CHRIST JESUS,the great Way-shower, once said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Many have long puzzled over the meaning of his words, and have not yet reached a satisfactory explanation. Christian Science, however, by reason of its spiritual illumination of Scripture, affords a practical and scientific interpretation.
We learn in Christian Science that God is divine Mind, infinite in wisdom, unlimited in power, and illimitable in love; that God is the source of all true being, of all that is real, permanent, good. From Him proceed all intelligence, true knowledge, and spiritual understanding. He is the only creator, and His creation consists of spiritual ideas, maintained by perfect Love. God is divine Life, from whom all true life proceeds, and by whom it is supported in perfection and completeness. Man is the idea or expression of God, and his life is the reflection of God. True existence is therefore harmonious and eternal.
It is self-evident that the real man can never lay down or surrender his life, since it is coexistent and coeternal with God. Mortals believe, however, that they have a mind and life of their own, separate from God; that they move in an orbit of their own and of their own choosing; that life is material, subject to material conditions, governed by material law, and consisting principally of the gratifying of material desires and inclinations. Of this material sense of life Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 550), "The continual contemplation of existence as material and corporeal—as beginning and ending, and with birth, decay, and dissolution as its component stages—hides the true and spiritual Life, and causes our standard to trail in the dust." In proportion, then, as we entertain a false concept of life, we are not fully conscious of our true spiritual life. It is this erroneous sense of life that we are to lay down, in order that the real and actual may be made manifest. Surely, we can manifest the "greater love" in no more effectual way than by constantly dwelling in consciousness upon God as the only Life, and by seeing the true selfhood of all as always reflecting God, Life. The understanding of this truth should spur us on to the most earnest endeavors in eradicating from our thinking everything that would hinder our reflection of divine Life, infinite good.
