When I was a little boy, my family had a nickname for me because of a certain tendency that I had. I was called rattle-head. Part of the reason for the nickname was my tendency to forget where I put something; I could easily lose things. I suppose that I didn't like that nickname as a little boy. But it was true. Now that I am older, I can look back on it and laugh at myself.
And you know what? I'm still somewhat of a rattle-head because I'm still losing things. Sometimes it makes me very upset with myself.
For example, the girls will tell you that I have a very strong tendency to “lose” my glasses. I take them off a lot when I have to do some close-up work because I can see better without them. But then I get involved with my work, and guess what? When I'm done I'll walk away from what I was doing without even thinking of my glasses. Sometime later I'll realize they are gone, but I won't have any idea where I had last put them. Guess who usually has to help me find them? The girls shake their heads every time it happens. You would think that I would learn my lesson. But, I know that sometime this coming week I'll be searching for them again.
Do you have any tendency like that? If I lose my glasses or you misplace whatever it is that you have a tendency to forget, nothing really bad is going to come out of it. The worst thing that could happen to me if I lost them altogether would be that I would have to buy a new pair of glasses. It would cost me, but I could always get another pair without too much difficulty. And so it goes with the ordinary, temporal things of life. For the most part you could usually replace what is lost.
But that is not true with things that are eternal, particularly your soul. If through inattention or doubt or outright rejection of the Word you lose your soul, it's gone eternally and you will suffer forever in hell. A soul cannot be replaced if it is lost. This is no laughing matter.
Of this we find a dire warning in our text. At the same time Jesus encourages us to find our soul daily in Him through a saving faith. But to find your soul in Him, you have to lose something else. You have to let go of the attractions and distractions of this life that will pull you away from Christ. In our text Jesus put it this
way, “Whoever finds his life (meaning the attractions/distractions of this world) will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake (that is, giving up harmful things for faith in the Savior) will find it.” Usually losing something is bad, but not here, for when you lose things for Christ's sake, you actually gain so much more.
May the Holy Spirit graciously guide us in the study of our text today that we may understand what Losing Your Life in Christ really means. Losing Your Life in Christ I. won't get you worldly peace; but it II. will get you the rewards of grace.
I. …won't get you worldly peace.
Jesus begins with what many would consider to be a contradictory statement for Him whom the Bible calls the Prince of Peace. It is a statement that many do not like to hear. He said, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
A sword is an instrument of war. It is the tool a person wields whereby he can bring about a violent death. How is it that Jesus brought a sword and violence with Him when He came to earth? And how is it that He, the Prince of Peace, intended to do that?
On the night of His birth in Bethlehem, the angels sang to the shepherds on the hills around the city, proclaiming that there would now be “peace on earth to men on whom God's favor rested.” This Prince of Peace had come to establish peace between God and sinful men. He would do that by offering Himself as the perfect sacrifice to atone for our sins. Yet, the vast majority of this world's people prefer to think that they can and will do what is necessary to establish their own peace with God. They also resent it when anyone tells them something different. So, if you tell them that only Jesus can give us peace with God, only Jesus can take away our sins, and that only by faith in Him we will find the way to heaven, they won't like it. You will find a division coming in-between the two of you. And that's what a sword does. It cuts, it divides, it separates, and it does so in a painful way. That was a consequence of Jesus' coming.
You see, dear friends, the enemies of Christ and salvation by grace through faith alone are hostile towards true Christianity. Sometimes that hostility has led to bloodshed in the past. The early Christians were thrown to the lions for their faith in Christ. How peaceful could that have been for them? Sadly, Jesus wants us to realize that such treatment can even come from the members of our own families. He said, “I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law – a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.”
Oh, what a sad and horrible thing it is when a believer finds himself at odds with those in this world who are supposed to be closest to him. And the cause? - his faith in Christ. That's a bad and a sad situation. But what is the believer to do? And what is he tempted to do when such a situation arises?
The temptation is to avoid the bad blood within the family circle. But to do that, you're going to have to put out your Christian light that is supposed to shine in this world. Christians will be tempted to hide their faith, or to close their eyes to the truth of faith, or even, as Peter found in the courtyard of the High Priest when Jesus was on trial, Christians will be tempted to deny their Lord. Why do such temptations come? Because a person is more concerned about his or her relationship with the relatives than about his or her relationship with the Savior. Anyone who is more concerned for such relationships on earth is making a disastrous choice.
