The perfect expression of Godly love is revealed in Jesus’ words in John 15:12-14: 

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.

To think that this verse commands us to lay down our physical lives is a wrong interpretation of Jesus’ death and of sacrificial love. The lives that we lay down are lives of envy, pride, boasting, anger, self-serving, unforgiveness, delighting in evil, dishonoring others, practicing favoritism and partiality, and polishing our religious and political identities.  These internal, matters of the heart are what we lay down, or sacrifice, when we love others. 

John 15:12-14 does not command us to sacrifice our physical bodies or our material possessions. Rather, the command is to sacrifice (i.e. give up, quit) those attitudes and behaviors that cause hurt and separate us from others. Since what we think and do originates in our hearts, the sacrifice begins there. In other words we first sacrifice who we are internally (i.e. in our hearts). The renewal of the mind and behaviors follows because what we think, say and do emerges from our hearts.

Jesus was popular because he had a clean, pure heart. Everything he said and did reflected his heart. This was only true, however, after he was baptized/anointed by God’s spirit. From then, everything he said and did was consistent with his new, clean, pure heart. Up until then, his heart was evil and impure just like his Jewish family and neighbors. 

so that nothing we do inhibits our neighbors’ access to life, liberty and happiness. We make spiritual sacrifices so that our neighbors’ spiritual, emotional and physical needs are satisfied fully. We are not expected to sacrifice our physical lives.

The symbolism of Jesus’ death and our sacrifice is worth repeating.:

Jesus’ death is a symbolic representation of the difficulty everyone has when they  sacrifice  lives of envy, pride, boasting, anger, self-serving, unforgiveness, delighting in evil, dishonoring others and practicing favoritism and partiality in their relationships, religion and politics.  Whether we realize it or not, these characteristics and behaviors are intrinsic to who we are. These are the attitudes and behaviors that must die before we can love our neighbors as we love ourselves. This new life that emerges in us after we die to these attitudes and behaviors does not include envy, pride, boasting, anger, self-serving, unforgiveness, delighting in evil, dishonoring others or social/political/religious favoritism and partiality. We are able to love our neighbors only when we live lives free of these characteristics.

Jesus’ resurrection to a new life symbolizes a life that includes what Godly love is and does and does not include what Godly love does not do.  Click here for understanding of the characteristics of new life.

It is impossible to love your neighbor and love yourself unless and until you sacrifice envy, pride, boasting, anger, self-serving, unforgiveness, delighting in evil, dishonoring others and practicing favoritism and partiality. These attitudes and behaviors are totally inconsistent with God’s character and totally inconsistent with the character of people who love God, love their neighbors and love themselves.

Where you find love for God you will always find love for yourself and others because Godly love is indiscriminate. It includes everyone and excludes no one.  

When you follow Jesus’ example of how to live a sacrificial life, you love yourself while you love our neighbors. This is only true, however, if you consider Jesus’ persecution and death to be symbolic of sacrificing your rights and privileges so that the rights, privileges and needs of your neighbors can be fulfilled. God’s idea of loving our neighbors always includes personal self-sacrifice for the sake of the rights and privileges of others. 

The relationship of self-love to sacrifice is not immediately obvious. But, when you remember the “give and it will be given to you” principle in Luke 6:38, you see that our sacrifices will always accrue to our benefit. The essence of this verse is this: When you give Godly love you will eventually receive the love, respect and acceptance we all crave.

The giving and receiving process begins when you sacrifice (i.e. lay down) your rights, privileges and possessions. The rights and privileges you give up are human rights and privileges allowed by cultures, religions and governments. They are creations of men. They are not specified or guaranteed by God. God’s attitude about these rights and privileges are specified in 1 Corinthians 10:23-24:

All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify. Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbor.

What this verse means is that all things authorized by and enforced by human cultures are lawful within the context of those cultures. These human rights and privileges (including envy, pride, boasting, anger, self-serving, unforgiveness, delighting in evil, dishonoring others and practicing favoritism and partiality) are common, even encouraged, in all cultures. These rights and privileges all deal with relationships in one way or another.  

The problem is that when people use their legal human rights to freely express envy, pride, boasting, anger, self-serving, unforgiveness, delighting in evil, dishonoring others, favoritism and partiality, they cause trouble in their relationships at home, nationally or internationally. Since envy, pride, boasting, anger, self-serving, unforgiveness, delighting in evil, dishonoring others, favoritism and partiality are not expressions of love in 1 Corinthians 13:3-8, people in effect express hate toward their neighbors – not love – when they employ their legal human rights and privileges in their everyday lives. This is the dynamic that causes division and hurt for their neighbors.

Individuals who selfishly use and defend their legal human rights to the degree that they interfere with and deny the rights of other people, they  cause division and oppression that offends God as well as the people who are directly hurt or deprived. Personal offenses and deprivations of rights are always in God’s view and he does not regard them favorably. Personal offenses and deprivations always occur in the context of favoritism and partiality for individuals  and others who are members of the ethnic, religious, economic, education, and political communities with which they identify. God’s feels so strongly about favoritism and partiality that he calls it sin.

In human cultures, showing partiality is perfectly legal. It is not legal, however, in the context of the Kingdom of God. The reason it is not legal in the Kingdom of God is that someone always gets abused or marginalized when others use their legal, human rights to freely express envy, pride, boasting, anger, self-serving, unforgiveness, delighting in evil, dishonoring others, favoritism and partiality.  This is just another example of God’s ways not being like man’s ways. 

In a world where love for neighbors is not the norm, when one person successfully and aggressively uses their legal human rights and privileges , someone else loses something. This is not unity or equity in biblical terms and does not satisfy God’s ideal for unity and harmony. 

