Easter Sunday, 2007
"What does it mean to lay down our lives for our brothers?"
Sounds pretty extravagant, but the next verse in 1 John 3 reminds us that most often it's very simple: if we have a brother or sister in Christ with needs, we give up what we have to fill that need!
This is how we know love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.
1 John 3:16
Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death, and the worst kind of death at that... a crucifixion.
Philippians 2:6-8
Heaven
