When I Survey
H. Hoeksema
Book 1, Part 2, Chapter 1
Laying Down His Life

"Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again." (John 10:17)

A very proper custom it is of the Church on earth to direct her attention especially to the passion and death of her Savior in the weeks preceding Easter, the so-called lenten season. Proper this custom is, because the vicarious suffering of the Lord must needs occupy a central place in the consciousness of faith, and in the preaching of the gospel. On the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ depends all our salvation. In this respect the name of Jesus is quite different from any other name. Other names are remembered by men because of the illustrious lives and mighty deeds they represent; the name of Jesus is a perpetual object of grateful adoration especially because of the great significance of His death. There is power in that death of Christ, power of redemption, power of forgiveness and eternal righteousness, the power of everlasting life and glory. Of a mere man it is sometimes said that his life was a great blessing for the world, that the world would be much the worse had he not lived and labored; but of the Savior it is true that He would have no significance at all if He had not died. For had He not died, He would not have risen. And if He is not raised, our faith is vain, we are yet in our sins. I Cor. 15:17. And, therefore, we are not surprised that the Church never grows weary of concentrating her attention upon the cross of Jesus, and contemplating by faith the suffering of her Lord. In the cross of Christ she glories. To her the Word of the cross is a power of God unto salvation.

We will follow this custom in our discussions, and for the next few chapters make the passion of the Lord the main theme of our discussion. However, we will have to limit this theme if we are to convey a definite message. The suffering of the Lord is as many-sided as human sin and redemption; it is as deep as hell and as high as heaven; it is as rich as the love of God. And we may notice, too, that a comparatively very large part of the gospel narratives is devoted to the passion and death of the Savior. We must, therefore, confine our discussion to one definite aspect of this suffering, and consider it from a certain particular viewpoint. And the specific aspect of the passion of our Lord which we have chosen to discuss in all our lenten meditations is that of Christ's voluntary suffering. Christ's suffering was a sacrifice. And this implies that He suffered and died voluntarily, by which I mean, not merely that He was wholly resigned to, in agreement with His way of sorrow and grief and death, but that His passion and death were acts of His will. Distinction is often made between the active and passive obedience of the Lord. And this distinction may stand, if we only remember that also His passive obedience was very really obedience. His suffering was an act. He suffered because, before God, it was His will to suffer. He died because it was His will to die. As the Lord Himself expresses it in the words to which I would like to call special attention in the present chapter: "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father." John 10:17,18.

Christ laid down His life in order that He might take it again. We should not separate these two clauses, for they are intimately related, and the first can be understood correctly only in the light of the second. Christ did not merely lay down His life, but emphatically He laid down that life in order that He might take it again. A suicide lays down his life, but to no purpose and from a thoroughly sinful motive. In a certain sense it may be said of one that he lays down his life for another. A mother may die for the babe of her love; a friend may die for his friend; a soldier may die for his country. But in all these cases death is the end of the self-sacrifice, and the sacrifice bears no other fruit, yields no other benefit than that which the death as such could profit the other. But with Christ this is different. He laid down His life for the very purpose that He might take it again. The main thought is after all, not the death of Christ, but His resurrection. The resurrection is the goal that must be attained. For Christ is here speaking as the Good Shepherd. Sheep were given unto Him by the Father. He has been appointed the Shepherd of the sheep whom the Father loves. Christ has a flock. And that flock must be saved. These sheep, whom the Father gave to Christ, are in themselves in the midst of death. They have sinned, and as sinners they are under the just wrath of God and delivered over unto death. But the Father has ordained that they should have life, and what is more, that they should have it more abundantly than ever they had life before. In Adam they possessed an earthly life, and the image of the earthy they bore. But it is God's purpose to give them the eternal life of the resurrection in heavenly glory. To give them that life the Father appointed the Son, even from before the foundation of the world, as their Good Shepherd. He will give them that life. But in order to be able to give them this more abundant life of heavenly glory, He must first obtain it Himself, and become the quickening Spirit. Only as the risen Lord, the heavenly Lord, can Christ give the more abundant life to His sheep. And in order to attain to that glorious life of the resurrection which He is to impart to His sheep, He must first die, or rather, He must lay down His life, in order that He might take it again. Therefore, then, does His Father love Him, because He is willing to lay down His life in order that He might take it again, and thus become the living Good Shepherd that is able to give life to His own more abundantly.

