Laying Down Your Life
One
“Laying Down Your Life”
A common phrase in the New Testament is the one about laying down one’s life.
Jesus uses it to express the height of love, “No one has greater love than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) He also uses it to describe his own suffering and death, “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own free will.” (John 10:18). St. Paul tells husbands that this is how they’re supposed to love their wives, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ love the Church, and laid down his life for her” (Ephesians 5:25). And then, in the first letter of John, the sacred writer tells the early Christians, “Here is how we know God’s love: that he laid down his life for us. And we too should lay down our lives for our brethren.” (I John 3:16).
So look, “laying down your life” is what Christianity is all about. It’s how God loved us, and it’s how we’re supposed to love one another. So what does it mean?
Two
What does it mean to lay down your life?
Jesus is obviously the model for laying down one’s life. And in his case, it’s pretty clear how that worked. He died a hideous, shameful death on the cross so that we could enter into the glorious, ecstatic life of heaven. In other words, He lost, so that we could gain. He entered into a situation where He would give us infinitely more than he received from us – in order that we might receive infinitely more from him than we could ever give back.
That’s what it means to lay down your life. It means willingly giving more than you receive. It means to suffer so that someone else can thrive. It means to forfeit your prerogatives so that someone else can be happy.
Now what does that look like in practice?
Three
Laying Down Your Life in Practice
What does laying down your life look like in practice?
It means exactly what Jesus said in Luke 6:35, “Love your enemies; give and expect nothing in return.” In other words, laying down your life means embracing an inequitable exchange, where you feel like you’re on the losing end.
It means saying nice things about and to people who won’t say nice things about you or to you. It means spending time with people when they enjoy it, and you don’t. It means giving to the poor, and the Church. It means tailoring your job to maximally benefit your family instead of trying to realize your own dreams. It means being willing to do most of the work and letting someone else get most of the credit.
This is how Christ behaved towards us, it’s how we’re supposed to behave towards other people.
Other people are our opportunity to imitate Christ. Do we realize that? Or do we see other people as a personal support network that exists just so we can maximize our own goals and life experience?
Four
“Support Network”
Instead of seeing family and friends as an opportunity to lay down our lives, we often treat them as our personal support network.
People talk like this all the time. They say, “Look, I have certain needs, and they are not being met.” Or they say, “I really need you to support me right now.” At best, they see their relationships as based on a kind of contract equivalency, a quid pro quo basis. I’ll meet your needs if you meet my needs. I’ll support you if you support me. But don’t ask me to give if I’m not getting anything out of it.
Do you understand that the love of the Gospel is not about balance, it’s about imbalance? It’s about trying to create an imbalance, it’s about being glad that there is an imbalance. Only if there’s an imbalance, where the other person is getting more than you are, only then are you following Christ’s example, as a Christian is supposed to, and laying down your life.
Five
Who is Gaining because of your Generosity? Who is better off?
So it’s time to ask yourself: for whom am I laying down my life? Who is consistently better off because you have been generous? Spouse, kids, co-workers, friends, strangers…You have to find people you can be generous to on a regular basis if you want to live like a Christian on a regular basis.
St. John says, “This is how we know God’s love: that he laid down his life for us. And we too should lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.”
Take some time to think about how you could do a better job of making that your framework for life. Take some time to think about how you could do a better job laying down your life daily.