In the last essay, I explored the meaning of the word ψυχή in the paradoxical saying of Jesus that the man who seeks to save his ψυχή will end up losing it while the man who loses it will end up finding it. Although martyrdom is certainly a high calling, I argued that this saying means more than the sacrifice of one’s life. It means the sacrifice of one’s very self. Giving oneself, giving one’s innermost core, is paradoxically the best way to look after oneself and cause that core to flourish.

In this essay, we will continue our investigation by examining another set of parallel verses that use the same difficult word, ψυχή, and I will argue that the gift of one’s ψυχή is the very essence of love. Many people are capable of rattling off the definition of love as “willing the good of another,” but this understanding of love goes deeper; it understands love as a radical gift of one’s very person.

Once more, we begin from a saying of Jesus that many will have memorized but which contains much more meaning than first meets the eye.

Αὕτη ἐστὶν ἡ ἐντολὴ ἡ ἐμή, ἵνα ἀγαπᾶτε ἀλλήλους καθὼς ἠγάπησα ὑμᾶς. μείζονα ταύτης ἀγάπην ούδεὶς ἔχει, ἵνα τις τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ θῇ ὑπὲρ τῶν φίλων αὐτοῦ.

This is my commandment: that you love one another just as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: that someone should lay down his ψυχή for those whom he holds dear.
(John 15:12–13)

Here again, ψυχή is usually translated as “life,” and when I was a child, I thought Jesus was simply saying that the greatest expression of love is dying for one’s friends.

While the sacrifice of one’s life is obviously a great sacrifice, I would argue that it is not the ultimate sacrifice as people often say at military funerals. After all, people sometimes throw away their lives cheaply to thrill seeking or substance abuse. What Jesus says is even more impressive than the sacrifice of one’s biological life in the final moment of death: It is the sacrifice of one’s ongoing “life” in the sense of one’s whole self. In extreme circumstances, this may indeed demand physical death, but that is the capstone on a whole mode of being, a whole orientation of oneself toward another, that must precede that final act.

The phrasing of giving or laying down the ψυχή is not unique to this gospel passage. In 1 John, we are told that we can know the essence of love by looking to the example of Christ:

ἐν τούτῳ ἐγνώκαμεν τὴν ἀγάπην, ὅτι ἐκεῖνος ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἔθηκεν· καὶ ἡμεῖς ὀφείλομεν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀδελφῶν τὰς ψυχὰς θεῖναι.

In this we have come to understand love: That he has laid down his ψυχή for our sake, and we ought to lay down our ψυχαί for the sake of our brothers.
(1 John 3:16)

We are told that a good shepherd is the one who “lays down his ψυχή for the sake of his sheep” (John 10:11), and we might think this just means dying when the lions come. But just a few versus later (verse 15), Jesus says “I am laying down my ψυχή for the sake of the sheep” in the present tense. He is not just speaking about his eventual death on the cross, but rather his whole ongoing way of being that culminates in that death.

Following these statements and mirroring the paradox of losing and finding the ψυχή that we examined in the last essay, Jesus goes on to make an enormously important claim loaded with detail critical for our investigation:

Διὰ τοῦτο με ὁ πατὴρ ἀγαπᾷ ὅτι ἐγὼ τίθημι τὴν ψυχὴν μου, ἵνα πάλιν λάβω αὐτήν. οὐδεις αἴρει αὐτὴν ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ, ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ τίθημι αὐτὴν ἀπ’ ἐμαυτοῦ. ἐξουσίαν ἔχω θεῖναι αὐτήν, καὶ ἐξουσίαν ἔχω πάλιν λαβεῖν αὐτήν· ταύτην τὴν ἐντολὴν ἔλαβον παρὰ τοῦ πατρός μου.

This is why the Father loves me: Because I am laying down my ψυχή in order that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I am laying it down from myself. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it up again. This is the commandment I received from my Father.
(John 10:17–18)

Elsewhere, Jesus says that he does not act “from himself” but only does what he sees or hears from the Father (John 5:19,30, 7:18,28, 8:28, 14:10). Here, however, he insists that offering his ψυχή is his act, done on his own authority, rather than something done to him that he merely accepts passively.

We must pause to note two remarkable details before we move on from this passage. First, it is striking that Jesus says that this act of self-offering is the ground of love that the Father has toward him. Second, it is striking that he lays down his ψυχή in order to take it back again. This would be perplexing if the ψυχή were something inherently bad, signifying selfishness or an ego-identity that must be set aside, annihilated, or absorbed. Instead, Christ himself exemplifies the lesson we learned in the last essay: The ψυχή must be sacrificed precisely because it is so valuable and because this self-offering is the very way to bring it to fulfillment.

