There are basically two kinds of sermons on the Christian life. The first type of sermon views the Christian life as a kind of puzzle to be solved, with the message going something like this: Life is full of hardships, and frustrations, and obstacles. But if you do this one thing; if you understand this “one weird trick” (whatever that may be), then you can unlock the secret to living a victorious Christian life. That secret may be any number of things: prayer, or tithing, or fasting, or regular devotions, or Bible reading, or “name it and claim it”, but the gist of this kind of sermon is that once you put into practice whatever it is that’s being promoted on that particular Sunday, your life as a follower of Jesus Christ will be simpler, and easier, and more fulfilling. Obstacles will fall away. Frustrations will vanish. The life of faith will be transformed into a daily adventure filled with joy and delight. I’m exaggerating, but you get the idea. The theme of this kind of sermon is that if your life as a Christian is hard, or frustrating, or less than fulfilling, then you’re doing it wrong. That’s the first kind of sermon on the Christian life. It’s very popular.
The second kind of sermon is different. This kind of sermon says that life isn’t hard because you’re doing it wrong. Life has been hard ever since Adam and Eve bit into that apple. Our lives on this earth are often painful and disappointing. We go through times when just making it through the day requires all of our willpower, and joy is hard to come by. Things often don’t work the way they should. People don’t keep their promises. The promotion you worked for never comes. The lab results come back and they’re not good. Your family is in conflict. Or maybe nothing’s really that bad, but you just feel vaguely dissatisfied, and impatient for something better. And that’s life. That’s reality. As Westley, aka the Dread Pirate Roberts, says to Buttercup in The Princess Bride, “Life is Pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
But this life isn’t the whole story. In fact, it isn’t even most of the story. There is much more to come, an eternity to come, once we “shuffle off this mortal coil”. And in the meantime, our faith can help to sustain us in a world that ranges from very bad, to not so great, to just OK, to pretty good. In the end, if we continue to trust God, and listen, and follow, we will find that it was all worth it. That’s the hope and the promise. Every choice to continue believing, every choice to continue obeying, every choice to continue persevering in the midst of whatever circumstances we find ourselves, in the midst of whatever mental and emotional state we find ourselves in – every act of faithfulness will be rewarded. And someday not so far from now we will look back on all of this; all the toil, and suffering, and heartache, mixed with joy, and gladness, and times of refreshment, and we will testify that it was all worth it, every bit of it. The good and the bad, the happy and the sad.
That’s the second kind of sermon on the Christian life. That one’s not quite as popular. But that is the kind you will hear this morning. I really don’t have any choice. Because at the core of today’s Bible passage are Jesus’ recognition that he is about to die, and his teaching that we, like him, must embrace death, to the point even of “hating” our life in this world.
“23 Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25 Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.” – John 12:23-26
It’s hard to spin that into a sermon on having Your Best Life Now.
Please don’t misunderstand me. There is real value in things like prayer, and tithing, and regular devotions, and Bible reading. Our faith does bring a measure of joy and peace. Christianity does relieve us of many burdens, burdens that God never intended us to bear. The burden of guilt. The burden of shame. The burden of fear of death. The burden of thinking that we have to earn God’s acceptance by doing good things, and thinking good thoughts, and saying good words – which often translates into trying to please all the people around us, an effort which is doomed to fail. Faith in Christ does relieve us of many burdens. There are real benefits in this life to following Christ. But we can’t escape the fact that following Christ means following him in a journey to the cross.
Let’s unpack this a bit. First, is this a one-off or a consistent theme of Christ’s teaching? It’s a consistent theme. Listen to these similar passages:
“37 Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” – Matthew 10:37-39
“32 Remember Lot’s wife! 33 Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it.” – Luke 17:32-33
“34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 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. 36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? 37 Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” – Mark 8:34-37
Let me ask you a question. Are you trying to hold on to your life, to keep it? Are you trying to save your life? You might say, well of course I am! But Jesus says that if you are holding tightly onto all the things that the world thinks of as “life,” then you will lose your life. Why? Because you will be unwilling to let go of those things in order to embrace Christ. You see, you can’t do both. You can’t live for this world and also live for Christ; you can’t seek first what this world offers and also seek first his kingdom and his righteousness; you can’t live as if this life is all there is, and then gain entry into the next one. You really can’t. You have to choose. And what Jesus is telling us is that when you extend your hand to grasp the life to come, then by necessity, you will also be releasing your grasp on this one.
