When Ava and Emma asked me to play "Old Elf" (think Old Maid but with a bearded gnome), I plopped down on the floor and dutifully picked up my cards.

As she nestled next to me, the game in full swing, Emma “couldn’t help” but notice what was in my hand: one last card (which you’ve correctly guessed was “the old elf”). Five-year-old Emma could have chosen to draw a card from her sister. Yet her big blue eyes narrowed as she softly stated, “I want to do this for you.” I tried to talk her out of it, reminding her she would lose the whole game. But she insisted again, “I want to do this for you.”

For a moment, her gesture transported me to a dank hall, where torchlight flickered on a circle of faces unusually hardened. In the center of that circle stood a man whose hands were tied.

The prisoner looked directly into the eyes of a thug menacing a wooden stick, a knot on the end. Walloping the skull of the prisoner, the ruffian heard an unlikely reply from the bruised head: "I want to do this for you."

Another came forward with a fiendish grin—and a crown of thorns. As this brute jammed the crown on the prisoner's head, he declared quietly to his attacker, "I want to do this for you."

Another slapped the prisoner's face. Another spat in it. Still, another drew blood and pus as he ripped out a section of the guy's beard. To all of them, the prisoner said softly, "I want to do this for you."

There were others—many others—a soldier with a bone-laced whip and an executioner bearing a hammer and nails. The prisoner, weakened as he was, whispered gently to all of them, "I want to do this for you."

He said it and said it and said it. All the way to the cross. All across the ages. All the way to this very moment.

Consider. Jesus wasn’t a hapless victim dying a helpless death. He did it for you.

And the unspeakable reason is—He wanted to.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners,

Christ died for us.

-Romans 5:8