<p>10:17 <i>For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life so that I may take it again</i>-</p><p>The idea of Christ <i>giving</i> Himself for us refers to that final moment of giving up, yielding, laying down His breath for us. He did not die, as most men do, against their will, fighting for the continuation of life at all costs; in the words of Dylan Thomas, dying men &ldquo;Go not gentle into that good night / But rage, rage against the dying of the light&rdquo;. The Lord died by breathing out the last breath in His lungs, His spirit, toward His disciples. Paul was evidently moved by this; he marvelled at how Christ &quot;<i>gave himself</i> for me&quot; (Gal. 2:20), using the same word as in Jn. 19:30 concerning him giving up His spirit. And we can enter into that sense or marvel and wonder. Paul again alludes to this in Eph. 5:2: &quot;Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath <i>given himself</i> for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour&quot;. That wondrous moment when Christ reached such self-control as to give His life for us, to breathe out His last breath for us as an act of the will, that moment was evidently deep within the mind of Paul. Because of it we should find ample inspiration to &quot;walk in love&quot; towards each other, to be so full of praise for this that we have no time to even speak about the sins to which are earthly nature is so prone. These are high ideals indeed, yet in Paul (another sin-stricken human) they began to be realized. They <i>really can</i> be realized in our lives, we truly can begin to appreciate the intensity of that yielding up, that laying down of the life spirit of our Lord Jesus- and therefore and thereby we will find the inspiration to respond in a life of true love for each other.</p><p>The same word crops up later: &quot;Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and <i>gave himself</i> for it&quot; (Eph. 5:25). Now this is high, heavenly, indeed. Husbands are asked to consider the intensity of that moment when Christ, rigid with self-control, gave up His life for us, breathing His last as a controlled act of the will. And the Spirit through Paul asks husbands to reflect this in their daily lives, in the petty day by day situation of life. No wonder he asks wives to deeply respect their husbands if they at least try to rise up to this spirit (Eph. 5:33). Real meditation upon the implications of all this, the very height of the challenge, will surely do more good to a marriage than any amount of counselling and reading of human words.</p><p>The Father loved the Son <i>because</i> He laid down His life in this way; there was an upwelling of love within the soul of Almighty God as He beheld it (Jn. 10:17). And ditto for all those who try to enter into the spirit of laying down their lives after the pattern of our Lord's final moment. But well before His death, our Lord could speak of how &quot;I lay down my life&quot; (Jn. 10:17); His whole life was a laying down of His innermost spirit, His final out breathing was a summation of His daily attitude. He saw His death as the baptism with which He must be baptized (Lk. 12:50 cp. Rom. 6:3,4; Col. 2:10-12, His 'baptism-unto-death' Gk.); and yet He spoke of the baptism with which He was being baptized in an ongoing sense (Mt. 20:22). In this same vein, Ps. 69:8,9 is a prophecy about the final sufferings of the Lord in crucifixion, and yet these verses are elsewhere quoted about the experiences of His ministry. And &ldquo;they hated me without a cause&quot; (Ps. 69:4) was true throughout the Lord&rsquo;s life (Jn. 15:25) as well as particularly in His death. The Lord spoke of the manna as being a symbol of His body, which He would give on the cross. He described the gift of that bread, that figure of His sacrifice, as not only bread that would come from Heaven but more accurately as bread that <i>is coming down</i>, and had been throughout His life (Jn. 6:50,51 Gk.). The spirit of life-giving which there was in His death was shown all through His life.</p><p>The fact the Lord died not just because events overtook Him and happened to Him is perhaps reflected in Paul&rsquo;s speaking in Rom. 6 of &ldquo;the death that he died&hellip;the life that he liveth&quot;. He died a death; he Himself died it; and yet just as truly, He lived a life. He didn&rsquo;t just let events happen to Him. He was not mastered in His life by human lusts and selfish desires; He was in that sense the only ultimately free person. When He &ldquo;bowed his head&quot;, the same Greek is used as in Mt. 8:20: &ldquo;The Son of man has no place to lay / bow his head&quot;. It was as if He only lay His head down, giving out His life, when He knew it was time to rest from a day&rsquo;s work well done. He lived a surpassingly free life, and freely gave that life up; it was not taken from Him.</p><p>That we should be called to imitate our Lord in this should truly fill us with a sense of highness, that we should be called to such a high challenge. 1 Jn. 3:16 takes us even further in this wondrous story, alluding to Jn. 10:17: &quot; Hereby perceive we the love of God (cp. &ldquo;For this reason the Father loves me&rdquo;, because he <i>laid down</i> His life for us: and we ought to <i>lay down</i> our lives for the brethren&quot;. So intensely was God in Christ on the cross that in a sense He too laid down His life for us, He bowed down for us, laid Himself before our feet as that palsied man was laid before (same word) Jesus. In that final cry from the cross we perceive God's love for us. We too, therefore, should not be put off from laying down our lives for each other because we feel our brethren are spiritually weak. This is the very essence of laying down our lives for each other; we are to replicate the laying down of the life of Christ for us <i>while we were weak</i> in our giving of our innermost being for our weak brethren. We are truly at the very boundary of human words to express these things. We must, we <i>must</i> respond in practice. And the wonder of it all is that in this final, supreme moment of self-giving, the Lord was identifying with apostate Israel, of whom it had been prophesied: &ldquo;She hath given up the spirit; her sun is gone down while it was yet day: she hath been ashamed&quot; (Jer. 15:9- all crucifixion language).</p>