No greater love is this than a man lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13). What is love? What if we redefined love from an emotion to an action? Actually we don't have to. Jesus already did that for us. I really love the Greek language. One of the reasons I love it, is because understanding greek better really brings the New Testament to life. The sermon tonight started with John 15:13. In this very verse Jesus takes love from simply an emotion to an action. Obviously Jesus is foreshadowing his sacrificing his life for ours on the cross but there's more to in than that. John is a poet so everything he writes is always deeper than it seems at surface level. The word John uses here tithahmi means to lay down but also means to put aside or place behind. Jesus is not only talking about his own physical sacrifice but offering a message to his disciples. He's telling them that laying down your life is not only physical but also means putting others before yourself or putting yourself behind. For us Jesus was a living breathing example of both. He would give His life for those who didn't deserve it, but also would lower himself to the lowest of low to serve others. In the 10th chapter of Mark James and John are asking Jesus to make them His top guys. Jesus tells them before they can lead they must serve. Jesus follows that message by delivering a bomb to James and John telling them “even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Jesus is tying sacrifice, love, and service and making them one with each other. I talked about Greek earlier to say this. Greek has several words for love. We think we know what love is but the Greeks can't simply define it at love. The word Jesus uses in John 15:13 is agape. Agape is the Greek word for sacrificial unconditional love. John and Jesus then begin to weave this beautiful tapestry of how laying down our life physically might now be our call but we are called to lay down our lives and desires to help and serve those of others. Jesus was the ultimate example of this. In Biblical times the feet washer was the lowest of low. He was what we would call the low man on the totem pole, but Jesus lowered himself to this level and washed the feet of his disciples. The greatest man to ever grace the face of the earth has lowered himself to do the job least desirable in serving his disciples. As Christians we commit ourselves to following Christ by being baptized. We remember the ultimate sacrifice Christ gave for us by partaking in communion. No greater way can we remind ourselves that we are called to be sacrificial and serve others. Christ was and is our example to follow and we must remind ourselves to remain humble and not be to proud to serve those we feel below us because Jesus was greater than we can ever be and felt no shame but pride in lowering himself to serve those who were below him.
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