John 10:17–18

Here the Lord leaves behind the figures of shepherd and door. We stand, as it were, on holy ground. There, in the relations the divine Persons have with one another, we may even learn the manner of the love in which they exist eternally... And yet He was the object of the Father's love before the foundation of the world. Like the glory He had with Him before the world was, the love also was eternal.

The Father always loved His Son: He lived in His bosom. When, however, that well-loved Son laid down His life at Calvary, His love went out to Him in a new way. It gave the Father a fresh motive to love Him.

In this act of devotedness, the gift of His life, the point is not only the feelings of the sheep, but of the Father. Jesus could give a motive to the Father that He should love Him: it is only a divine Person who could do this. The Father takes pleasure in the faithfulness of His children. But something more was a motive for the Father's affection: to lay down His life, to give Himself even to death, and to take His life again in resurrection, restoring the Father's glory that sin and death had tarnished. To give Himself in this way was His own act, an act of voluntary devotedness; but, having become Man and Servant, it was still an act according to His Father's will.

The Lord does not add here "for the sheep," nor should we limit His death to ourselves. He lets us see the value His own laying down of His life had in itself. No wonder, if only for the depth beyond measuring to which His own devotedness went down. But no one except the Father knows what He found in it: love, confidence in Him, self-surrender, and moral excellence in every way. It was crowned by the personal dignity of the One who stood in a nearness to the Father beyond words, and who was pleased to die.

The Father loves Him not only for laying down His life, but for laying it down that He might take it again. In this last clause we have resurrection. Death was His own act and so also resurrection. This does not contradict or clash with the part both the Father and the Spirit had in His glorious resurrection (Rom. 6:4; 1 Peter 3:18).

What follows that? Does He simply go back as He came, finished with His humanity, having no more use for it, because the work is done? No! The life He laid down He takes up again. In another way, of course — in the way of glory — but He still takes it up. He takes up the human life, to live as a Man among the men gathered around Him forever and forever. Oh, think of the Father's love delighting in Him just because He does that!

The laying down of this life refers to His condition as a man in subjection and responsibility. In resurrection He takes it again, but without the responsible condition He took on so that He could die. He is a divine Person, equal with the Father and the Spirit in Deity, and that life He could never give up. But He had come into a life of responsibility, and He laid down His life as One who is God when He gave up His life of responsible manhood in dying on the cross.

No man takes My life from Me! That means that it was impossible for men to kill Him. In intent they did it. They spared no effort to bring Him down to death, and from this point of view they were His murderers. But when they had done all that their devil-inspired malice could think up, He freely laid down His life as a sacrifice for sin. He did not die by the violence of men, nor by any natural cause.

Death was no necessity of the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. All other men must die through Adam; Christ did not have to... He bore the consequences of the first Adam only for others, by God's will and in His own sovereign love... He alone of all men could say this since the world began. Adam in the garden of Eden could not speak like this; Christ alone had the title according to the rights of His person.

Not by constraint but freely He lays down His life: "No one takes My life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself: I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again." For as Man, He will not dispose of His own life without the Father's sanction; but that is not all: "this commandment have I received of My Father."

In John 5:19 we read, "The Son can do nothing of Himself." In John 14:10, "The words that I speak to you I do not speak from Myself."... But now, speaking of laying down His life, He says, "No man takes it from Me, but I lay it down from Myself." He asserts that He has power to lay it down and power to take it again. Yet He adds, "This commandment I received from My Father." This teaches us that He had the power, being what He was. Even so, He would only use it in obedience to His Father, in keeping with the place of subjection He had freely taken.

A creature could never have the power of choosing to do the will of his Creator. When a man obeys, he does no more than his duty. In that he is no more than an unworthy servant (Luke 17:10). The Son, however, is equal with God. He could announce His own agreement with the divine will and purpose, saying, "Behold, I have come to do your will, O God" (Heb. 10:7)... so this act, beyond all comparison, has immeasurable worth and is fully acceptable.

In other Gospels He told His disciples again and again how the chief priests and rulers would hand Him over to the Gentiles, so that they would put Him to death. Yet here He asserts that no man would take His life from Him. Both His death and His resurrection would be His own acts. Men did to Him what makes death unavoidable for any mere man. Yet in His case none of it would have had any effect if He had not chosen to lay down His life... but now He is to take up His life in resurrection, and so He was to become the very life of His own in the power of the Spirit.

In perfect peace He declares that all is finished, and He gives up His spirit Himself. No one takes it from Him; it is He Himself who gives it up. This was a divine act. He had suffered everything in His soul when God forsook Him. Then, in perfect calmness, He owns that all is accomplished. He Himself separates His spirit from His body and gives it up to God, His Father.