What does it mean that He laid down His life for us (1 John 3:16)?

Thus things are followed to their full result, as we have seen them traced to their hidden sources before God. How different was all with Christ! "Hereby perceive we the love" … To add "of God" spoils the sentence. There is no ground for interpolating any words. But One showed such love, and He was man as surely as God. "Hereby perceive we the love, because 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 brethren." The same life of which we live was in Him: ought it not to be exercised in similar love? We may not often be called to lay down our life for our brethren; but are there not plain, simple, common ways by which it may be tested every day? My brother may have need: it is no use talking about readiness to die for my brother, if I at once shrink back from meeting his ordinary and perhaps urgent necessity? There is nothing great here; it is homely, but how practical! How it puts the heart to the test, and one that might be presented any day of the week!

Verse 16. "Hereby we have known love, because he laid down his life for us." We have seen that hatred [murder] is of the devil, who sinned from the beginning; here we are taught that we know love by this, that He laid down His life for us. The contrast could not be more complete, hatred and love, each traced up to its source.

"Layeth down His life," or soul (cf. Isa. 53:10). The word for "life" here is altogether different from that in verse 10 (life in contrast with death). The following "for," as Meyer says, indicates substitution, not only benefit, as in 1 John 3:16, with which cf. Rom. 16:4 (decisive). It comes out strikingly in this Gospel (John 18:8), where see note.

lay down our lives (v.16)

We might almost say that John hardly puts pen to page without using either of the above-mentioned extremes to characterise an action or attitude. We might understandably take the edge off his statement here by paraphrasing it in our minds that we should devote the activity of our lives to serving the brethren. But this is not what he says. Speaking plainly, he says we ought to die for them (not, of course, in a substitutionary way as Christ died for our sins, but nevertheless to actually lose our lives in death).

This is another example of ‘bearing'. Carried to its logical extreme, the attitude we have towards the brethren would take us this far – a willingness to lose our lives if necessary. It would be folly to take John's words literally and to say that any living Christian is a disobedient Christian because they have failed to carry out this verse as a commandment!

"And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." His was the unfathomable depth, and nothing can match it in any way. Still it becomes the model for those that are His, however short of atonement. What limit can be set to it? Love is intended to surmount every difficulty now. God's love to us in our sins creates love not only to God but to His children, our brethren. "And we ought." He does not say that "we do": though there have been saints that have died not only for Christ's sake but for their brethren. He is content to say "we ought"; our love, being of God, is capable of doing it. And in point of fact, if our dying would be of real use to our brother, we ought to be willing. It is however a rare complication that would make it a duty.

But we are also taught that without pressing this extreme proof there is an appeal to our hearts at the door. We have not to go far without finding calls on the exercise of the love that is in our hearts. Come now; look at everyday matters. To lay down our lives for the brethren might befall us rarely here below; but there is all ordinary lack that often occurs, and we know it frequently where our lot lies: a brother or sister in abject need. How does it present itself to your soul? How does our love answer to the suffering of the poor brother or sister?

"Whoso may have the world's means of living" is what is called here its "good." Nor does he say merely "seeth," but contemplateth, beholdeth, hath a full view of his brother's need. He perhaps has not made the slightest sign, has not complained at all, nor mentioned his trial to another. This silence ought to be all the stronger appeal to our hearts. He has been bearing the pressure without a murmur; she has been enduring and only telling God about it. But there with our eyes wide open, beholding our brother's affliction, we hesitate. One has the means of helping and relieving, but instead of this he "shutteth up his bowels" from him, the sufferer. There is no need to add "of compassion," which is plainly enough implied. "How abideth the love of God in him?" The apostle puts it cautiously and calmly but earnestly and searchingly: "How dwelleth the love of God in him?" He does not ask me to die for my brother; he does ask me that my love should go out, with means beyond my own real wants, to one who is suffering whether from the cold or sickness, hunger, or other pains. One can relieve the brother, and one does not: "how abideth the love of God in him?"

Yet the fact of His laying down His life for us is also an example for us; so that “we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” If this should end in death, so be it, but our lives ought to be laid down in service for the sake of the saints of God, which involves living for them, not only dying for them if occasion requires. Again, this is not the devoting our lives merely to a noteworthy cause, however noble it may appear, but to the glory of God and for the sake of the blessing of the true children of God, not of the world.

“But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” Is this not to be a real, personal exercise and responsibility as before God? This is no demanding of the government that the poor should be relieved from public funds, while taking nothing from my own pocket; nor is it the founding of a benefit society to solicit the support of the world for the relief of the poor. The Lord give His people serious concern to see that their means are used for the blessing of others, and here it is specially the household of faith. If we ignore evident needs, is this an evidence of the love of God dwelling in us? To give where there is not need is of course a mistake; yet it is better to err on the side of kindness than on the side of greed and heartlessness.

In contrast, we see in Christ the perfect expression of love, in that His love led Him to lay down His life for us. Having His perfect example before us, we should be prepared, in the power of the new life marked by love, to lay down our lives for the brethren. This does not necessarily mean actual death, but the letting go of the life here for Christ's sake (Matthew 16:25).

Now for the obligation. "We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." Love with us ought to go as far as that. Priscilla and Aquila went as far as that for Paul, since they "laid down their own necks" for his life. Would they have done so for some very lowly and utterly undistinguished saint, we wonder? Very likely they would, for they are placed at the very head of the long list of Christian worthies who are saluted in Romans 16. At any rate that is the length to which love of a divine sort goes.

If love goes to that length, it obviously will go to any point that falls short of it. There are many ways in which the child of God may lay down his or her life for the brethren which do not involve dying, or even facing actual death. The household of Stephanus, for instance — of whom we read in 1 Corinthians 16:15 — "addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints," or "devoted themselves to the saints for service." If they did not lay down, they at least laid out their lives for the brethren. They were serving Christ in His members, and displaying the love in very practical fashion.

Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us. We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

This love, as we have seen, is expressed in death. “Hereby perceive we the love (of God is in italics and, does not give the thought), because He laid down His life for us” (1 John 3:16). Now, He says to His disciples (John 15:12), “This is My commandment, that ye love one another as I have loved you.” It was the love that was expressed in Him that was to come out in His own. Therefore we read, “He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:16).

It has been said that we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren, if necessary. But it is always necessary. There is no self in love, and there is a great deal of self in us, which, to walk in love, must be sacrificed. “Walk in love as Christ also has loved us and has given Himself for us” (Eph. 5:2). In this world men guard themselves from the encroachment of their neighbours. Each cares for his own things, and self-interest is man’s first and supreme thought, for man is beyond all thought utterly selfish. But in the assembly of God it is to be the opposite of this, for there a man is no object to himself. His neighbours everything and himself nothing. There is to be no self-assertion, but continual self-surrender. If our hearts are filled with the love of Christ, we will not find it difficult. The commandment, that we should love one another, as He has loved us, will not be grievous to us.