“For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.”
Here’s the great dichotomy that partners with Christ’s popular truth: “But many who are first shall be last, and the last first.” It’s a theme of Scripture that those who give up their possessions and lives in this life for Jesus, will end up not losing treasure but gaining “a hundred fold in heaven.” But whoever tries to preserve their current life will find that the earthly blessings will be the only blessing they will end up having, receiving nothing in heaven.
This reminds me of a sermon from Francis Chan where he basically says that Christians never really sacrifice anything, because when they give up anything for their lives they end up storing treasures in heaven for themselves. How empty are the earthly treasures in which “moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.”(Matthew 6:19) This not only refers to our earthly possessions, but our earthly lives where time, weariness, stress, and sickness wear our flesh down to the point where we eventually lose it “whoever desires to save his life will lose it.”
Application: My life, ambitions, desires, whether tangible or impossible, good or sinful; will all burn to the point where only the eternal, everlasting Triune Jehovah stands in glory. If I allow my “self” life to be crucified and let my life be lost in the purpose and Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, I will truly find life.
“But whoever loses His life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it”
“Oh the wonderful cross, Oh the wonderful cross, bids me come and die, and find that I may truly live.”- Chris Tomlin’s “Wonderful Cross”
“I count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss for all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ.” (Philippians 3:8)
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