A Loss Of “life”

A Loss of “Life”

Read: Luke 9:23-25

“Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.”

Luke 9:24

“A man’s god is that for which he lives.”

—Martyn Lloyd-Jones

IN WORD Jesus’ words are frightening. Who doesn’t want to save his own life? The emotionally disturbed, perhaps, but the rest of us hang on to it with a passion. We try to build it up and establish it with our reputations, our careers, our enjoyments, our families, our friends, our accomplishments—anything we can think of, really. We begin life with an emptiness that needs to be filled—or, more accurately, that demands to be filled. From childhood forward, we seek fulfillment in whatever will temporarily satisfy that emptiness. And that’s the problem; we seek fulfillment with unworthy things. Sometimes those things are good and noble, other times not. Either way, they are not the eternal fulfillment God wants us to have. They will eventually destroy us.

Jesus condemns what is for us a very natural tendency, this urge to establish our lives with whatever makes us feel alive. But simply feeling alive isn’t the same as having life. In His love, God will strip us of all of these false props. They are our idols. If you don’t think you’re that attached to them, measure your reaction when God pulls them away. We clutch them with desperate hands; they are sometimes the only life we’ve known.

IN DEED Jesus tells us to go ahead and let go. We must lose those things we call “life,” those earthly fulfillments we thought we needed. We have deeper cravings than those, and Jesus knows how to satisfy them. When we cease clinging to those things, people, or ideas that we’ve used to define our lives, we can cling to that which God has given for true life. When He exposes our idols, we can know true worship. But that’s the catch: He must first take them away, and we must let go of them. That hurts. It genuinely feels like losing your life. In the end, it’s the only way to save it.