David W Palmer
(John 15:12–13 NKJV) “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. {13} Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”
After reading this passage in class one day, I challenged the students: “Turn to the person next to you and ask them, ‘Would you lay down your life for me?’” After asking her friend, a young woman in the front row yelled back to me in a shocked tone, “She said she wouldn’t do it!” At least her friend was honest. Loving others “as” Jesus loved us is an extremely challenging expectation. After all, he laid his life down completely—giving up his right to his freedom to have his own life and pursue his own happiness here on earth.
Does Jesus really expect us to do as he did—lay down our lives completely for others? Yet, this is his one new commandment; yes, it’s actually a commandment. Jesus went on to say …
(John 15:14 NKJV) “You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.”
This is very confronting. Is Jesus saying that we can only be his friends “if” we do whatever he commands us? In context, he just told us that his command is to love one another by laying down our lives for them.
For a start, think of how that would work for you … say in the schoolyard, or in the workplace. Imagine walking up to someone and saying, “You can be my friend if you do whatever I command you.” How would that be received? It sounds more like a gang-leader than a Christian greeting. What’s more, how would it go down if you added: “My command is that you lay down your life for my other friends.”
This wouldn’t work for us, so how come Jesus can say it to us? First, he can expect it because he was willing to lay down his life for us. What’s more, he didn’t just say that he would lay it down; he actually did it. Second, Jesus is Lord; he saves us by giving us instructions (See: Heb. 5:9). Third, this level of love is what Father dreams of having in his eternal kingdom.
Through the apostle Paul, the Holy Spirit makes it very clear that God’s expectation is that we not only lay our lives down occasionally, but that we put our independent self-life to death completely. Paul had so completely laid his life down that he was able to say:
(Galatians 2:20 NKJV) “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
He encourages us further with the same thought in different words. (What he says here is a powerful truth with which we can renew our minds:)
(Colossians 3:3 ESV) “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
Our Lord Jesus set the example in this for us, and now he expects the same from those who are really serious about following him:
(Luke 9:23 NKJV) Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.”
Here, Jesus says that denying the old self-life and taking up the cross—experiencing the laying down your life part of his commandment—is a “daily” occurrence, The Apostle Paul certainly lived this:
(1 Corinthians 15:31 NKJV) “ ... I die daily.”
Today, in Jesus’s name, I feel to challenge you: How would you answer a friend if they asked you, “Would you lay down your life for me?” Perhaps you would for a good friend. Paul didn’t seem to think that this was unreasonable:
(Romans 5:7 NKJV) “For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.”
But Jesus’s example in this has him dying for those who aren’t even his friends, let alone “good” people:
(Romans 5:8 NKJV) “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Amazingly, through his own death that he died for you and me, and in his resurrection for us, with us, and as us, Jesus made available to us his supernatural ability to love like h
