The Lion's Sacrifice at the Stone Table

In C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, there is a moment that has brought readers to tears for over seventy years. Aslan, the great Lion, knows that Edmund has betrayed his siblings and that the Deep Magic demands Edmund's life. So Aslan goes to the Stone Table alone, in the dark of night, to die in Edmund's place.

What strikes me every time I read it is that Edmund never asked for this. He never deserved it. Just hours earlier, he had sold out his own family for Turkish Delight — a handful of enchanted candy. Edmund was not a sympathetic figure. He was selfish, dishonest, and cruel to his sister Lucy. And yet Aslan walked willingly to that table, allowed himself to be bound and shaved and mocked, and gave his life for a boy who had done nothing to earn it.

Lewis understood something about love that we often forget: genuine love does not wait for the beloved to become worthy. It moves toward the undeserving. It absorbs the cost without sending an invoice.

The apostle Paul put it plainly: "God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Not after we cleaned ourselves up. Not once we proved we were sorry. While we were still choosing the Turkish Delight.

That is the nature of the love the Almighty offers — not a reward for the worthy, but a rescue for the lost.