1. Jesus' filial union with the Father is expressed in the perfect love of which he also made the main commandment of the Gospel: 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first of the commandments" (Matthew 22: 37 f). As we know, to this commandment Jesus adds a second one "similar to the first", that of love of neighbour (cf. Mt 22:39). And of this love he sets himself as an example: "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you" (Jn 13:34). He teaches and delivers to his followers a love modelled on his own.

The gifts of charity listed by St Paul can truly be applied to this love: 'Charity is patient, . . . kind, . . . is not envious, is not boastful, is not puffed up, . . . does not seek its own interest, . . . takes no account of evil received, . . . rejoices in the truth, . . . It covers all things, . . . endures all things" (1 Cor 13:4-7). When, in his letter, the Apostle presented his recipients in Corinth with such an image of evangelical charity, he was certainly pervaded in mind and heart by the thought of Christ's love, towards which he wished to direct the life of the Christian communities, so that his hymn of charity can be considered a commentary on the precept of loving one another after the model of Christ's love (as Saint Catherine of Siena would say many centuries later): "(This is how) I have loved you" (Jn 13:34).

St Paul emphasises in other texts that the culmination of this love is the sacrifice of the cross: "Christ loved you and gave himself up for us, offering himself as a sacrifice to God. . . "Make yourselves therefore imitators of God . . . walk in charity' (Eph 5:1-2).

It is now instructive, constructive and consoling for us to consider these properties of Christ's love.

2. The love, with which Jesus loved us, is humble and has the character of service. "For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mk 10:45). On the eve of the passion, before the institution of the Eucharist, Jesus washes the feet of the apostles and says to them: "I have given you an example, that as I have done, you also should do" (Jn 13:15). And on another occasion he admonishes them: "Whoever wants to be great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you shall be servant of all" (Mk 10:43-44).

3. In the light of this model of humble readiness that reaches the ultimate "service" of the cross, Jesus can invite the disciples: "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart" (Mt 11:29).

The love taught by Christ is expressed in mutual service, which leads to sacrificing oneself for one another, and whose ultimate test is to offer one's life "for the brethren" (1 John 3:16). This is what St Paul emphasises when he writes that "Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her (Eph 5:25).

4. Another endowment extolled in the Pauline hymn to charity is that true love "does not seek its own interest" (1 Cor 13:5): and we know that Jesus left us the most perfect model of such selfless love. St Paul makes this clear in another passage: "Let each one of us seek to please his neighbour in good works, to edify him. For Christ did not seek to please himself . . ." (Rom 15:2-3). In the love of Jesus, the evangelical "radicalism" of the eight beatitudes he proclaimed is realised and reaches its climax: Christ's heroism will always be the model for the heroic virtues of the saints.

5. Indeed, we know that the evangelist John, when he presents Jesus to us on the threshold of his passion, writes of him that ". . . having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end" (Jn 13:1). That 'to the end' seems to testify here to the definitive - and unsurpassable - character of Christ's love. "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (Jn 15:13), says Jesus himself in the discourse reported by his beloved disciple.

The evangelist himself wrote in his letter: "By this we have come to know love: he laid down his life for us". And he would add: we too must lay down our lives for our brothers (1 John 3: 16). Christ's love, which was manifested definitively in the sacrifice of the cross - that is, in "laying down one's life for one's brethren" - is the definitive model for all authentic love. - is the definitive model for all authentic human love. If it in not a few followers of the Crucified One reaches the form of heroic sacrifice, as we often see in the history of Christian holiness, this measure of the Master's "imitation" is explained by the power of Christ's Spirit, which he obtained and "sent" by the Father also for the disciples (cf. Jn 15:26).

6. The sacrifice of Christ has become the "price" and the "reward" for the liberation of man: the liberation from "slavery to sin" (cf. Rom 6:6-17), the passage to the "freedom of the children of God" (cf. Rom 8:21). With this sacrifice, derived from his love for us, Jesus Christ completed his salvific mission. The proclamation of the whole New Testament finds its most concise expression in that passage from the Gospel of Mark: "The Son of Man . . . did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mk 10:45).

This word 'ransom' fostered the formation of the concept and expression 'redemption' (Greek: [Greek term] = ransom, [Greek term] = redemption). This central truth of the new covenant constitutes at the same time the fulfilment of Isaiah's prophetic announcement concerning the servant of the Lord: "He was pierced for our sins . . ., by his wounds we were healed" (Is 53:5); "He bore the sins of many (Is 53:12). It can be said that redemption was the expectation of the whole old covenant.

7. Thus, "having loved to the end" (cf. Jn 13:1) those whom the Father "gave him" (Jn 17:6), Christ offered his life on the cross as a "sacrifice for sins" (in the words of Isaiah). The awareness of this task, of this supreme mission, was always present in Jesus' thinking and will. His words about the "good shepherd" who "lays down his life for the sheep" (Jn 10:11) tell us so. And that mysterious but transparent aspiration of his: "There is a baptism that I must receive; and how anxious I am, until it is accomplished!" (Lk 12:50). And that supreme declaration over the cup of wine at the Last Supper: "This is my blood of the covenant, shed for many, for the remission of sins" (Mt 26:28).

8. Apostolic preaching from the beginning inculcates the truth that "Christ died - according to the Scriptures - for our sins" (1 Cor 15:3).

Paul resolutely told the Corinthians: "Thus we preach and thus you have believed" (1 Cor 15:11). He preached the same to the elders in Ephesus: ". . The Holy Spirit has set you as bishops to shepherd the Church of God, which he purchased with his blood" (Acts 20:28). And Paul's preaching is fully consonant with Peter's voice: "Christ died once for all for sins, righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you back to God" (1 Pet 3:18).

Paul repeats the same concept, namely that in Christ "we have redemption through his blood, the remission of sins according to the riches of his grace" (Eph 1:7).

Because of the systematic nature and continuity of this teaching, the Apostle resolutely proclaims: "We preach Christ crucified, scandal to the Jews, foolishness to the Gentiles" (1 Cor 1:23). "For what is foolishness of God is wiser than men, and what is weakness of God is stronger than men" (1 Cor 1:25). The Apostle is aware of the "contradiction" revealed by the cross of Christ. Why then is this cross the supreme power and wisdom of God? The answer is only one: because love was manifested in the cross: "God demonstrates his love for us because, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom 5:8); "Christ loved you and gave himself up for you" (Eph 5:2). Paul's words echo those of Christ himself: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life" (Jn 15:13) for the sins of the world.

9. The truth about Christ's redeeming sacrifice of love is part of the doctrine contained in the letter to the Hebrews. Christ is shown there as the "high priest of future goods", who "entered once for all into the sanctuary . . . with his own blood, having obtained for us eternal redemption" (Heb 9:11-12). For he did not only present that ritual sacrifice of the blood of animals, which in the old covenant was offered in the sanctuary 'made by human hands': he offered himself, transforming his own violent death into a means of communion with God. In this way, through the "things he suffered" (Heb 5:8), Christ became "the cause of eternal salvation for all who obey him" (Heb 5:9). This sacrifice alone has the power to "cleanse our conscience from dead works" (cf. Heb 9:14). It alone "makes perfect for ever those who are sanctified" (cf. Heb 10:14). In this sacrifice, in which Christ, "with an eternal Spirit offered himself . . . to God" (Heb 9:14), his love found definitive expression: the love with which he "loved to the end" (Jn 13:1); the love that he commanded to become obedient "unto death and death on a cross" (Phil 2:8).

[Pope John Paul II, General Audience 31 August 1988]