LOVE: THE LAID DOWN LIFE
What love really is

NEW TESTAMENT love has little to do with warm glowy feelings and nothing to do with soft-focus photography. The focus of the New Testament is, in fact, fairly sharp: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” (1 John 3:16)

Let’s get to the real issue here. If you lay your life down for someone then you put everything you are and everything you have at their disposal. It’s not a case of, “I’m free on Wednesdays at nine and I can lend you a tenner,” it’s a case of, “I will be with you always and everything I have is yours”… Hang on – I will be with you always? Everything I have is yours? Sounds like marriage – the kind “made in heaven”.

Well, yes. Love, true love, is loyal and true, come what may. It cannot possess what the one loved does not have. The nature of love is to give, to share, to unite.

Time to forget the notion that love is being nice and not annoying the neighbours (the British gospel). Love is tough and it is radical. Love shares all its possessions and all its life.

In case we haven’t got the full impact of what he is saying, the apostle John spells it out for us straight away: “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” (1 John 3:17-18)

How is the love of Jesus Christ to be demonstrated to a watching world? When the people who bear His name demonstrate His love by sharing all they have and laying down their lives for each other.

Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you. (Jesus in John 14:12-14, The Message)