Unity  is not just an idealistic aspiration for God. Everything he says and does is designed to move people toward unity, harmony and peace. People who know how to interpret the symbolism of the bible understand this truth and obey God’s commands to make unity a reality by loving their neighbors. Religious people, including  Jews and Christians do not understand this truth because their literal interpretations always lead them to believe that the bible teaches them to be religious. Religion — not unity — is their focus. 

Unity and peace is not and aspiration that is unique to America. Unity and peace is God’s aspiration for all people in all nations.  God’s plan for unity and peace will be achieved when everyone loves their neighbors as they love themselves. He feels so strongly about unity that he has made loving your neighbor a commandment that is equal to the command to love him. These commandments are tied together. You can’t do one without doing the other.

God knows what we do not know about the goal of universal unity: It won’t happen unless some people are willing to make sacrifices for others. So he gave the command to love and then described perfect love as laying down your life to your friends/neighbors. It is curious that sacrificial love is not a command. Perhaps this is because God knows that commanding people to make sacrifices for others would make him appear heavy-handed and oppressive. His work-around for this problem is to write his laws on the hearts of people so they would voluntarily do what needed to be done to pursue unity. Since this is a hard concept to understand, God provided the story of Jesus to give us a picture of what it means to lay down your life for another. That was a good thing to do, of course, but people didn’t understand the example because they insisted on interpreting the life of Jesus literally — not symbolically. Therefore they don’t understand what it means to sacrifice the hidden lives of their hearts.

The reference in John 15:12-14 to laying down your life for your friends applies to the life (i.e. rights and privileges) allowed by human civil, religious, cultural, and institutional laws. These rights and privileges include, but are not limited to rights guaranteed by the Constitution and governments. Normally people receive these rights and privileges without question. But sometimes the rights of third parties are adversely affected when someone seeks to expand their rights through litigation, deception, theft and violence. People who use any or all of these measures to expand their rights do not love their neighbors. If they were content with the rights they already had, they would already be loving their neighbors sacrificially. It is when they seek to expand their rights and possessions that they do not love their neighbor.

Cultures do not typically have laws against envy, pride, boasting, unkindness, impatience, anger, unforgiveness, serving yourself or name-calling. This is not true in the Kingdom of God where God writes his laws on our hearts and then details what thoughts and actions are necessary to obey those commandments. Loving your neighbor is a commandment that we willingly obey when God’s laws are written on our hearts – not an option. Loving your neighbor as yourself has the same legal weight as the Ten Commandments. Just as breaking one of the Ten Commandments is a sin, failure to love your neighbor is also a sin. This fact is helpful to know for religious people who want to please God, but it is a useless fact unless you know what love is. 

1 Corinthians 13:3-8 contains some of the facts about love that people need to know if they want to take God’s commands seriously. Here they learn that the absence of envy, pride, boasting, unkindness, impatience, anger, unforgiveness, serving yourself and name-calling are not consistent with Godly  love. They will recognize that these attitudes and behaviors which are legal in most cultures are illegal in God’s eyes. They will learn that if they want to love their neighbor with Godly love they must sacrifice their legal human rights to practice envy, pride, boasting, unkindness, impatience, anger, unforgiveness, serving yourself and name-calling. When we examine the life of Jesus we see that his sacrificial death symbolically represents giving up these rights so that his friends and neighbors could have new lives free of envy, pride, boasting, unkindness, impatience, anger, unforgiveness, serving yourself and name-calling.

To be clear, Jesus did not sacrifice his legal human rights so that others could enjoy their legal human rights. Nothing changed for the Jews in terms of legal rights after Jesus’ death and resurrection. And it is accurate to say that legal human rights have gone from bad to worse in the past two thousand years because Jesus’ disciples always interpreted his death and resurrection as literal events and built religious traditions around those interpretations. This was not what God had in mind. All God ever wanted and still wants is that people would have love, joy, peace, mercy, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control in their hearts because, when they had these qualities in their hearts, they would know that they had God in their hearts. That is what he has always wanted. Nothing more and nothing less. 

God’s grand plan cannot be achieved, however, unless people obey his command to love their neighbors. 

Nowhere does God promise rewards like going to a physical heaven or not going to a physical hell for obeying these commands. But he does promise the personal rewards of love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control in their hearts and in the hearts of their neighbors. 

Making sacrifices in your heart is important to God because there are no cultural, institutional or government laws that mandate that you make such sacrifices. In fact, as far as the world is concerned, you are free sacrifice your life or not. And, increasingly it seems, people receive praise when they militate to hold onto or expand their rights. This has the effect of encouraging more people to break God’s laws about loving your neighbor. Thus we see an increase in impatience, unkindness, anger, boasting, pride, self-seeking, unforgiveness, distrust, delight in evil and hopelessness across American culture. Political and religious leaders who think and act these ways encourage others to think and act these ways and effectively give them permission to violate God’s commands about loving your neighbor. They call evil good  and people believe them. 

God has only one frame of reference for legal matters: His spiritual laws written on the heart. He is not concerned about any laws that men design and enforce. His attitudes about human laws is summarized in this verse:

All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify. Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbor.

Here God says that man’s laws are lawful to men but that these laws are not spiritually profitable and do not edify humans about God’s spiritual laws. He also says that people seek their own material/physical good by obeying human laws. That means they obey to stay out of trouble with human authorities while  exploiting the limits of human laws to gather as much material and emotional wealth as they can. God is concerned about what people do to serve their own good because everything they do for their own good creates an expense for others. That is the problem he wants to correct when he gave the command to love your neighbor.