| Losing Your Life to Find It |
| by David A. DePra |
| "Whosoever seeks to save his live will lose it, and |
| whosoever loses his life for my sake will find it." |
| These words of Jesus are familiar words. But like so many of |
| the familiar passages of the Bible, the real meaning often gets |
| lost in the familiarity. We can get so used to hearing a verse that |
| we become dull to what God is saying through it. To us, it is |
| what we have heard so many times before. |
| We dare not do this with this verse. Why? Because of it's |
| importance. Notice what is at stake here. Jesus is talking about |
| losing your life! He is talking about how to find true life in God. So |
| certainly, if we don't get this right, nothing else is going to be |
| right in our Christian life either. This verse is clearly talking about |
| the most important thing imaginable: Life in Christ. And it's |
| telling us how to either lose it or find it. |
| Jesus is stating, in this one sentence, a principle of the |
| kingdom of God which is so important that it might be said that it |
| is a governing principle. It is, in fact, a description of how creation |
| functions. Embodied in this one statement of Jesus is the |
| plan of salvation, the process of growth, and a revelation of what |
| the relationship between God and His church is supposed to be. |
| In this verse is the HOW and the WHY of these realities. |
| A Simple Equation |
| Jesus says, "If you want to find your life, then lose it. But if |
| you want to lose your life, then try to save it." If we put this down |
| as a simple equation, we get this: |
| Seek to SAVE your life = LOSE it. |
| LOSE your life in Christ = SAVE (i.e., find) it. |
| This is the opposite of how human nature thinks. We think |
| that to gain our lives we must save them. We think that if we |
| let go of our lives that we will surely lose them. This is natural |
| and understandable. But it is wrong. |
| To grasp WHY it is wrong, we must understand what Jesus |
| means by the terms He uses in the above passage. What does |
| Jesus mean when He says, "Lose your life?" What does He |
| mean when He says, "Seek to save your life?" And why does |
| doing each produce the opposite effect from what we expect? |
| Simply put, Jesus is talking about self-ownership. He is telling |
| us that we must lose our ownership of ourselves. We must lose |
| control of our lives. All of that must die. It must be uncondtionally |
| surrendered into the hands of God. If we do surrender, then we |
| will experience what real life in Christ is all about. We'll actually |
| experience resurrection in Jesus. |
| Jesus also says, "If you want to die, demand your life. Hold |
| back from unconditional surrender to God. Own yourself; decide |
| for yourself. Choose to determine the outcome of your life |
| through your own works and reasoning. And to it all very |
| religiously." |
| Now, don't make the mistake of thinking that Jesus is drawing |
| a contrast between the saved and sinners. He is not specifically |
| doing that at all in these verses. To the contrary, He is talking |
| to His people; to those whom He has already called. He is |
| saying, "I have called you for a purpose. You had nothing to do |
| with it. It was completely by My grace. But now that I have |
| called you, you must choose. You must choose to either |
| surrender yourself to Me, or hold onto yourself." |
| No one can unconditionally surrender to God unless they |
| believe Him. This is, therefore, a call for faith. But even that is |
| something God will grant us a measure of by His grace. Losing |
| one's life in Christ is therefore one of the easiest things possible |
| for us -- although our flesh will resist our choice. Yet we must do |
| it, both in the overall sense as a commitment to God, and on a |
| daily basis, as we carry our Cross behind Jesus Christ. |
| A Work of Grace |
| Never think that God has called us by His grace only to |
| leave everything else up to us afterwards. No. God calls us by |
| His grace and then works in us by His grace. Nothing is up to |
| us except one thing: Surrender. It is up to us to lose our life in |
| His purposes. It is up to us to take up our Cross. |
| HOW do we surrender? Surrender first takes place as an act |
| of will. When God brings us to the place where we see He wants |
| a surrender, we must first choose to believe and trust Him. Then |
| we must actually choose to unconditionally surrender our |
| lives to Him. We must say, "Into your hands do I commit my |
| spirit." And then, if we really mean what we have said, we must |
| obey accordingly. We must "work out" our surrender in whatever |
| form is necessary. The consequences of our surrender, |
| and of our obedience, we must then leave with God. |
| Losing to Find |
| Under normal circumstances, seeking to save one's life is not |
