Laying It All Down part 2

Often, when considering the Love of God, our focus is on the love that is extended to His people through the death of His Son.  But, have you ever considered that God the Father had a special love for His Son?  It was a unique love, reserved just for Him.

Here’s a little Snack: John’s 10^th Gospel chapter offers insight into the very unique relationship that the Father had with His Son.  It was unique due to the common understanding that was established between the Father and the Son (verse 15).  They understood one another’s role and the preciousness of abiding in that role.  The Father was the Commander of commands and the Son was the Steward of obedience.  The command was to reveal the love of the Father to the people of God through the sacrificial death of Christ. Like the mood reflecting the light of the sun to a darkened earth, Jesus was obedient to the command, thus honoring the Commander of commands.

Verse 17 brings to light a great dynamic of this Heavenly relationship: the dynamic of the Father’s love for His Son. “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.” Read those words, exactly as they are written and out loud.  With ease they seem to role off the tongue of the believing reader.  It’s a beautiful thing to be made privy to God’s emotion for His Son.  I mean to say that displays of affection are, and often should be, reserved for private moments.  But here, Jesus sees fit to allow us access to deep seeded emotion established in the heart of divinity. A love that is extremely unique… and it’s a beautiful thing!

And what was that dynamic emotion expressed from the Father to the Son?  It was love.  Pure, undefiled, unimaginative love- from the Father to the Son.  Now, why do I refer to this emotion as unique?  Because the prompting of this emotion is unique.  Jesus tells us in verse 17 the Father’s love for the Son is a response to obedience; namely the obedience to lay down His life for the sheep. 

Now, some might ask, “Was the Father’s love held by contingency to the Son’s obedience?”  To which I would say, “Again, we see the uniqueness of this relationship.”  You see, Jesus was the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.  Christ’s dying was the prompting of obedience. And His obedience was the prompting of love contained in this most unique relationship.  In other words, the Son could not have responded in anything less than obedience because the Father could not have expressed any emotion less than love for His Son… and visa-versa.  Which is to say, the act of obedience on the part of the Son and the expression of love on the part of the Father were tandem displays of the foreordained plan of God.

And why? The answer is found in the latter part of this verse: “…that I might take it (my life) up again.”  Here we see the culmination of this heart-felt emotion between the Father and the Son that we have so graciously been made privy to.  The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead was the climactic celebration of both the command of the Commander and the obedience of the Steward.  And what a glorious celebration it was!  And what is the most glorious embellishment of this celebration?  That we the believers might be participants in this celebration by reflecting back to the Father glory- by our acts of obedience, prompted by the love of God.

Pastor Mike Carmody