What does it mean to “lose your life” for the sake of Christ? Jesus says that we must “take up our cross” in order to follow him. What does that mean? Roman executioners would sometimes required a condemned man to shoulder his own cross, and to carry it to the
place of execution where he would be nailed to it, and crucified. The cross, then, was a symbol of death. Verse 34 explains the metaphor: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Losing your life for Christ, then, means choosing to deny yourself; relinquishing things that you could legitimately claim and hold on to, things that the world around us considers to be the essence of life.
It means, for example, yielding your right to do as you please with your time. Benjamin Franklin, in his Poor Richard’s Almanak, wrote, “Do you love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of”. Old Ben was right. Time is life. And so “losing” our life means giving up the right to set our own priorities, and instead ordering our days and years according to God’s priorities. Being willing to relinquish our goals. Accepting the loss of opportunities for personal advancement. Notice I’m not saying we should have no priorities or goals, no hopes for achievement. I’m not saying we shouldn’t invest in a career, or that we shouldn’t engage in secular pursuits. What I’m saying is that we hold those things with an open hand, so that if called upon to give them up, if presented with a choice between following God and following our goals, we let the goals die.
Sometimes God endorses our passions; sometimes God rewards our pursuits. But we need to be willing to accept the death of those dreams when God has other plans for us. That’s part of what it means to “lose your life” for the sake of Christ and the gospel. It means first of all investing our time – our hours and days, our weeks, and months, and years – as God would have us to do. And it means accepting that even when we have been pursuing what seemed to us to be godly and faithful goals, God may have other plans. Our time, and our lives, belong to him. “Man proposes, but God disposes”.
Let’s pause for reflection. How do you view your time? Do you view it, first of all, as “your” time, to use however you wish? Or do you view it as belonging to God, to be used as He wishes? Let me give you a scenario. You’ve worked all week. You have a demanding job. Maybe you have children who need to be cared for; helped with homework, driven to soccer practice, kept from tormenting each other. Maybe you have older parents who need help and support. Church commitments. A house and yard to take care of. Bills to pay. Etcetera, etcetera. “The full catastrophe”, as Tevya put it in “Fiddler on the Roof”. But you’ve managed to carve out a precious couple of hours on Sunday afternoon to relax and watch a ball game on television. And just as you’re sitting down on the couch with some chips and a cold beverage, you get a call. Someone in your small group is hurting. They’re dealing with an issue. They need someone to talk to.
You know what it feels like to say “yes” to that request? It feels like something is dying. It’s the death of your beautiful vision for how you were going to spend the next two hours. The death of that brief opportunity to relax and kick back. It doesn’t feel joyful. That’s the thing about death. It feels like dying! It doesn’t feel good. It feels bad. It feels like disappointment, and loss, and seeing something you were counting on, and looking forward to, slip through your fingers. And that’s the kind of choice we are faced with every day. Live for ourselves; protect what is ours; hold onto the things we want and feel we need, no matter what. Or be willing let them go. That’s what it means to lose our life for Christ, and in so doing, to save it.
Dying to self also means yielding your right to do as you please with your possessions. But someone might object: shouldn’t we work, and study, and strive to better ourselves and improve our circumstances? Of course! Paul instructs us in this way:
“Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.” – Ephesians 4:28
“Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” – 1 Timothy 5:8
“Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good, in order to provide for urgent needs and not live unproductive lives.” – Titus 3:14
Yes, God wants us to work, and to be productive, and to earn a living, so that we can provide for our own needs, and the needs of our families, and so that we can help those in need.
At the same time, despite that fact that we worked to earn what we have, we should not regard it as belonging to us, but to God:
“For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?”
