“Before the feast of Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father. He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end.” – John 13:1
At the heart of our faith is something astonishing: Jesus stepped into our place of human weakness, sin, and death so that we can step into His place of strength, righteousness, and life. On the night before he died, St. John tells us that “He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end” (John 13:1). That “end” is not just a moment—it’s the Cross. It’s the full extent of God’s divine love poured out for us, nothing held back (in Greek: kenosis). This is the shape that love takes: a kind of holy exchange.
Jesus took on what is ours—our sin, our wounds, even our death—and offers us what is His: righteousness, life, and communion with the Father. What began in the fall of Adam (Genesis 3) is not simply undone; it is reversed by a love that goes all the way to the end. The prophet Isaiah speaks of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53) who doesn’t remain distant from our pain, but enters into it completely. He carries what burdens us, bears what wounds us, and through his own suffering, brings healing. He pours everything He has out for us. “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7-8). This is what love looks like when it goes to the end—it does not turn away.
“Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.” -Isaiah 53:4
St. Paul sees in Christ a new beginning for humanity: a new Adam (1 Corinthians 15:22). Where sin once spread through disobedience, grace now overflows through loving obedience, steadfast to the very end: “For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). St. Paul dares to say something even more striking: “For our sake he [God the Father] made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). This is the exchange at its deepest level.
“Jesus… by the grace of God [might] taste death for everyone.” (Heb 2:9)
Jesus became like us in every respect, even “tasting our death” (Hebrews 2:9;17). He did not avoid suffering—he embraced it. He walked through temptation, fear, suffering, and even death itself. God didn’t save us from a distance, but from within, entering into the mess of our lives and confronting the evil that exists in the world with love. This is what it means that He loved us to the end: He goes wherever we are, even to the furthest edges, even to the depths of Hell (see 1 Peter 3:18-19). And He still does go to the end for us. All of this begins—not with us—but with God’s love as total self-gift. Not condemnation, but rescue. This is the sin and death we look upon on the Cross this Palm Sunday. The innocent Jesus, the new Adam, our savior, the one who loves us to the end.