my life.= Not because I _have_ laid it down, as though the love of the Father were caused by the earthly love and sacrifice of Christ, but because I _lay_ it down. That is, because Christ’s Spirit is one of self-sacrificing love, manifested by, but not alone embodied in the incarnation, he is loved by the Father. See Phil. 2:9; Heb. 1:9.--=In order that I may take it again.= Beware of understanding this, as many of the commentators seem to do, as equivalent to, _I die in order that I may rise from the dead_. The meaning is interpreted by Christ’s declaration to his disciples: “He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” Christ lays down his life by his humiliation, his incarnation, his passion and his crucifixion, that he may take it again in the life of the myriads whom he has redeemed from death by his own death. He takes it again when he sees of the travail of his soul and is satisfied (Isa. 53:11), which he does when those who have been washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb stand before him (Rev. 7:14, 15). So every mother, laying down her life in continued self-sacrifice for her children, takes it again in their developed manhood and womanhood.--=No one taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself.= _No one_ is not equivalent to _no man_, a translation which weakens if it does not destroy the sense. The sacrifice of Christ, the whole experience of humiliation and suffering, commencing with the laying aside of the glory which he had with the Father and culminating in the crucifixion, was not imposed upon him by any one, neither by man, nor by Satan, nor even by the Father; it was self-assumed. This fact is the answer to all those objections to the N. T. doctrine of the atonement, which misrepresent it as portraying a God who inflicts on an innocent victim the punishment which was deserved by others.--=I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.= The word rendered _power_ (ἐξουσία), includes both _power_ and _right_ (see ch. 1:12, note); the word rendered _commandment_ (ἐντολὴ), is not equivalent to authority; the original word always means _law_ or _command_. Christ’s disciples have no authority to frame self-sacrifices for themselves; doing this is always characteristic of a corrupt and _quasi_ pagan religion. They are to bear with cheerful heroism whatever self-sacrifice the providence of God may lay upon them. So also they have never a right to seek death, but are always to seek to _live_ to the glory of God and for their fellow-men. But Christ voluntarily chose his life of humiliation and cross-bearing; voluntarily sought its privations; and finally went, not to an inevitable death, but to one which he might easily have avoided by flight, if he had acted according to the directions which he gave his followers, and on which the apostle subsequently acted. He might have fled from Jerusalem on the fatal night of his arrest, as he had done