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.
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. It is impossible for language more plainly and emphatically to express the absolute voluntariness of Christ's death, such a voluntariness as it would be manifest presumption in any mere creature to affirm of his own death. It is beyond all doubt the language of One who was conscious that His life was His own, which no creature's is, and, therefore, His to surrender or retain at will. Here lay the glory of His sacrifice, that it was purely voluntary. The claim of "power to take it again" is no less important, as showing that His resurrection, though ascribed to the Father, in the sense we shall presently see, was nevertheless His own assertion of His own right to life as soon as the purposes of His voluntary death were accomplished.
This commandment - that is, to "lay down His life, that He might take it again,"
Have I received, х elabon (G2983), rather, 'received I'] of my Father. So that Christ died at once by "command" of His Father, and by such a voluntary obedience to that command as has made Him, so to speak, infinitely dear to the Father. The necessity of Christ's death, in the light of these profound sayings, must be manifest to all but the superficial.