John 15: The Greatest Love, Laying Down Your Life for Your Friends

Introduction

"The theme of today's sermon is love." With these words, Pastor Kazuo Tsukuda opens his message of Sunday, October 11, 2026, at Ueno no Mori Christian Church in Tokyo. The text for the day is short, four verses from the Gospel of John, yet it touches the heart of the faith: "This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends" (World English Bible).

The pastor titled his message "The Greatest Love." In it he shows why disciples must love one another, what it means to be called a "friend" by Jesus, and how to receive the most demanding word in the passage: laying down one's life. To illustrate it, he tells the life story of the author of a much-loved hymn, then of believers who really did give their lives for others, up to Father Maximilian Kolbe, who died at Auschwitz in place of a father of a family.

Throughout the message, one conviction keeps returning: the love Jesus speaks of does not begin in us. It begins in God. And it is because you were loved first that you can, in turn, love.

Outline of the Message

1. Jesus' Farewell Words and a New Commandment

In the Gospel of John, chapters 14 to 16 record Jesus' farewell words. He already knows he is about to be crucified, and he leaves his disciples what matters most. The passage of John 15:12-15 sits at the heart of this discourse.
The Old Testament already knew the commandment to love. Leviticus 19:18 says: "you shall love your neighbor as yourself." The pastor notes that this commandment rests on the love each person has for himself: "everyone loves himself."
What this commandment lacks, in his view, is the perspective of a God who loves first. Put this way, the order to love your neighbor can feel like a rather cold obligation, imposed from one side only.
Jesus' new commandment is of a different nature: "even as I have loved you." It begins with God. God loved you first, and it is in response to this love that you love your brother and sister. The pastor senses in it a warmth beyond comparison with the old commandment.

2. A Commandment Repeated Three Times

In these chapters of the Gospel of John, the expression "love one another" appears three times: in John 13:34, John 15:12 and John 15:17. This repetition shows the importance of the commandment. Jesus says it three times, as if to make sure his disciples never forget it.
The first reason disciples must love one another: Jesus loved them. "The life of the Church consists in receiving the love of Jesus and abiding in it." The Church is to be a people who live by mutual love, following Jesus.
To live out this mutual love, the pastor mentions concrete actions: seeking to understand the other, accepting them, receiving them as they are, and taking care not to judge them.
The finest testimony of a Christian community, he says, is when someone who does not yet believe looks at the Church and thinks: "I would love to be part of this, it is a truly good place."
Loving one another also means serving one another while looking to the same Lord. At the last meal, Jesus washed his disciples' feet to teach them this mutual service (John 13).
Even when difficulties arise between us, the pastor urges us to bear with what hurts and to care for the other as if we were caring for Jesus himself.

3. Agape Love, the Love That Comes From God

The love Jesus speaks of is not eros, passionate love. Nor is it philia, human friendship, or brotherly affection. It is agape: not a human love, but the love of God, the love that comes from God.
"Only this love of God can deeply transform a person, and make the Church a living community, united in love."
The pastor quotes the first letter of John (1 John 4:9-11): "By this God's love was revealed in us, that God has sent his only born Son into the world that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as the atonement for our sins. Beloved, if God loved us in this way, we also ought to love one another."
He then shares a personal memory. For many years he worked in Hamamatsu within a large Christian social work organization, Seirei. The president of that organization, who trained him greatly, once gave him a calligraphy scroll, a kakejiku, which he has treasured ever since.
In front of the congregation, he unrolls it: it bears precisely the word of the day, the call to love one another as Jesus loved us.

4. No Longer Servants, but Friends

Verses 14 and 15 say: "You are my friends, if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant doesn't know what his master does. But I have called you friends, for everything that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you."
Here is the second reason to love one another: Jesus calls his disciples his friends. Since he calls you his friend, serve in turn, with all your heart, the people around you.
The disciples move from the status of servants to that of friends. Until then, the relationship rested on command and obedience: God commands, we obey. From now on, it is a relationship of trust and sharing.
The word "friend" does not carry here the light nuance of everyday speech. The second half of verse 15 sheds light on it: Jesus made known to his disciples everything he heard from the Father. They become, with him, co-workers in God's plan, charged with carrying it out together.
The pastor mentions a movement founded about a hundred years ago with this vision: the Friends of Jesus Association (Iesu no Tomo Kai), born around Toyohiko Kagawa and the pastors and believers who followed him. Its members still recite its five principles today and seek to live out the heart of Jesus through quiet, persevering actions. The pastor adds that he is himself a member.

