“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”¹

To lay down one’s life for one’s friends is the greatest act of devotion and love one person could possibly show to another. How many of us would actually do it though? Many of us have probably told somebody else that we would die for them, but when push came to shove would we have the courage to do it? Peter told Jesus he would die with Him² if he had to, only to deny even knowing Him when it was time to stand with Him.

Is it something we have said without thinking about what it really means, have we used it as a figure of speech? And how many of us would willingly lay down our lives for a stranger?

Jesus lived his whole life knowing what was going to happen to Him, it is the very reason He came into the world.³ He knew He was going to be beaten, mocked, and die a death for others that would be so painful the Romans had to invent a new name for the pain, excruciating.⁴ He knew He would be forsaken by those He was suffering for, and yet He loved them to the end.⁵

But He did not do it just for His eleven friends. He laid down his life as a ransom for many,⁶ those he did not know and even those who were not born yet. I hesitated to write that last sentence because I am reminded of Jeremiah 1:5 where it says, “before I formed you in the womb I knew you,” but the point is that Jesus laid down His life for every single one of us.

In the midst of despair He asked the Father to remove the cup from his lips,⁷ but in the end he laid his life down willingly, it was not taken from him.⁸ He fulfilled His mission to spare us from God’s wrath.

It is hard to overstate how powerful this is and now much love it shows! Jesus led the perfect life we could not live, He paid the price we could not pay, and He bore the weight of sin that we deserve, and He did it out of His great love for us. He even did it for those who would not, and still will not, accept this free gift.

What are we to do with this knowledge? I can’t help but think of the movie Saving Private Ryan here. After going through the war, fighting battles, and seeing friends die, all to save the life of one man, Captain John Miller is dying from his wounds but they have found Private Ryan. As he lies dying, Private Ryan comes over to him and with his dying breath Captain Miller looks Private Ryan in the eyes and says “earn this.”

That example is flawed because we can do nothing to earn our salvation, Jesus did it for us. We cannot work our way into heaven, but we do owe Jesus Christ our eternal lives. Yes, when we claim Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior a change in our hearts from the knowledge that Jesus died for us should cause a change in our behavior and good works will flow from that change, but salvation comes from our faith in Jesus Christ alone.

We haven’t even discussed what it means to be one of Jesus’ friends. This brings us to the verse which immediately follows the one we have been discussing, where Jesus defines who His friends are: “you are my friends if you do what I command you.”⁹ And this is followed in verse 16 with the command: “you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.”

We are commanded by Jesus to go into the world and to spread the Good News. We are to tell the world what He did for each and every one of us. Yes, in today’s secular would this is hard at times, but it is nothing compared to what Jesus did for us on the cross. If we are His friends this is the least we can do and He has commanded us to do it.

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1. John 15:13 (KJV) ↩︎
2. Matthew 26:35 ↩︎
3. John 27:12 ↩︎
4. From the Latin excruciare, meaning “from/out of the cross” ↩︎
5. John 13:1 ↩︎
6. Mark 10:45 ↩︎
7. Paraphrase of Luke 22:42 ↩︎
8. Paraphrase of John 10:18 ↩︎
9. John 15:14 ↩︎