I read an Easter toast last year or possibly the year before last that I thought was perfect. “We raise our glasses and drink to a Love that never gave up.” So simple, yet so completely profound. It is in essence a toast to the gospel in its purest form: relentless love.

That’s what we’re celebrating, after all. It’s about a Love that our sin could not quench, that our failures could not drive away, that the grave could not hold down. It’s a love that not even death and hell could overcome. No person or group or religion or cult or movement since has been able to stop it.

The best part of it all is that Love came in the person of Jesus with you and me on His mind. All He went through was to find a way to woo and win your heart back to His. When He saw our need and our helplessness, He determined that nothing would stand in the way of His coming to our rescue. When He saw our sin and failure, He took it upon Himself to make us right. Literally.

He took all our sin and paid for it, and then some. Why are we still trying to pay for something that’s already been paid for? We don’t have to, but we do. It’s called religion. The good news is that Love found a way to do what religion could never and will never be able to do. What our best efforts will never be able to do. Make us right with God and make us clean and pure again.

We are justified, which I heard defined as “just as if we’d never sinned.” I like that. All that because of Love. All that because of Love for you and me.

So raise your glass and drink to that relentless love of Jesus that still pursues your heart and won’t ever give up on you, but will make you, the beloved, into something exactly like the One who loves you– Jesus.

Amen and amen