Yes, Christ laid down His life that He might take it again. And let us understand first of all, that the life He takes again is not the same as the life He laid down. The life He laid down was earthy, mortal, corruptible, the life of flesh and blood that cannot inherit the kingdom of God. The word that is translated "life" here is literally: soul. Yet, the translators have rendered it quite correctly by life. For, as I have remarked previously, the word soul does not always have the same connotation in Scripture. It sometimes denotes the whole man, for man is called a living soul; in other passages it clearly means the spiritual part of man in distinction from the body; and then again it means the life which man lives in this world, his life as a living soul. And it is in this last sense that the word is used here. Christ had assumed our human nature in the incarnation. The Word was made flesh and dwelled among us. John 1:14. In that human nature, body and soul, Christ, during His earthly sojourn, lived our life. He was like His brethren in all things, sin excepted. He lived our human life. And that life was earthy, weak, mortal and corruptible. O, it is true, that Christ is the life and the resurrection, but He is this, not by virtue of the life He assumed when He became flesh, but because He is the Son of God, Who has life in Himself in the divine nature. In His human nature He lived our life. He ate and drank, He labored and grew weary, He saw and heard earthly things, He spoke an earthly language, He lived in the midst of earthly relationships, and that earthly life was subject to suffering and death. That life He laid down. But when He took it again in His resurrection, it was not in that earthly form, mortal and corruptible, but in the glory of immortality and incorruptibleness. Also Christ's body was sown in weakness, but raised in strength; it was sown in dishonor, it was raised in glory; it was sown in corruptibleness and mortality, it was raised in incorruption and immortality. And when the Lord says that He lays down His life, that He might take it again, the meaning is that He willingly puts down the life He assumed, in order that He might take it again in the glory of the resurrection. The seed must fall into the earth and die before it can bring forth fruit!

But if Christ, as the Good Shepherd, was so to die that He would through death attain to the glorious life of the resurrection, the more abundant life, His death must have special significance. For, He represented His people, the sheep which the Father gave Him. He took their place before the face of God in judgment. All their sins He took upon Himself. And the punishment for their sins He must bear. He died for them, that is, instead of them, and in order to give them life. But if His death was to have that power, the power of redemption, the power to blot out sin and to bestow eternal life, it must be a sacrifice, a perfect and complete sacrifice, satisfying fully the justice of God with respect to sin. And this implies, first, that in laying down His life He should taste death in all its terrible agony as the expression of the wrath of God against sin. Christ must not merely die: He must taste death. The terrible wrath of the infinitely holy God must be poured out over Him, must pass through every nerve and fiber of His existence. In dying He must fully taste the very agony of hell! And, secondly, this death, in order to be a sacrifice and an atonement for sin, must be an act on Christ's part. We, too, die, but our death is inflicted upon us without and against our will. The lost in hell also suffer the eternal wrath of God, but in this suffering there is no atonement, for the simple reason that it is not an act of loving obedience. But Christ must bring a sacrifice. He must suffer all there is in death and the wrath of God voluntarily. He must want to die for God's righteousness' sake. He must descend into the depth of hell, and there, experiencing the awful wrath of God against sin, He must be able to say: "willingly I give Myself a sacrifice to Thy righteousness, O, God! And even here in the darkness of deepest death I love thee, and it is My meat to do Thy will!" And it is this that is expressed in the words of the Good Shepherd: "I lay down my life, that I might take it again."

Hence, the Lord speaks of a commandment He received from His Father. "This commandment", He says, "I have received of my Father." The commandment He received was that He should lay down His life that He might take it again in glory, in order that, as the Good Shepherd, He might give life to His own, and give it to them more abundantly. Hence, the commandment implied that He should take upon Himself the sins of His people and so bear the punishment for them, that He might take them away forever, blot them out, satisfy the justice of God, and merit for His own eternal righteousness and life. And again, this implied that He had received a commandment voluntarily to walk the way of death and hell and to bear the punishment of sin in perfect and loving obedience. "Thou shalt love Me!" That is the eternal and unchangeable demand of God upon man. "Thou shalt love Me with all thine heart and mind and soul and strength", that is the whole law! And it was God's demand for man in the state of righteousness in paradise. But the first man violated the covenant of friendship, and transgressed the commandment of God. He refused to love God in the midst of the abundance and joy of paradise. And if ever atonement was to be made for sin, someone must come who is able to love God perfectly, but now in the manifestation of His righteousness and justice: He must love God in hell! That is the commandment Christ received: Thou shalt die in love to Me! This commandment Christ received from before the foundations of the world. It was not a commandment that was revealed to Him for the first time at some moment during His sojourn on earth. On the contrary, all His life and work was in obedience to this commandment of the Father. To obey this commandment He came in the fulness of time, assumed our flesh and blood, and dwelled among us. In obedience to this commandment He endured reproach and shame all the time He was on earth, and when He was reviled He reviled not again. In obedience to this commandment He set His face to Jerusalem, that He might be betrayed into the hands of sinners and be crucified and slain. It was in obedience to that commandment, that in the night of His betrayal He sent away the betrayer into the darkness of that darkest of all nights with the message: what thou doest, do quickly! And from there on He descends voluntarily into the depth of hell, the way becoming narrower and more difficult to travel as He descends: from the upper room to the garden of agony, from there to the meeting of the Sanhedrin to be rejected by His own, thence to the Roman governor to be judged and condemned by the world-power, and, finally, to the Hill of the Skull, that He might be lifted up on the accursed tree!

