their point of view, as they see Him--that is to say, He means by
'friends' not those who love Him, but those whom He loves. The
'friends' for whom He dies are the same persons as the Apostle, in
his sweet variation upon the words of my text, has called by the
opposite name, when He says that He died for His 'enemies.'

There is an old, wild ballad that tells of how a knight found,
coiling round a tree in a dismal forest, a loathly dragon breathing
out poison; and how, undeterred by its hideousness and foulness, he
cast his arms round it and kissed it on the mouth. Three times he did
it undisgusted, and at the third the shape changed into a fair lady,
and he won his bride. Christ 'kisses with the kisses of His mouth'
His enemies, and makes them His friends because He loves them. 'If He
had never died for His enemies' says one of the old fathers, 'He
would never have possessed His friends.' And so He teaches us here in
what seems to be a restriction of the purpose of His death and the
sweep of His love, that the way by which we are to meet even
alienation and hostility is by pouring upon it the treasures of an
unselfish, self-sacrificing affection which will conquer at the last.

Christ's death is the pattern for our lives as well as the hope of
our hearts.

IV. Lastly, we have here by implication, though not by direct
statement, the Motive of the love.

Surely that, too, is contained in the words, 'As I have loved you.'
Christ's commandment of love is a new commandment, not so much
because it is a revelation of a new duty, though it is the casting of
an old duty into new prominence, as because it is not merely a