There is a scene in the movie The Iron Giant that makes me cry nearly every time I watch it.*  The Iron Giant, whom federal agents are seeking to destroy, gives his own life for the lives of the people he loves after one crazed agent fires a nuclear missile off that would wipe them all out. 



Instead of loving God, we have, at worst, despised Him, and, at best, been double minded toward Him, the One who made us and loves us.  We truly all like sheep have strayed from our Shepherd.  But Isaiah 53 says about Jesus that "he has borne our griefs...he was crushed for our iniquities."  We, like these crazed, willful agents, deserve our rebelliousness to fall upon our own heads.  Yet Jesus, like the Iron Giant, let it fall on Him.  Because He loved us says St. Paul, He gave Himself for us.     

*Many thanks to Tim Keller for pointing me to this movie