Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 313 · November 9
Lay Down Our Lives
“Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”
Here is an honest objection: nobody has ever asked me to die for anybody. A command that can only be obeyed on a day that never comes costs nothing, and it flatters everyone who hears it. We say that "we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren," in a building where the biggest sacrifice anyone made that morning was finding a parking space.
John answers that objection in the very next sentence, and he brings it down to earth on purpose: "But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" The "bowels of compassion" are the deep feelings of pity inside a person. There are three steps in John's sentence: you have the goods, you see the need, and something inside you closes. So John has taken the greatest thing a person can do, laying down a life, and turned it into small payments that come due this week.
The whole chapter has been building toward this. "This is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another." Then comes the opposite example, which is a killing: "Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother." Then comes a hard test with no comfort in it: "He that loveth not his brother abideth in death." And then the summary, which names the cheap way most of our love is paid and asks for more: "My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth."
So put a number on it this week. Think of one amount you spent on yourself last month that you would not have missed. Get it to a need you already know about, one with a person's name on it, before the week is out, and say nothing about what it cost you. Watch whether anything closes up inside you while you look at that person, because that is John's test. And remember where this love starts: "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us." Christ gave Himself first, and His love in you is what makes your giving possible.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 313 is Enduring Mercy (Psalm 107:1).