5. Jesus, the Faithful Friend in Distress: The Story of a Hymn

The hymn sung during the service also calls Jesus "friend." It is known in Japan as "Itsukushimi fukaki" and in the English-speaking world as "What a Friend We Have in Jesus." It is sometimes nicknamed "the hymn of hymns," so beloved is it.
Its author, Joseph Scriven, was born in Ireland in the nineteenth century. According to one explanation, he wrote the text to comfort his mother, sick and alone in Ireland.
Another explanation, more solid according to the pastor, points to a tragedy. At 24, on the eve of his wedding, Scriven waits for his fiancée, who does not arrive: the boat carrying her capsized and she drowned.
In despair, unable to undertake anything, he eventually emigrated to Canada to start a new life. There he became a teacher, attended a Plymouth Brethren assembly and devoted himself to the poorest people in his neighborhood, so much so that he was nicknamed "the good Samaritan."
At 41, he became engaged to a young woman of 23. But he lost this second fiancée too, carried off by tuberculosis. It is said that the hymn was born from these two trials. The theory about his mother probably comes from the fact that Scriven had sent her the poem with a letter to comfort her.
For the pastor, the exact origin matters little: to his sick mother as to himself, twice bereaved, Scriven wanted to say that Jesus is a kind friend who walks with us and consoles us. "What a happy life it is when you can call Jesus your friend!"

6. The Greatest Love: The Cross, and What It Asks of Us

Verse 13 gave the message its title: "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." Among all forms of love, the greatest is to lay down one's life for one's friends.
Giving your life for your parents, your children or a close friend is already very hard. Jesus, without sin, died for the very people who hated him, envied him and wanted him put to death.
More than two thousand years ago, Jesus healed the sick and led people on the path of salvation. Jealous of his reputation, the religious leaders stirred up the crowd to have him put to death. Condemned after an unjust trial and flogged, he had to carry the cross to the place of execution.
At nine in the morning he is crucified, with large nails through his hands and feet. As the cross is raised and the crowd mocks, he prays: "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). After six hours of agony, at three in the afternoon, he breathes his last with these final words: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!" (Luke 23:46). He entrusts everything to God.
"To give one's own life as a sacrifice for the salvation of all humanity: that is the greatest love." John writes in his first letter: "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers" (1 John 3:16).
The pastor acknowledges that this sentence frightens some people. He has seen or heard of people thinking of drifting away from the Church because they believed faith would make their lives too hard. He regrets it. If we thought only of "having to die," taking these words literally, he says, we would never have enough lives. That is not what the Bible means.
He draws on hymn 227 of the Shin Seika hymnal, sung during the service: "In my place, a sinner, Christ went up to the cross, he did not spare his life. If the love of Christ compels me, I offer him my life and live solely for the Lord." The conclusion of the hymn is clear: live for the Lord.
For the pastor, it is not about seeking death, but about entrusting your life to the Lord and living for him with firm resolve. If you live this way, he watches over you and sustains you. "If one day I must die, I will give this life. But as long as I am kept alive, I will live for the Lord to the very end."
Some believers, with their eyes fixed on Christ, have nevertheless ended up truly giving their lives for others. The pastor recalls the typhoon shipwreck of 1954: on the sinking ship, some passengers were saved thanks to their life jackets. Two missionaries who had come to Japan, Stone and Leeper, gave their own life jackets to two young people who had none. The two young people survived, the two missionaries died.
He also mentions Father Damien, who lived in Hawaii among the lepers, who were despised and kept apart at the time. He cared for thousands of the sick and accompanied them to their deaths, before being struck by the disease himself. He rejoiced in it: "Now I am truly one of them."