– 1 Corinthians 4:7
“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.” – Acts 4:32
“Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” – 1 Peter 4:9-10
In the last passage, Peter goes beyond just our money and our goods, to our abilities and other resources. All of these things come from God, and are given to us to serve God and his people. We are not the owners of those things; rather, Paul calls us stewards. In other words, God has entrusted them to us for the advancement of his kingdom and the accomplishment of his purposes in the world. They are not given to us primarily for our own pleasure, and security, and satisfaction. And so dying, losing our life, means giving up our rights to do with our gifts, and abilities, and possessions whatever we please. It means offering them up to God for his use.
I’ll go a step farther. Dying to self, denying oneself, means relinquishing the right to do as you please in general; but instead, guiding your conduct according to what best serves God’s purposes. Paul gives us an example as it pertains to eating and drinking:
“9 Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. 10 For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? 11 So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. 12 When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. 13 Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.” – 1 Corinthians 8:9-13
“19 Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. . . . 22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. 23 I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.”
– 1 Corinthians 9:19, 22-23
Even in our mundane everyday choices, like what to have for dinner, God is calling us to be willing to give up our rights; to let them die, in order to serve others.
Think about it. What happens when you die? You lose all of your possessions. You lose all of your rights. After the funeral, your family members gather together in the lawyer’s office for the reading of the will, and everything you own will be divided up among your heirs. Your bank accounts, your house, your car, your stamp collection – all of those things will be given to someone else, or sold to the highest bidder and the proceeds distributed. What about your rights? They are all moot. You have no rights. You’re dead.
What Paul is telling us in these passages is that in order to follow Christ, we need to live as though that had already happened, as if we had already departed from this life, and had therefore lost everything. Listen to what he writes in Philippians 3:7-8:
“7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ”
What rights do you have? Do you have a right to be free from danger? Free from suffering? Free from false accusations? Free from mistreatment? Free from false imprisonment? God may call you to relinquish those rights for the sake of Christ. Even today, he is calling on Christians in many parts of the world to suffer the loss of those rights. The pastors and missionaries whom we support as members of Providence know that to be true.
Let me make an important clarification. Am I saying that we should have no possessions? Or am I saying that we have no rights? No, I am not. Even the Declaration of Independence, a secular political document, recognizes that we are all endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. As beings made in God’s image, we have human rights. Am I then saying that we should never defend our rights? I am not. Jesus defended himself when falsely accused by the Pharisees. Jesus even instructed his disciples to arm themselves with swords. Yes. It’s in the Bible. You can look it up. But he also told Peter to put away his sword when Peter attempted to defend him against being arrested.
What I am saying is not that we should never defend ourselves or defend our rights. What I am saying is that following Christ means voluntarily relinquishing our rights when doing so advances the cause of Christ and of the gospel. We need to be willing to “lose” them, and to lose the things they protect. That calls for discernment. It isn’t always easy to know when it best serves the gospel for us to claim and defend our rights, or when we should instead voluntarily give them up. But that difficulty doesn’t alter the principle: that what we are called upon to do as Christians is not fundamentally to hold onto our lives in this world, to hold onto our time, our possessions, our rights. What we are called upon to do is imitate our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who relinquished all of those things for us.
Again, what does it feel like when we choose not to defend ourselves, choose not to defend our rights? It feels like dying. It feels like we are giving up something important. Because we are. But we do it in order to gain something far greater. Because on the other side of that death, that dying to self, is resurrection, and transformation, and eternal life.
And so let me ask you again: are you holding on to your life with a clenched fist, with an iron grip? Are you holding on to your time, and your possessions, and your freedom; your privileges, and your plans? Or are you holding them with an open hand, offering them up to God to do with as he wills? Remember what Jesus taught us:
“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.” -- Mark 8:35
Let’s be specific. Is there something that God has been calling you to give up for the sake of Christ and the gospel, something that you have been unwilling to let go of? Is there some right that God has been calling you to relinquish in order to advance his kingdom? Perhaps a right to safety and security, or a right to be well thought of, or a right to be untroubled by other people’s problems. Perhaps it’s simply a right to have a peaceful life free from worry, or a right to protect what you’ve worked so hard to acquire. Do any of those resonate with you? What Christ is telling us is that the more we try to hold on to those things with a clenched fist, the more our lives will squeeze through our fingers and ultimately be lost. If we serve ourselves and our own lives only, we will in the end lose everything; we will lose ourselves and will be lost forever. I pray none of us will suffer that loss.
