This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
No one has greater love than this, that one should lay down his life for his friends.
The Lord speaks these words on the night before the cross. He has just told His disciples to love one another as He has loved them. He names the furthest point love can reach, then goes there Himself.
Human love has a ceiling, and He names it. Yet one writer says the love of God went far past that ceiling. He also ties this love to obedience.
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. The love of God in Jesus went far beyond this. It has to stand alone, and it is right that it should. We ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters, as we are taught elsewhere. But what is that worth if our hearts do not go out day by day to the common needs and sufferings of God's children? The Lord at once binds love up with obedience, without which it is only self-pleasing.
His death has more than one side. Here the Lord holds it up as something we are meant to copy.
Such was His love that He could lay down His life for His friends. Here He does not present His death as the sacrifice that pays for sin, which could be no pattern for us. He presents it as the highest expression of love for one's friends. These verses hold a whole history of love: the Father's love to the Son, the love of Jesus to His people, and the love of His people to one another. Each stage is both the source and the standard for the next.
He says "friends," not sinners. One writer draws out what that friendship means.
This is a completely different thing from laying down His life for sinners. Here it is for His friends. It shows the intensity of His love: I sacrifice Myself for him. He does not say, I am your Friend, but we are His friends. He was the Friend of sinners when He gave His life for them. We are His friends when we enjoy His confidence... If I have a friend, I tell him what is on my mind, even things that have nothing to do with him. I share all my thoughts with the one who is my friend.
Some go further and use this verse as a step towards the greater wonder that He died for enemies. Another writer warns that a much-loved hymn, though true in itself, turns the Lord's words around:
No one can boast of greater love / Than dying for a friend; / You for Your enemies were slain, / What love can compare with Yours?... The thought expressed in the hymn is quite different from the Lord's thought in John 15. In the hymn we think of ourselves as His enemies, which is the exact opposite of "You are My friends."
One writer sets this verse beside another word of the Lord in the same Gospel. Together they show His love running in two directions at once.
In John's Gospel, two statements from His own lips show how He expressed His love to God and love to man... He expressed love to His Father and love to His friends in full, when He laid down His life for them both. On the one side for the Father's glory and on the other for the need of His own.
The verse sets a standard for us. So how do we keep it when no one is asking us to die?
"By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us." If you want to know what love is, look here. This was love indeed. "And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters." The same life that we live by was in Him. Should it not show the same love? He may not often ask us to lay down our life for our brothers and sisters. But are there not plain, simple, common ways to test that love every day? My brother may be in need. It is no use talking about being ready to die for him if I at once shrink back from meeting his ordinary, and maybe urgent, need.
- Ceiling. Laying down your life is the furthest love can reach among people. The love of God in Jesus went far beyond it and stands alone.
- Pattern. Here His death is not the sacrifice for sin, which no one could copy. It is the highest expression of love for one's friends.
- Friends. He speaks of those He has taken into His confidence. He shares with them what is on His heart.
- Both directions. The one act expressed love to the Father for His glory and love to His own for their need.
- Daily. The standard is proved not in dramatic death but in whether we meet a brother's ordinary need today.