Article April 10, 2017 Issue

‘Laying down our life’ and gaining much: the implications of Easter

Susan Booth Mack Snipes

A couple of years ago, I was praying to understand more deeply the story of Christ Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection when it appeared in the Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly during the Easter season. The Lesson that week included this passage from the Gospel of John: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (15:13).

As I read that passage, I felt that there was something important to grasp and that it was the key to this deeper understanding that I was seeking.

My study in Christian Science brought me to an illuminating and victorious interpretation of this Bible passage above—that Jesus’ love for mankind was so great that he submitted to the crucifixion to prove through the resurrection that there is only Life and there is no death. This caused me to focus on the victory of divine Life, or God, over sin, suffering, and death. It helped me see that sin, suffering, and death are not God-given states of being, and so they are no part of Life or of man’s experience as God’s beloved, pure expression.

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