John 10:18 — "No one has taken it [my life] away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father."
John 14:31 — "but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let us go from here."
Philippians 2:8 — Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
In God's economy of salvation, Jesus Christ agreed to take flesh and die in the place of His people, receiving from the Father the punishment their sins deserved. Note though, that in many places in Scripture, this agreement on the part of Jesus is characterized as His obedience to the commandment of the Father (see the examples above).
In John 14:28-31, Jesus even says that the world would know that He loves the Father because of the obedience He would show to the Father's commands in His going away from the disciples and returning to the Father (i.e as He went to the cross).
In our previous meditation, we reflected on how the Lord's Supper proclaims the love of Jesus for His people. It is no less true that the sufferings of Christ in His life, culminating in the agony of His death upon the cross, give us something of an insight into the depth of love Jesus has for His Father.
"If you love me," said Jesus to His disciples, "you will keep my commandments." (John 14:15). It is one thing to say that we love someone, but quite another to show it by our lives. So when the commandment of God came to the man, Christ Jesus, even though He was being asked to undertake the most difficult, painful and costly assignment that was ever entrusted to anyone, He did not shrink back or hesitate, but joyfully set out upon a path of perfect obedience, borne out of His great love for the One Who commanded Him.
Even in Gethsemane, as the magnitude of what He was about to undergo pressed down upon His soul and He sweat drops of blood, He prayed that the cup of suffering might pass from Him if possible, but that nevertheless God's will would be done - the will that He had come down from heaven to accomplish (John 6:38).
And so Jesus willingly took upon Himself the guilt of His people's sin, and the full punishment they merited. But let us not forget that He received these stripes from the Father He loved so deeply. By this sublime heavenly God and Father, He was forsaken. From Him, Jesus received not the love and grace that had been His portion to that moment, but rather the full intensity of His righteous anger and wrath against sin. How this must have added to the anguish, the agony and the grief of His ordeal! Yet out of love for God, He obeyed the command of the Father that placed Him in that very situation.
So when we come to the Lord's Table, let us ponder these deep and mysterious truths, and marvel at the greatest demonstration of love there has ever been or ever could be - the love of Jesus for His Father in heaven, and the love of Jesus for His people, whom He would save!
O, the deep, deep love of Jesus,
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!
Rolling as a mighty ocean
In its fullness over me!
(S. Trevor Francis, 1875.)