You see, dear Christian friends, Losing Your Life for Christ , choosing Christ above all other individuals and above all other things, won't get you worldly peace. Sooner or later it will get you pain, division, or, what Jesus calls, the “sword.” The price of discipleship is a costly one.
On the one hand discipleship will cost you nothing, absolutely nothing. How so? Because God sent His Son die in your place. Because God freely gives His forgiveness to you for Jesus' sake.. Because God sends you His Holy Spirit so that you can receive this gift in faith. None of this costs you anything. You are saved totally by what God has done for you. That's grace. It cost Him everything. But He gladly paid everything because of His great love and mercy for you. On the one hand it costs you nothing to be a Christian.
On the other hand such discipleship will cost you everything for you are to Lose Your Life in Christ , denouncing everything and everyone that would come in-between you and Him. And sometimes that will mean the ones closest to you. Jesus said, “Anyone who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” In essence you Lose Your Life for Christ.
Some Christians are called upon to bear much heavier crosses than others; some Christians “lose” more than others. Why? That answer lies only in the mind of God. But our Lord promises it happens to those whom He loves. He also promises that He will give the strength you need to get you through. Even though Losing Your Life for Christ won't get you worldly peace and may even get you the pain of the sword in your own family, it means that your life is in Christ the Savior. There is no better place for your life to be than in Him, for then the second part of our text holds true
II. … Losing Your Life in Christ gets you the rewards of grace.
Jesus promised, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it….he will certainly not lose his reward.” Christ Himself promises to recognize the life that was lost in Him with a reward.
Normally a reward is something given in return to you for something you have done. If you do society a good turn and capture a dangerous criminal, a reward for his capture may be given to you. If a child picks up his clothes from the floor and helps his mother with the cleaning of the house, he may receive something in return for what he has done – like money or a trip to a special place for him. That's what we think of when we think of rewards – something given to us in return for something we have done.
Does God give us such rewards? Yes, but His basis for the reward is completely apart from the normal way that we view rewards. He does not reward us according to what we have done on our own. Thank goodness He doesn't for what we have done is sin. Even the most righteous things that we have done are nothing but dirty looking rags to Him. And the Bible adds, “The wages (or reward) for sin is death.” That's how God would have to reward us if rewards were given on the basis of what we had done on our own.
But God's rewards are not based on what we have done as much as they are based on what Christ the Savior has done for us by taking away our sin and then by working through us. They are known as rewards of grace, not merit, and they flow to those who by faith have Lost their Lives in Christ. Jesus said it this way in in our text: “Anyone who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward. (The same is true for one who receives a righteous man.) And if anyone gives a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.”
A prophet's reward or a righteous man's reward is not heaven; it's not eternal salvation. No one, not even a prophet nor an apostle, earned heaven by anything he did. Rather, we know from the Bible that anyone receives eternal salvation only through faith in Christ crucified. When we believe that, when we receive a prophet, a preacher's word on that and believe it, God graciously rewards our faith with the same blessings the prophet receives: peace with God through Christ, patience in time of tribulation, confidence to pray, and the like. And, like a prophet, we will live for Christ in all things that we do. Even such a simple act like giving a cup of cold water to a thirsty child, when that is done as an expression of the faith that Loses Its Life in Christ, pleases God. He will find a way to reward us with His grace . We may forget about what we have done, but He won't.
Perhaps some who are among us today could tell of blessings from their own experience which followed as a result of some act carried out in faith in Christ. Perhaps the blessing was even entirely out of proportion to the effort spent. Losing Your Life in Christ will get you the rewards of grace. You may see them in time.
But most especially, you will enjoy them in heaven. John writes in Revelation (14:13), “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth. Yes, says the Spirit, they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.”
Our good works do not precede us into eternity. They do not open the door to the Father's House for us, nor do they have the power to get us in. Christ crucified does and faith in Him. But once the believer is there, all of those good works and deeds of faith, even a cup of cold water, are remembered and honored. Why? Not so much because you did them, dear friend in Christ, but because they showed that you had lost your life in the Savior. That God never will forget.
Losing Your Life in Christ won't get you worldly peace, but it will get you the rewards of grace. God grant it in our lives of humble faith, for Jesus' sake. Amen.