Lest we think that this is uniquely Johannine, both Matthew (20:28) and Mark (10:45) record the saying that “the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his ψυχή as a ransom in place of many” and Paul writes this to the Thessalonians: “Longing for you, we wanted to share with you not only the gospel of God but even our own ψυχαί because you became beloved to us” (1 Thessalonians 2:8). Similarly, in Revelation, we are told of the “brethren” who have overcome the Dragon by the “blood of the Lamb and the account of their witness (μαρτυρία)” and who “did not love their ψυχή unto death” (Revelation 12:11). The qualification “unto death” is important here because death is not understood as just the same thing as not loving one’s ψυχή. Instead, death is the endpoint of a whole trajectory—although we must remember that it is paradoxically not the final endpoint given that we are meant to find our ψυχή again on the other side.

Across the New Testament, then, we see a consistent testimony that giving, laying down, or sharing one’s ψυχή is the very epitome of love. I have heard many sermons about love, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard this explained from the pulpit, and yet when we examine the emphatic language in the verses above and consider their sheer number, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is one of the central messages of the New Testament. I think it doesn’t make for regular sermon material simply because it is somewhat hard to wrap one’s head around. What is this foreign concept that we don’t exactly have a single word for in English? And what does it look like, in concrete terms, to give or lay down one’s ψυχή if it means more than simply dying for someone?

I think a good way to wrap our heads around what this looks like is to read the lives of the saints. Many saints are martyrs, of course, and I do not by any means want to downplay the enormity and nobility of such a death. But many of the saints were not martyrs, and yet their lives make vivid and tangible what it looks like to offer one’s whole self in love. One might consider, for example, the poverty and tender zeal of St. Francis or Mother Teresa’s care for the lepers of Calcutta. We should also consider the more hidden self-giving of contemplatives such as St. John of the Cross in their ecstatic love of God above all else.

What we see in these lives is not the extent of the material good they did for others. Perhaps a billionaire donor might be able to do more in some utilitarian calculus. What we see is how radically they gave themselves from their very depths, how radically they broke free from the confines of our habitual self-centeredness, how radically they found themselves again coming into the fullness of who they were meant to be all along.

Appendix of Passages

καὶ γὰρ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου οὐκ ἧλθεν διακονηθῆναι ἀλλὰ διακονῆσαι καὶ δοῦναι τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν.

For even¹ the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his ψυχή as a ransom in place of many.
(Mark 10:45)

Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλός. ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλὸς τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ τίθησιν ὑπὲρ τῶν προβάτων.

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his ψυχή for the sake of the sheep.
(John 10:11)

…καὶ τὴν ψυχήν μου τίθημι ὑπὲρ τῶν προβάτων.

…And I am laying down my ψυχή for the sake of the sheep.
(John 10:15)

Διὰ τοῦτο με ὁ πατὴρ ἀγαπᾷ ὅτι ἐγὼ τίθημι τὴν ψυχὴν μου, ἵνα πάλιν λάβω αὐτήν. οὐδεις αἴρει αὐτὴν ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ, ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ τίθημι αὐτὴν ἀπ’ ἐμαυτοῦ. ἐξουσίαν ἔχω θεῖναι αὐτήν, καὶ ἐξουσίαν ἔχω πάλιν λαβεῖν αὐτήν· ταύτην τὴν ἐντολὴν ἔλαβον παρὰ τοῦ πατρός μου.

This is why the Father loves me: Because I am laying down my ψυχή in order that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I am laying it down from myself. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it up again. This is the commandment I received from my Father.
(John 10:17–18)

οὕτως ὁμειρόμενοι ὑμῶν εὐδοκοῦμεν μεταδοῦναι ὑμῖν οὐ μόνον τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ θεοῦ ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς ἑαυτῶν ψυχάς, διότι ἀγαπητοὶ ἡμῖν ἐγενήθητε.

So, longing for you, we wanted to share with you not only the gospel of God but even our own ψυχαί because you became beloved to us.
(1 Thessalonians 2:8)

καὶ αὐτοὶ ἐνίκησαν αὐτὸν διὰ τὸ αἷμα τοῦ ἀρνίου καὶ διὰ τὸν λόγον τῆς μαρτυρίας αὐτῶν καὶ οὐκ ἠγάπησαν τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτῶν ἄχρι θανάτου.

And they have conquered him through the blood of the Lamb and the account of their witness and did not love their ψυχή unto death.
(Revelation 12:11)