CHRIST JESUS gave us the example by which we can know what it means to acknowledge that God is Love. He gave his life, in every sense of giving one's life, and so demonstrated love as an essential element of man in God's image. He gave up the comfort of home and family. He refused personal acclaim. He allowed himself to be nailed to the cross, ridiculed, spat upon, and he reacted only with love. He endured suffering beyond human conception and submitted to the grave to prove the glory of Love, the immortality of the life of one who truly loves.
Jesus demonstrated the victory of love over mortality. Although on the cross his life seemed to come to an end, his conscious identity was never destroyed. Except for the love the Master expressed, we should never have known of the fact of immortal consciousness and of the possibility of victory over death. The real life of man is God, and God is Love. In the degree that one loves unselfishly, one demonstrates his real life, in which there is no death.
Jesus' love was complete and unselfish. He could, therefore, permit himself to be entombed and alone with his consciousness of Life as Love. Understanding Love as his whole being, he overcame death. Of this event, Mrs. Eddy writes on page 44 of Science and Health: "His three days' work in the sepulchre set the seal of eternity on time. He proved Life to be deathless and Love to be the master of hate. He met and mastered on the basis of Christian Science, the power of Mind over matter, all the claims of medicine, surgery, and hygiene."
