John 13:1-19 Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world to the Father… The mother, wan and pale with incessant vigils by the bedside of a sick child; the fireman, maimed for life in bravely rescuing the inmates of a blazing house; the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae; Howard, dying of fever caught in dungeons where he was fulfilling his noble purpose of succouring the oppressed and remembering the forgotten; the Moravian missionaries, who voluntarily incarcerated themselves in an African leper house (from which regress into the healthy world was impossible, and escape only to be effected through the gates of death) in order that they might preach the glad tidings to the lepers, — all these, and many other glorious instances of self-devotion, do but faintly shadow forth the love of Him who laid aside divine glory, and humbled himself to the death of the cross. (W. Baxendale.) Parallel Verses KJV: Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. |
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