.”
 Well someday our circumstances will change. One day we too shall rise again.
In our Good Friday service, we reflected on the courageous love of Jesus. It took tremendous
courage to willingly face the cross and the torture that awaited him.
It is one thing to be tortured when you have no choice. But it takes a whole different level of
courage to endure torture when at any moment you could stop it. Jesus said they didn’t take his
life he gave it. The bible says at any moment he could have called on the angels and they would
have stopped it. He died on the cross willingly. But why?
What was it that caused him to go through with it and endure the cross? What was driving him?
He was either a madman or he was a man madly in love with those he was about to die for.
The title of our message this morning is Victorious Love. The driving force behind the Easter
story is an overwhelming deep love that caused Jesus to die on the cross for our sins so we could
have eternal life.
Someone rightly said it wasn’t the nails that held him on the cross, it was love that held him
there. He willingly laid down his life for you and I.
TEXT: John 15:9-15
There is no greater love then what we see in Jesus!
This morning we want to reflect on this amazing victorious love. It is an impossible task to fully
describe the love of God toward us in Christ.
It is like the song – THE LOVE OF GOD - says
The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell
It goes beyond the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hell
Could we with ink the ocean fill
And were the skies of parchment made
Were every stalk on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky
I am reminded of the first sermon I ever preached forty years ago. I was part of a church that
used “the lot” to discern who God was calling to be the pastor.
 This is how they chose the apostle to replace Judas in the book of Acts.
In my case they put a slip of paper in one of three bibles. There were three of us who shared the
lot so we each chose a bible and whichever bible had the slip of paper in was God’s choice to be
the pastor.
 Since I was the youngest at 22, I chose last and the lot fell on me.
Now the practice was that after you were chosen you had to preach your first sermon the coming
Sunday or the following week. No training, no coaching, no practice, you just had to trust the
Holy Spirit to help you. So one day you could be a farmer, truck driver or businessman and the
next day you are a pastor and have to start preaching. That’s how it was back in the day.
For me it was like learning to swim by jumping off the high dive. That’s really how it felt.
So I decided I would preach on something I thought would be very easy – “The Love of God.” I
had no idea how deep and wide the subject was. Where do you start and where do you stop?
 This is a subject that Paul says surpasses our knowledge. I made it through that sermon
somehow but it was a real challenge.
Here I am 40 years later and it still is a challenge to grasp the depth of God’s love. That’s why
the Apostle Paul prayed for us to understand this love.
Eph 3:17-19 …… I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power,
together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is
the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled
to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Let me share a few thoughts about this victorious love to help us appreciate how deeply we are
loved.
1. The depth of the Father’s love for us is seen in how far He was willing to go to
save us.
Add to this the fact that humanity had again and again rejected God and killed his messengers
the prophets. God could have very easily and had every right to destroy this planet and start over.
The point is - we are not just nameless people to God. We are not just a mass of cells. We are
created by God in our mother’s womb into his likeness and image with a soul that is destined to
live forever.
We have all sinned and sin brings separation between us and God. God could have said you
chose your bed now lie in it. You get what you deserve which is an eternity in hell.
But that is not what he did. The depth of God’s love is expressed in John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him
shall not perish but have eternal life.
God gave that which was the dearest to him in all the endless universe, his one and only son.
The worth of something is revealed by its price. You can tell the worth of a diamond ring in a
store just by looking at its price.
You and I were of such great worth that Father God paid the highest price in the whole universe.
He gave his son as a sacrifice and as payment for the sins of every human that has ever lived or
will ever live anywhere on this planet.
He did this because there was no other way to redeem us back to himself. If there was another
way, he would have done it. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane cried out –“If it is possible let
this cup be taken from me.” He was saying –“Father is there another way to redeem
mankind?” But there was not.
Only the blood of Jesus, the perfect one, could pay for our sins and set us free.
Acts 4:12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given
to mankind by which we must be saved.”
Jesus said. No one comes to the Father except through him.
So the promise is that whoever – whoever – calls upon the name of Jesus will be saved from an
eternity in hell and separation from God and will be given eternal life.
That is victorious love. There is nothing greater than this. This is the Good News of the Gospel
and we are to go and tell everybody because without it they are eternally lost.
2. The depth of Jesus’ love is seen in his willingness to lay down his glory and the
comforts of heaven to die a cruel death on a cross.
The Apostle Paul states that Jesus willingly laid down his exalted position in Heaven to come to
us and experience life with us.
Philp 2:7-8 …. of his own free will he gave up all he had, and took the nature of a servant.
He became like a human being and appeared in human likeness. He was humble and
walked the path of obedience all the way to death - his death on the cross.
Reminds me of a story I heard. There are variations of this story so I don’t know if the original
story is true or a fable. It’s a story of a little boy and his little sister in a war torn country. The
little girl was wounded and needed blood and the boy was a match so they asked if he would give
his sister his blood to save her life. He was scared but as he looked at his dying sister, with a
quivering lip he agreed. While they were drawing his blood, tears began to roll down his face.
They asked if he was in pain and he said no. Then he asked how long it was going to take until he
dies. Then they realized that he had misunderstood and thought giving his blood to save his
sister meant he had to die so she could live. And yet he was willing to do that for his sister.
This is the kind of love Jesus demonstrated for us. But not only did he die – many heroes put
their lives on the line for loved ones - Jesus took upon himself the guilt, shame and sins of
all mankind.
He experienced the ugliness and weight of our sin. And then he took the cruel punishment and
torture that belonged to us. He took both our sin and our punishment. – Why – Because he loved
us so much and wants us to be with him forever.
When Jesus cried out on the cross “It is Finished”. LOVE WON! Love was victorious!
3. Love won.
On the cross the final payment for our sins was completed. Jesus did not have to suffer anymore
after that. It was over. The bible says he went down into hell and announced the good news to
the Old Testament saints that had been in a holding place call Paradise until this victorious day.
 The bible says Jesus led the captives into freedom and into heaven that day.
When Jesus came bursting out of the tomb on that Easter morning in a resurrected body – LOVE
WON!
Our victory was sealed forever. The cross paid for our sins and the resurrection declared our
victory over sin, death and the grave.
Conclusion:
Close with two wonderful verses and promises!
1 John 3:1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called
children of God! And that is what we are! …
John 1:12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the
right to become children of God—
I invite you to become a child of God this morning. God is calling you home to his family today.
Blessing:
May the joy of the resurrection burn in your heart and may His victorious love guard and keep
you
For nothing can ever separate you from the love of the father
Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any
powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us
from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Go and walk in this amazing love.