John 6:38-39
38. For I came down from heaven not to do Mine own will—to play an independent part.
but—in respect to both the foregoing things, the divine and the human side of salvation. the will of Him that sent Me—What this twofold will of Him that sent Him is, we are next sublimely told (Joh 6:39, 40):39. And this—in the first place.
is the will of Him that sent me, that of all—everything. which He hath given Me—(taking up the identical words of Joh 6:37). I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day—The meaning is not, of course, that He is charged to keep the objects entrusted to Him as He received them, so as they should merely suffer nothing in His hands. For as they were just "perishing" sinners of Adam's family, to let "nothing" of such "be lost," but "raise them up at the last day," must involve, first, giving His flesh for them (Joh 6:51), that they "might not perish, but have everlasting life"; and then, after "keeping them from falling," raising their sleeping dust in incorruption and glory, and presenting them, body and soul, perfect and entire, wanting nothing, to Him who gave them to Him, saying, "Behold I and the children which God hath given Me." So much for the first will of Him that sent Him, the divine side of man's salvation, whose every stage and movement is inscrutable to us, but infallibly certain. John 10:18
18. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down myself: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again—It is impossible for language more plainly and emphatically to express the absolute voluntariness of Christ's death, such a voluntariness as it would be manifest presumption in any mere creature to affirm of his own death. It is beyond all doubt the language of One who was conscious that His life was His own (which no creature's is), and therefore His to surrender or retain at will. Here lay the glory of His sacrifice, that it was purely voluntary. The claim of "power to take it again" is no less important, as showing that His resurrection, though ascribed to the Father, in the sense we shall presently see, was nevertheless His own assertion of His own right to life as soon as the purposes of His voluntary death were accomplished.
This commandment—to "lay down His—life, that He might take it again." have I received of my Father—So that Christ died at once by "command" of His Father, and by such a voluntary obedience to that command as has made Him (so to speak) infinitely dear to the Father. The necessity of Christ's death, in the light of these profound sayings, must be manifest to all but the superficial student.