The Lion Who Died on the Stone Table

In C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, there is a moment that has stopped readers mid-sentence for over seventy years. Aslan, the great Lion, knows that Edmund has betrayed his family. The boy sold out his own siblings for a box of Turkish Delight. He deserves judgment. The White Witch has a legal claim on his life.

But Aslan does something no one expects. He offers himself instead.

The great Lion walks alone to the Stone Table in the dead of night. He allows himself to be bound, shaved, mocked, and killed — all for a boy who never asked to be rescued and certainly did not deserve it. Susan and Lucy watch from the shadows, weeping, unable to understand why the most powerful creature in Narnia would surrender to such humiliation.

Lewis was not being subtle. He was showing us what love actually looks like when it stops being a sentiment and becomes a sacrifice. Love is not a feeling that washes over us when conditions are right. Love is a decision to absorb the cost that someone else earned.

The Apostle John put it plainly: "This is love — not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."

The question is never whether we deserve that kind of love. The answer is that we never did. And He came anyway.