7. Maximilian Kolbe, a Life Given at Auschwitz

To conclude, the pastor tells the life of Father Maximilian Kolbe, drawing on a book about Kolbe and the life he gave for his friends. Many in the congregation already know him, but he wants everyone to touch, through him, the greatness of faith.
Born in Poland, Kolbe entered the seminary with the desire to become a priest. At 16 he was trained at the convent, and he was ordained a priest at 24. At 33 he received the call to mission in Asia, and at 36 the door to Japan opened: he arrived in Nagasaki.
After five years of fine work in Japan, he was appointed superior of the Niepokalanów convent and returned to Poland. War was looming. Three years later, Hitler began sending his opponents to concentration camps.
On February 17, 1941, Kolbe was arrested, then sent to the Auschwitz camp. The pastor describes it as a true hell: people unable to work were stripped and killed en masse in gas chambers. Millions of people were murdered there. He refers to the testimony of Frankl, known in Japan under the title "Night and Fog" (in English, "Man's Search for Meaning").
One July day, it is very hot. The work detail of block 14, Kolbe's block, is sent to forced labor. A prisoner escapes. According to the account the pastor relays, his companions even helped him leave so that he could make the world aware of Nazi cruelty.
At the evening roll call, the escape is discovered. Furious, the camp commander announces that if the fugitive is not recaptured within 24 hours, ten men from this group will be chosen to die. The next evening, he has still not been found. Ten prisoners will be condemned to die of starvation, as an example.
Numbers are called at random. One of the men selected clings to the officer's legs, crying: "I have a wife and children! Let me see them again!" A man who had not been chosen then steps forward: "I have a request. Put me among the ten, in place of this young man. He has a wife and children. I am single."
That man is Father Kolbe. "You are a priest? You pig!" the camp commander snaps at him. But, impressed by his seriousness, he agrees. The spared man rushes to the priest to express his gratitude.
The ten condemned men, Kolbe included, are thrown naked into an underground cell, without a drop of water. Even their clothes are taken away so that they cannot eat them and prolong their lives. After five days, three are dead.
In this place of nightmare, Kolbe's cell is nevertheless filled with the Word, prayer and songs of praise. "It was like a church," the book reports.
After two weeks, four men are still breathing, but three of them are nearly unconscious. Only Kolbe keeps full clarity of mind. Thin, long accustomed to a very simple life, he is still alive. "It was God who kept him alive," the pastor thinks. Leaning against the wall, he prays that his companions, and those who died before them, will be welcomed into heaven.
On the fifteenth day, a guard enters: "You are still alive? Today, you will die." At the moment of the phenol injection, the priest himself holds out his arm. He repeats the Hail Mary several times, then loses consciousness. It was August 14, 1941. Maximilian Kolbe was 47 years old.
And the man who was saved? His name was Gajowniczek (the pastor notes that the Japanese spelling of his name varies from one translation to another). He lived through four more very hard years before being freed from Auschwitz in 1945. His first act was to go and see Kolbe's mother to tell her how her son had saved his life and what an admirable man he had been.
The author of the book visited Gajowniczek when he was about eighty years old. He told him that he had decided to speak of Father Kolbe until his death: "It is my mission." And he wept in front of him.
"Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." The greatest love is the death of Jesus on the cross. But among those who believed in him and followed him, some have lived and died for others as Christ did. Perhaps you will not be able to live or die this way. The pastor nevertheless invites everyone to thank Jesus for his love and to pray to walk in his footsteps every day.

Key Takeaways

The new commandment begins with God: you love others because Jesus loved you first.
Agape love, the love that comes from God, is the only love able to transform a person and to make the Church a community others long to enter.
Jesus no longer calls you a servant but a friend: he trusts you and involves you in God's work.
Giving your life for your friends does not mean seeking death, it means entrusting your life to the Lord and living for him to the end.
The cross is the greatest love, and believers like Maximilian Kolbe show how far this love can lead.

Personal Application

Do you love others in response to the love God has given you, or as one fulfills a rather cold obligation?
Which person in your church do you struggle to understand or accept? How could you serve them this week, as Jesus washed his disciples' feet?
What changes in your prayer and in your life when Jesus calls you "friend" rather than "servant"?
In what trial do you need to meet Jesus as the faithful friend who consoles, in the manner of Joseph Scriven?
Concretely, what would it mean for you to "offer your life to the Lord" in your daily life: your time, your work, your family, your service?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between the commandment of Leviticus 19 and that of John 15?

Leviticus 19:18 asks us to love our neighbor as ourselves. For Pastor Kazuo Tsukuda, this commandment does not say that God loved us first. In John 15:12, Jesus says: "love one another, even as I have loved you." Everything starts from God's love: we love one another in response to the love we have received.

What does Jesus mean when he calls his disciples "friends"?

In John 15:15, Jesus says that he no longer calls his disciples servants, because he has made known to them everything he learned from his Father. The relationship of command and obedience becomes a relationship of trust and sharing. The disciples become, with Jesus, co-workers in God's plan, and this friendship moves them to serve those around them.

Should we take "we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers" literally?

Pastor Tsukuda observes that this verse, 1 John 3:16, frightens some people to the point that they think of leaving the Church. He does not think we should seek death: it is about entrusting one's life to the Lord and living for him with all one's heart, ready to give it if one day it is required.

Who was Father Maximilian Kolbe?

A Polish priest who came to Japan as a missionary, in Nagasaki, he was arrested in 1941 and sent to Auschwitz. When ten prisoners were condemned to starve to death, he took the place of a man who was pleading for his wife and children, Gajowniczek. He died on August 14, 1941, at age 47, after turning his cell into a place of prayer and praise.