(by Dave, 15-20min)
Scripture
Matthew 16:25, For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
Choose Christ and live
When I was a teenager, I signed up to take lifeguard lessons. One of the tests was to jump into the pool and rescue one of the current lifeguards who was pretending to drown. The lifeguard for my test was the oldest guy on the staff probably home from graduate school for the summer. I came up under him in the water the way I was taught grabbing his legs and spinning him so that he faced away from me. Then I controlled him until I came out of the water from behind and dropped my forearm across his chest so I could drag him to the side. As soon as my forearm was in place, he grabbed it, pulled me under the water and bear hugged me to his chest. I started to thrash and push him away driving myself downward the way we were taught. He was too strong, and I couldn’t get away. I was running out of breath, but still he held on. So I panicked and bit him. It was a healthy chomp right into the poor man’s chest. He immediately let go and flunked me. I was not invited to try again by the man applying antiseptic and Band-Aids to his chest.
In the Scripture verse from Matthew, I don’t think Jesus was saying I should have drowned in order to live. That would have been just dying. Instead, Jesus says we need to die for his sake which conveys a far deeper and apparently very important message. According to the NIV study Bible no other saying of Jesus is given such emphasis in the Gospels. Some version of the saying appears in all four Gospels sometimes repetitively. Here are rest of them:
Matthew 10:39, Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.
Mark 8:35, For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.
Luke 9:24, For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.
Luke 14:26-27, If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters— yes, even their own life— such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
John12:25, Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
Although there are several levels to this repeated, sobering observation from Christ, his position is the same for them all. Choose Him over everything if you want to live.
The most dramatic level of choosing Jesus is to give your physical life for him. The disciples and many other saints down through the centuries (and today) refused to abandon their faith and perished as a result. In the Scripture verse from John, we are told explicitly these people have eternal life. At this most sacrificial level, Jesus is saying our love for him must exceed our desire to survive.
I’d like to believe I could meet this standard (despite my behavior with the lifeguard) and would choose to die before I denied Christ. It’s not surprising that if I or you could do this it would warrant eternal life. After all, John’s Gospel tells us (below) that belief in Jesus Christ alone is required for eternal life and there is no better indicator of belief than dying for him.
The second level in the sayings recognizes that many may not have to choose between physically perishing and loving Christ. Yet Jesus’s message is no less sobering. Each of our lives will be lost if we choose to love something in this world more than him. Today’s citation from Luke, and Matthew elsewhere, says we must hate our father and mother, wife and children and brothers and sisters. Hate is believed to be used here to illustrate that the love we feel for Christ should be so much greater than the love we feel for our beloved relatives that they seem like opposites. Jesus is very clear. If you want to live, love me exponentially more than anything else in this world.
Oh man, I wonder if the second level is even possible for me. I love Jesus very much for who he is, his sacrifice, eternal life and the presence of the Holy Spirit that guides us. But I can’t honestly say that the love I feel for my daughter is so dwarfed by the love I feel for Christ as to seem like hate in comparison. Maybe there are some who can say this with integrity. If so, they have done exactly what the Lord commanded and will live. But what about the rest of us (assuming there are others like me)?
The meaning of life
Jesus doesn’t equivocate. If we fail to meet the standard of this most repeated saying in the Gospels, our lives are lost. Our eternal lives? That doesn’t comport with what John tells us about belief:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. (John 3:16-18)
If John’s Gospel is true, then we must wonder what life we are losing when we fail to meet this level of Jesus’s sayings. The Greek word translated to life in today’s passages is psuché. This is one of three Greek words used to describe life each of which has a Hebrew corollary. Psuché means vital breath or soul. Like it’s Hebrew synonym, nephesh, the word is used in the Bible for the soul of a person that makes them a living being with a conscious self. In other words, the God-given soul breathed into us that makes each person unique. Psuché is the root of the English word psyche. The Scriptures from today indicate that if you want to truly be who you were intended to be, you must love Christ much, much more than anything else.
Can it be much, much more?
So often when we encounter the teachings of Jesus, they seem impossible. You shall not murder, but even if you are angry, you will be subject to judgment. You shall not commit adultery, but even if you lust, you have already committed adultery. And this from Matthew: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Jesus routinely sets standards for us based on God’s truth, not our human abilities. We are to strive relentlessly for his goals knowing we are incapable of perfection, but always capable of improving. I think the same is true of the sayings we encounter today. Every day, strive to love Christ exponentially more than anything in this life. Only when we give up our lives for this will we find life as the people we were intended to be.
Loving our loving Savior
The Gospels tell us precisely what loving Jesus looks like in multiple different ways. I think perhaps the broadest representation is the Lord’s response to the question of which is the greatest commandment in the law:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37-39)
The sayings from Jesus today add depth to these commandments by describing how much love we should aspire to give. So much love for God and Christ that all we care about in the world looks like hate in comparison. So much love for our neighbors that their lives are equivalent to our own. For the sake of Christ, strive for this and find your true life here and eternally. Today, I would like to describe two people who walked this pathway in different ways. Each of the stories helps elucidate how rich and deep is the Lord’s teaching.
