Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father. (John 10:17-18)
This passage reveals the deep love of the Father for His Son Jesus, the love of Jesus for His Father as well as their love for all of us who were created in their image. Our focus passage also reveals the beautiful character and self-sacrifice of Jesus and the fact that God loved His son all the more because of it. Another very important fact to ponder in our verse is that Jesus states emphatically that no one takes His life. He lays it down! When the actual event happened (His crucifixion) He allowed them to place Him on the cross, after He allowed them to scourge Him.
It is true that anybody can lay down their life for another, and in fact that has surely happened over and over throughout the history of man. However, nobody other than Jesus has been known to take up his life once he laid it down as Jesus did. Because Jesus had the power to take up His own life, it is evidence of His unique relationship with His Father. Why is this important to take note of? Because there are those such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses who teach that Jesus couldn’t do that. Then there are even well-known evangelicals in the modern-day faith movement that teach that Jesus suffered as a victim in hell and was saved only by the intervention of God the Father—that Jesus did not have the power to take it again. That teaching is contrary to what Jesus states in our focus passage!
Jesus’ action that came later regarding His death and resurrection was completely voluntary. We must also realize that this act was not an indirect suicide in any sense! This voluntary act of His was part of a plan to submit to death and then to emerge from it victoriously alive, according to the command that He had received from God the Father.
We must always remember that this act was motivated by pure love for the Father and for all of us who were created in His image John 3:16-17: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
Dale LaFrance (please look up 1John 3:16 & 4:10)
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