It was all an act of voluntary obedience. "No one taketh my life from me, but I lay it down of myself." O, indeed, superficially considered this would seem different. Did not, after all, men take His life from Him? Was He not crucified by wicked men and slain? Was it not the evil machinations of the chief priests and elders and the dark treachery of the traitor that led Him to His death? Was He not taken captive by a band of soldiers and men, and does it not appear that He is quite helplessly in the power of His enemies, when He is bound and led to Annas and Caiaphas, when He is smitten and spit upon and buffeted? Does it not appear as if the world is triumphant over Him and takes His life away from Him, when He is judged by Pilate, mocked by Herod, scourged by the Roman governor, cruelly crowned with a crown of thorns by the soldiers, condemned to death and led away to be crucified? Does it not appear on the way to Golgotha as if He will die on the road, so that someone must carry His cross behind Him? And do not men take away His life, when strong arms of Roman soldiers stretch His weary body on the cross, and hammer the cruel nails through His hands and feet? And when He is finally lifted up between two malefactors, do not the enemies still rail at Him, mocking and jeering, and challenging Him to come down from the cross if He can? Are not then that suffering and death of Jesus giving the lie to His own words: No man can take it from me, but I lay it down of myself?

Indeed, it appears so. But, first of all, do not forget that none of all these wicked enemies, that play their part in the drama of the crucifixion, could have laid hands on Him, could have touched Him with a finger, had He not voluntarily surrendered Himself to their will. How often this had been proved during the three years of His public ministry, when they tried to take Him, but could not, "because His hour had not yet come"! And if we but study more closely the incidents connected with His capture and trial and death, it will become abundantly evident, that they could not have taken His life had He not willed it. After all, was He not the Son of God? Did He not have power over life and death? Had He not cast out devils, rebuked storms and angry waves, raised the dead? Could He not have scattered the wicked members of the Sanhedrin with a look of His eye, and could He not have laid the proud Roman governor prostrate before Him? Or would it have been beyond His wondrous power to release Himself from the tree and come down? Yes, the enemies were instrumental in causing His death, and that is their terrible guilt; but after all, never could they have taken His life, had He not willed it. But, and this is the second element that must be considered, in all His suffering and death Christ was in perfect harmony with the will of His Father. Surely, the enemies inflicted the pain of death upon Him; and God poured out His wrath upon Him for the sins of His people; but in all this Christ suffered willingly, freely, obediently, in love to the Father. If I may express myself thus: His lifeblood was not taken from Him, He shed it! In every drop of blood that trickled from His hands and feet there was a conscious act of obedience, an act of perfect love. And so, on the cross He fully realized His own words: "I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father."

Yes, indeed, power Christ had to lay down His life in order that He might take it again! Had it not been so, His death would still have been vain, and could not have had the value of a sacrifice blotting out our sins. No one could possibly offer his life as a vicarious sacrifice, unless He had been authorized by the Judge of heaven and earth. Christ, however, had power so to lay down His life that He might take it again in glory, and that by this voluntary death He might obtain forgiveness, eternal righteousness and life for His own. The idea that must have the emphasis here, according to the meaning of the original, is that Christ had received authority to lay down His life, and to take it again. To be sure, Christ also had power in the sense of ability and strength to lay down His life as a sacrifice; for He is the eternal Son of God, and as such He is the Lord of life and death. And He was in a position to give His life as a sacrifice for sin, for He was without sin, and was not Himself under the sentence of death. We have no life to give away or to offer as a sacrifice to God. We are under the death sentence. How could a criminal, sentenced to death and about to die on the gallows, stipulate that his death should be received as a sacrifice for his fellow criminals? But the Savior knew no sin. He was, therefore, in a position to offer His life to God as a sacrifice for the sins of others. And He was capable of bringing the perfect sacrifice, as an act of perfect obedience, because it was His meat to do the Father's will. He was the perfect High Priest, Who not only had a sacrifice to offer without blemish, but Who could also make the offering an act of perfect love of God. And even as He was capable of laying down His life as a sacrifice, so He had power to take it again, for He is the life and the resurrection!

Yet, the idea that He had authority to lay down His life and to take it again, must have all the emphasis. Of what avail would it be that a man would deprive himself of his life, or take the place of another on the gallows, if such a sacrifice were not authorized and accepted by the judge? Christ was authorized, officially appointed and empowered to lay down His life and to take it again. He was God's High Priest, appointed to bring the atoning sacrifice instead of His people. And so, the cross is, indeed, the manifestation of the great love of the Good Shepherd for His sheep, but it is ultimately the revelation of the unfathomable, eternal and unchangeable love of God to us. The cross is not the cause of the love of God to His people, but the outflow and central revelation of that love. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Surveying the wondrous cross by faith, we are assured that on that accursed tree "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them." II Cor. 5:19. And relying on that eternal love of God revealed in the cross of His Son, we have righteousness in the midst of our present sin and guilt; peace with God, transcendent, victorious peace, in the midst of the present unrest; and eternal life and glory even while we still lie in the midst of our present death! And so, the church, contemplating the death of her Lord, may, indeed, sing:

"When I survey the wondrous cross,
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all!"