True Love Requires Sacrifice

September 28, 2026

When I visited my daughter in China I met Bri, her wonderful roommate. Bri had a dangerous hobby of collecting forbidden Christian books since middle school. She did not own a Bible. She had a Bible storybook she found in seventh grade at boarding school when everyone else was gone. She knew the stories. When the evening came she would ask questions about Jesus. She loved asking questions about life, death, and justice. When we invited her to church the next Sunday, she could not wait.

Walking into that sanctuary meant walking under cameras installed by the communists to see who came. Bri could pay a price for being there. She might lose the freedom to travel. She might lose her job for being recorded on the cameras for attending. Someone heard me talking to her in public about Jesus, and warned me we should not be having this conversation. In private, we talked honestly about the cost of following Jesus. In communist countries it can cost a lot to be a Christian.

Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). He also said the Father prunes every fruitful branch, so it will bear more fruit, and that the world will hate His followers because it hated Him first. Love in this chapter is not a feeling we manage. Love in John 15 is not warm and fuzzy feelings. It is love with a price. It is a life we give. It is remaining in Him, bearing fruit that glorifies the Father, and testifying even when the cameras are watching.

During World War II, German paratroopers invaded Crete. Islanders met them with kitchen knives and hay scythes, and then they were lined up and shot. A boy named Alexander Papaderous saw his village destroyed and was sent to a concentration camp. After the war he became convinced his people had to let go of the hatred the war had unleashed. He founded an institute for peace on the very ground that had embodied so much horror.

One day someone asked him the meaning of life. He took from his wallet a small round mirror. As a child he had found it among the wreckage of a German motorcycle. He could not put the broken pieces back together, so he shaped the largest shard and used it to bounce light into holes and crevices. That fragment became his life. “I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know,” he said. “Nevertheless, with what I have I can reflect light into the dark places of this world, into the black places in the hearts of men, and change some things in some people” (adapted from “It Was On Fire When I Laid Down On It” by Robert Fulgham).

That is John 15 in a different story. We do not have to see the whole design. We remain in the Vine. We accept the pruning. We love one another when it costs us. Jesus says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). We reflect the light we have been given into places the world would rather keep dark strengthened by Christ, and in His name. Bri walked into a watched sanctuary because she wanted the Light more than she wanted safety. Papaderous spent his life shining a broken piece of glass into hatred he had every reason to keep.

True love requires sacrifice because that is how Jesus loved us. He laid down His life. He sends the Spirit of truth to help us testify. He does not ask us to manufacture a feeling. He asks us to stay connected to Him and to let His life bear fruit through us, even when the fruit is costly.

Where is Jesus asking you to love at a cost instead of at a convenience? What dark place could use the light you already carry? What would it look like this week to remain in Him rather than protect yourself first?

I invite you to take one honest step toward sacrificial love. It may be a conversation, a gift, a risk, a fast, or a quiet act of remaining when walking away would be easier. You do not have to be the whole mirror. You only have to reflect the Light you have.

Jesus is the true Vine. He laid down His life for His friends. When we love one another as He loved us, the world sees Him, the Father is glorified, and His name is lifted high. (To learn more about Al Earley or read previous articles, see www.lagrangepres.org. You can purchase my book, My Faith Journal, at Amazon.com, a compilation of 366 articles as a daily devotional. Check out my podcast on YouTube, called “My Faith Journey”).