| wrong. It is natural and legitimate. But in this passage, Jesus |
| says that it is a sure way to LOSE. If I try to SAVE my life, Jesus |
| says, I'll end up losing it. Or, to put it another way, if I try to gain |
| my life, death will be the result. |
| The most obvious "life" to which Jesus is referring, the "life" we |
| are never to try to "save," or preserve, would be this temporal life. |
| We must never try to save or preserve our old man in Adam. |
| But that is only the beginning of what Jesus is talking about here. |
| Jesus is actually saying that we must never try to save or |
| preserve ANY of our life -- including even our life in Christ. We |
| must fully and unconditionally surrender ourselves to God. Total |
| abandonment to God is the only way to true life in Christ. |
| It may seem odd to suggest that we could try to "save" our life |
| in Christ. Afterall, we only have life in Christ if we are already |
| saved. But what Jesus is warning against is the tendency for |
| Christians to try to control the outcome of their walk with Christ |
| through the efforts of religious flesh. He is telling us that if we |
| really belong to Him, we must relinquish even that into His hands. |
| All of us try to control the outcome of our spiritual lives. God |
| works in us along a particular line and we resist. We don't want |
| to die the death required to advance into freedom. We'd rather |
| try to accomplish "God's will" in our own way -- a more |
| comfortable and less costly way. And we always do it quite |
| religiously. Terribly religiously. In fact, some of us have even |
| used self-imposed suffering and humiliation to preserve |
| ourselves. Anything to avoid the real issue. |
| Of course we usually do this mostly in ignorance. The flesh |
| tends to have a natural reaction to defend itself against anything |
| which would violate it's territory. Often, we don't even need to |
| think about it. We throw our guard up against God and try to |
| avoid what He is doing. We mask ourselves in religious garb and |
| try to convince ourselves, and God, that we really do belong to |
| Him without strings attached. |
| Fortunately, God is never suprised or shocked by any of this. |
| He already knows we are going to do these things. He knows |
| what we are made of. Despite it all, God continues to invade us. |
| He continues to disturb us; stir up our complacency. He loves us |
| too much to allow us to be ill at ease. The Holy Spirit is |
| continually seeking access to us for the continuing work of grace |
| and redemption which Jesus Christ has won for us. |
| Ultimately, however, I must choose. I must choose to either |
| save my life, or lose it for Christ. I must do this in many "little" |
| ways each day. But then there will be the "big" ways -- those |
| crisis points in which I will either go on with God in a deeper way, |
| or regress to a point where God must start all over with me. |
| It is never too late to repent and surrender to God. There is |
| no sin I can commit, nor any bad choice which I can make which |
| is too deep for the Redemption of Jesus Christ and the full |
| forgiveness of God to reach. It is always always possible to turn |
| and say to God, "Into your hands I commit my spirit." It is never |
| too late to lose my life in Jesus Christ. |
| Ownership |
| "Losing my life for Jesus' sake" means exactly what the |
| phrase suggests: I must lose my life. This means that I don't |
| control it anymore. In fact, I no longer know where my life is, or |
| where it is going. Yet I trust the One who is leading. I trust the |
| One who is in control. |
| This issue is clearly a matter of OWNERSHIP. Who owns me? |
| Have I staked a claim of ownership upon any part of my |
| existance? Have I reserved for myself the right to have the final |
| word regarding anything about myself? Do I operate under the |
| spirit of self-owership? If I do, then I am seeking to SAVE my life |
| -- seeking to OWN my life. I am on the throne, at least partially. |
| I have set limits upon the access I will give to God. |
| When we think of examples of how we might seek to save |
| ourselves, or be our own boss, there are some which are quite |
| obvious. For instance, if I am trying to maintain myself with God |
| through my own works, I am obviously trying to save myself. I |
| may not call it that, or even bring salvation into my thinking. But |
| as long as my works are my basis for standing before God, I am |
| seeking to save myself. And the only result possible is that I will |
| LOSE my life. |
| This is exactly what happens, too. Ask anyone who has spent |
| years trying to live up to their self-imposed standards for |
| walking with Christ. They will likely tell you they are buried |
| underneath an avalanche of condemnation, fear, and guilt. This |
| is the only possible result of putting myself under such |