But there is more to Christ’s words here than just a warning. There’s also a promise. Let’s read it again:
“23 Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25 Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.” – John 12:23-26
When I was in second grade, we did a science experiment. Maybe you did something similar. We each took a bean of some kind, maybe a pinto bean. We moistened a paper towel and put it in a styrofoam cup. Then we stuck the bean in between the moist towel and the side of the cup and put it in the window, in the sun. Over the course of several days, we could see roots and a bean plant sprouting from the bean. The magic of science! But in the process the bean was destroyed. Over time, as the plant continued to grow, it was consumed. It’s the same with any kind of seed, like wheat or corn. What happens if you take kernels of corn and bury them in the ground? Over time, if you add sun and water, you will have a cornstalk several feet high, with many ears of corn, each covered in new kernels, hundreds or thousands more than you started with. But if you then dig into the dirt to retrieve the original kernels that you buried, what will you find? Nothing. They’re gone. They died. They were transformed into the new plant.
What I want to tell you this morning is that your life can be that grain of wheat, that kernel of corn. Your life can have a positive influence on the world that is a huge multiple of what you could ever accomplish by serving only yourself. You can produce “many” seeds. But there’s just one catch. You have to die. You have to give up your claim to your own life and to all of the things that comprise it; your time, your possessions, your plans, your rights. Are you willing to do that? Are you willing for God to use your life in ways you never could have imagined? He can and he will. But in order for him to do that, you have to relinquish your “ownership” over your life, and turn it over to him to use as he sees fit. And that’s not pleasant. Again, it’s hard. It feels like dying. It feels like losing, or risking the loss, of everything you have and everything you hope for. But in reality, it’s just the opposite. It’s not losing everything; it’s gaining Christ, who is worth far more than everything in this world put together; it’s gaining eternal life. Will you decide, today and every day, to do that? Are you, as Paul wrote in Philippians, willing to suffer the loss of everything because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus?
What happens when we do this? Yes, it feels like dying. But once we’ve made the choice to do it, to relinquish what we were holding on to, there is a profound sense of joy and gladness. Not in the loss itself; that still may be grievous to us. But even in the midst of sorrow, we rejoice in the knowledge that what we gave up, as much as it meant to us, as much as we valued it, was worth far less that what we are receiving in return, which is eternal life in Jesus Christ. The author of Hebrews writes these words to a group of believers who were experiencing renewed persecution, calling on them to respond in the same way they had previously:
32 Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you endured in a great conflict full of suffering. 33 Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. 34 You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions. 35 So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.” -- Hebrews 10:32-35
Those to whom he was writing had been falsely accused, publicly humiliated and mistreated. They had been deprived of many things that most people would consider essential to a good life: their possessions, their safety and security, their freedom, their peace and well-being, their reputations, perhaps even their livelihoods. But what was their response? They “joyfully accepted” the loss of these things, because they knew that they had “better and lasting possessions”. They knew that their faith would be “richly rewarded”. And so also will ours, if we are willing to lose our lives to save them.
In our last few minutes, I’d like to look at the other half of the equation; not only what it means to us to lose our lives for Christ, and thus gain them in the end, but also what it meant for Christ to lose his own life. Let’s continue reading in verse 27:
“27 Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name!”
Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.”
29 The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.
30 Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. 31 Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33 He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die. – John 12:27-33
When Jesus calls on us to give up our lives, to lose them for his sake and for the gospel, he is calling us to follow his example. He is calling us to do what he has already done; to follow the path he already laid out. He gave his life for us; He sacrificed everything in order that we might have forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
“. . . whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” -- Mark 10:43-45
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” – John 10:11
What was the result of his sacrifice? Let’s end with Paul’s hymn to Christ in Philippians chapter two:
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
In giving his life, Christ purchased eternal life for us. Like a seed falling to ground and dying, his death resulted in untold millions of souls being saved. But God did not permit his death to be final; God raised him from the grave and exalted him to the highest place in heaven.
In the same way, God will raise to eternal life and everlasting honor those who relinquish their claim on their own lives in this world in order to gain Christ. Will you choose today to be among them?
