Joining Jesus – 11th February 2019

4. ‘Choose Life!’
From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. Matthew 16:21-24

As He engaged in His Mission, Jesus invited people to follow Him. His invitation confronted the first disciples, and all of us with an enormous and eternal choice:

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
The choice is between seeking to ‘save’ our life or being prepared to ‘lose it’ for the sake of Jesus. There is so much that could be said about this challenge but I want to go straight to what I believe is the core of what Jesus is saying here. His words ‘whoever wants to save their life’ mean – ‘Whoever wants to stay in control of their life and still think of it as ‘my life’. People who make this choice will lose their life because they have never become the kind of followers that Jesus is seeking. The phrase ‘lose it (their life)’ refers to the ‘kingdom life that Jesus came to bring’. The life He offers cannot be received by people who want to carry on living their own life and somehow make Jesus a part of it! The result of us continuing to live our own lives is that that we will not truly know Jesus in this life and in eternity!

On the contrary, Jesus continues, ‘whoever loses their life for me’, these words mean – ‘whoever surrenders their life and submits to Jesus as Lord’ These people will ‘find life’ because the new life that Jesus offers is a ‘replacement’ for the life that we live when we stay in control. As Paul writes in his second letter to the church at Corinth:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 2 Corinthians 5:17
A follower of Christ is, in the words of Jesus and Paul, a new creature whose old life ‘has gone’ and who is living a ‘new life’ with Jesus at the centre.

The challenge of these words of Jesus and Paul, is that Jesus never offered what passes for ‘being a Christian’ in many churches. Jesus never offered eternal life to people who would continue to live their own lives and turn up at church on Sunday for worship gatherings. He offered a new life to those who would be willing to surrender their life to Him, and join Him in His mission.

As I write these words I am personally, deeply challenged, by the uncomplicated yet radical choice that Jesus presents us with. I find myself wanting to look for a less challenging choice that will make it easier for me, and for others, to follow Jesus. But as hard as I look I can’t find one, Jesus didn’t offer ‘an easy road’ Rather, He said:

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. Matthew 7:13,14.

As I conclude this short series on what is means to be a disciple of Jesus, I ask you, and indeed myself, to look at some other words that were written by the Apostle Paul and to ask the Lord, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to help us to reach the place where these words can be our living testimony:

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20