Along with “thy will be done,” having no greater love than laying down one’s life for a friend, is perhaps the most overused and misused of Jesus’ words.1 We can probably also include “judge not” on this list, a different topic for another day.2 When it comes to dying for another, we must keep in mind the unique efficacy of Christ’s sacrificial death.
Recognizing the unique nature of Christ’s sacrifice is vital to grasping what Jesus is saying. God’s love, given to us in Christ and poured out by the Holy Spirit, remains even when we fail to do what the Lord commands. These are what keep us from using Jesus’ words in vain.
What is it that the Lord commands us to do that, if and when we do it, we are His friends? Love one another as He loves us.3 But let’s not fall into the trap of separating these two things. To love others, to love your neighbor, to make yourself a neighbor, especially to those in need, is to lay your life down for them. In this passage, “love” translates the Greek word agape, which denotes self-giving, sacrificial love.
In our Gospel passage, Jesus is not talking about two separate things. He is not even talking about two different but related things, one following from the other. He is saying you lay down your life for others more by how you live than by any willingness to die. You lay down your life by loving them the way Christ loves you.
In his Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul noted that “only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die.”He went on to state, “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”5
The Cistercian monk, Father M. Louis, more famously known by his birth name, Thomas Merton, in a letter written to Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day, summarizes Jesus’ teaching very well:
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy6This is how you become a friend of Jesus.
1 Matthew 26:42; Luke 22:42; John 15:13.↩
2 Matthew 7:1.↩
3 John 15:12.↩
4 Romans 5:7.↩
5 Romans 5:8.↩
6 Cited in Catholic Voices in a World on Fire, by Stephen Hand, pg 180. Lulu Press, 2005.↩
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