| self-imposed laws. I LOSE real life in Christ because I seek to |
| save myself through my own efforts. |
| Seeking to save or preserve my life always results in a fake, |
| soulish type of spirituality. It always results in religious flesh |
| governing my life. I may say the right spiritual things, and appear |
| to be a most spiritual and deep person. But underneath it all, |
| I have somewhere side-stepped the real Cross God had for me, |
| and opted for my own agenda. Yet we need not judge one |
| another in these matters. Our focus should be to present OUR |
| bodies, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. Indeed, |
| this is what it means to "judge ourselves, that we be not judged." |
| A Dependent Nature |
| Anytime I decide to own myself, even along legitimate lines, I |
| will LOSE what I'm after. But this is not because God is going to |
| come down from heaven and punish me or something. It is |
| because that's the way it works -- it's as a "law." It's the way |
| things MUST work in the kingdom of God, because it's the only |
| way they CAN work. |
| Why? Because what we are talking about here has to do with |
| man's -- and God's -- fundamental nature. Man was |
| originally designed to be fully dependent upon God. God did not |
| make man with any capacity at all to be independent. Therefore, |
| when man declared his independence from God, he became |
| something contrary to the original nature God put in him. The |
| result was distortion of character, and a twisting of his real nature. |
| That is always what happens when a living creature begins to |
| operate out of the realm for which he is suited. |
| Man is not suited to save, control, own, or rule himself. He |
| can't do it. It produces death. Only if I surrender my self to God |
| without strings attached do I return to the NORM. And the norm |
| is LIFE -- now provided through a surrender to God through |
| His Son, Jesus Christ. |
| The greatest sin a Christian can commit is to seek to save |
| himself. Why? Because by doing so, I actually deny Jesus |
| Christ. I seek to salvage myself for my own ends. This is the |
| very essense of the sin of Adam! It is what God is delivering us |
| from. No wonder Jesus says that the end result is that I will |
| LOSE the very thing I seek to save through my own efforts! |
| Seek First the Kingdom |
Jesus said to instead "Seek first the kingdom of God." That |
means to live for the eternal. It means that rather than try to |
| salvage something out of this life for myself, and thus "save" my |
| life, I'll surrender it all to God. The result? I'll FIND real life. In |
| other words, I'll find Christ Himself. And along with Christ, I'll |
| have added to me all that is necessary to achieve God's |
purposes in me. That too, is as "a law." |
| The issue again and again is one of OWNERSHIP. One of |
| HEADSHIP. Who is my God? Who runs my life? Not in theory, |
| or in a doctrinal sense, but really? |
| We find the issue of headship wonderfully illustrated in the |
| book of Revelation. There God illustrates this great principle in |
| the 20th chapter: |
| And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was |
| given unto them. And I saw the souls of them that were |
| beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the Word of God, and |
| which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither |
| had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands. |
| And they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years...on |
| such the second death has no power. (Rev. 20:4,6) |
| Notice what qualified these ones to reign with Christ: They |
| were "beheaded" for His sake. In other words, they had their |
| OWN HEADSHIP cut-off! God, in symbol form, is showing us |
| here this same Truth. He is telling us that if we want to reign and |
| rule with Christ, we cannot reign and rule ourselves. We must |
| LOSE all of that in order to find Him. |
| In the final analysis, the only way I can reign and rule with |
| Christ is if Christ first reigns and rules over me. There is simply |
| no other way I can be immune to "the second death." And there |
| is no other way I can experience what God has for me through |
| the resurrection. |
| Carrying Our Cross Daily |
The instrument of death God offers us is our cross. Jesus |
said, "If any man would be My disciple, he must pick up his cross |
and follow Me." This is not a one time event. It is a continual |
process. I am to walk through life carrying a cross. |
This does not take away from the fact that, in Christ, I do die |
all at once. It simply means that there is a process by which |
His death must be worked out and made manifest. Through the |
continual "losing of my life," it is worked out. And as His death |
is made manifest in my life, so is His life. For if I will "lose my |
| life" for Jesus' sake, I will find it in Him. * |