The pen-maker
I have friend who makes pens. His wife encouraged him to take on this hobby knowing he would be good at it and would have something to do of purpose in retirement. When she passed, he wisely moved forward with what she suggested. It was a very difficult time for him, but his beloved wife knew him well and she was right to encourage him to explore this part of himself.
The pens and other items he makes are spectacular. He gives all that he produces to friends and charity. The charity he supports funds research into the disease that afflicted his wife. His time and effort in making these pens is given over to the poor people who suffer from this disease. These folks are overwhelmingly delighted at his gifts as are the individuals who receive his pens. Most ask if they can pay. He never accepts but gives them the name of the charity he supports.
My friend is content and happy making his pens because he knows he is going to make someone’s day and that’s all he wants. His time is less important than their happiness. The money he spends on his equipment and supplies is less important than their joy. His life hours which are dwindling with age are less important than the people he labors for in love. In other words, he has found his life by sacrificing it.
The selfless person with cancer
A woman I knew passed away from lung cancer many years ago. She very much enjoyed her life. The time with her children and grandchildren was precious to her. If any of you have suffered from cancer you know the difficulty of trying to defeat it. Humans were not meant to experience chemotherapy and radiation and our bodies rebel horribly against it. Still, as her treatment progressed the cancer responded, and hope grew on the horizon. Then cancer sprang up in her spine. Radiation would be required to tamp this down. Unrelenting fatigue became her constant companion and just over three quarters of a year into her treatment she was through. It seemed to her the cancer was winning and the misery the treatments produced was unlikely to save her.
Her husband who absolutely adored her could not fathom life without her. He begged her to continue. In that moment the woman did exactly as Jesus commanded. She looked into his eyes and said I’ll do it for you. Her misery, fatigue, vomiting, pain and all the rest that comes with cancer treatment was going to be hers for the sake of another. The quality of her life didn’t matter if she could give him just a few more days of happiness. Her life was simply not as important to her as his. She died several months later, but for those several months her husband had her. As far as she was concerned, it was a gift she was happy to give.
Lose your life and find the heart of Christ
These two people both walked the pathway of losing their lives for the sake of another. Had the pen-maker clung to the pain of losing his wife, he could have become bitter and unhappy always wondering why this life is not what he wanted it to be. His friend never would’ve been touched by the output of his talented hands and the charity he supports bereft of his care and concern. As he turned to his faith in serving God a new life began for him. Had the cancer patient held fast and taken on no more treatments, she would’ve witnessed the unremitting sadness of her husband during the last months of her life. Instead, willingly making herself sick, she spared him several months of additional mourning.
In his book, Gentle and Lowly, Dane Ortland observes that only once in the Gospels does Jesus open up his very heart revealing his nature directly rather than through his deeds:
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11:28–30)
When we love Christ the way he wants us to this is who we become and where life begins. Gentle, humble, lowly servants whose lives are given over to the Savior and the neighbors he commands us to love. The Lord is uncompromising in his standards always pushing us toward perfection, but his ways are ultimately not a burden. On the contrary, they will release us to live life as God intended.
Deep and far-reaching
When people choose Christ and those Christ came to save over everything they are affected. The pen-maker’s story has another component that illustrates this. When he was making a pen for a very good friend he experienced something special. The process went flawlessly, a very rare occurrence. Even more rare, in fact unique in the practice of his craft, was the perception that God was with him during this time of giving his life for the happiness of his friend. As you can imagine, it was a deeply meaningful experience for him.
Because the woman with cancer passed away, we will never know what impact her selfless act would have had on her own life here. But I dream of her often, and in all of those dreams my mother is with God. Although such dreams could be the product of my hopeful mind, they seem uniquely real among the normal nighttime chatter that goes on in my head. Because she believed and sacrificed the quality of her life for the sake of another, I know she now lives.
Loving Christ above all else and becoming a gentle lowly servant doesn’t only give life to the servant. It also changes the served. I will never forget the story of the pen-maker because he made the pen on that special day for me. I was the person he served as he gave part of his precious life and resources solely to make me happy. Christ’s teachings and the actions of my friend remind me that people who give you a gift are not just being nice. In fact, the gift isn’t the gift at all. The gift is their precious life that was sacrificed in love for the receiver. I am changed by his losing his life for me.
Did the true stories of the pen-maker and cancer patient touch you? I’m guessing they did because when a person lives as God intended their life always touches people. It is my hope and prayer that these stories of Christ’s sayings applied can help us all embrace losing our life to save it.
One final thought and word of encouragement from my friend the pen-maker. When I told him I was writing this post for the blog, he reminded me of his story and said: “Allowing God to live through you is what makes life meaningful.” Such a beautiful personal expression of exactly what Jesus promised. Give your life for the sake of Jesus and others and feel God’s presence as you serve Him. It seems counterintuitive in our society of self-indulgence to put yourself second, much less to become humble, gentle, lowly servants irrevocably in love with our Savior. But our society is wrong. Jesus is the only way to find real life and truly know yourself. If sacrificing yourself brings a sense of God at your side, can there be any better living than that? I think not. May God bless you this and every day in your faith journey.
Dave
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