Laying down one’s life
John 15:9-17
9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
12 ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
The themes get being overlayed on top of each other. To abide in Jesus’ love, it is necessary to keep Jesus’ commandments. Just as Jesus stayed in God the Father’s love by keeping the Father’s commandments. In so doing they will bear fruit, a lasting crop. All of these themes we have heard before. But now they are being used for Jesus to speak in specifics rather than generalities.
Obeying Jesus’ commands, abiding in Jesus’ love, giving glory to God, all three bring us to the call to love one another as Jesus Christ has loved us. Vs. 13 describes what that love looks like, “laying down one’s life for one’s friends.” This is a love that give sup its wants, its dreams, its hopes for the one loved. This is a love that puts itself second and the well-being of the other first. It is a love that dies to self, to live for God and God’s purposes in the world. For if Jesus dies for us as his friends, than we as his friends become people who are willing to die for him.
In the gospel of John we do not find the words “Take up your cross and follow me”, instead here we have the same idea framed in slightly different words. It is still about dying, laying down our lives for our friends, in the same way that Jesus laid down his life. As Dietrich Bonhoffer wrote, “the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a person, He bids them come and die.”
This then is what it is to love God, to love Jesus, to love one another, it is to die to the self, and find the ability to love the Jesus way.
PRAYER:
O God, your Son Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, his friends, teach us to lay down our lives for Him and for one another that we might be a community who loves one another the way Jesus loves. In his name we pray. Amen.