“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” Matthew 16:24-25

Last time I let my mind and heart wander and roam a little, as I was thinking out loud about writing these newsletters over the last two years, what they have been about, and thinking about a new place to start. Thank you, if you reached out and offered some moral support.

Stories have always been about us, a mirror in which we can see ourselves — our hopes and dreams, but also our greatest dilemmas.

I believe that with all of my heart, so much so it is on the back cover of both of my short story volumes. Jesus came to this earth to teach us, there was never a moment in His life when He was not trying to be an example for us, to lead us along the better path. But there were some more pivotal moments, times when the spotlight became brighter. It was at these moments that He paused, and told a story, or parable; or sometimes would just say something which seemed like a riddle.

“What did He just say?” would often be the response.

But if you take some time to look at His words more closely, you may realize why they’re confusing, why at first they don’t seem to make sense. It is because He was simultaneously talking about two different things.

Or put it this way — He was talking about one thing, seen from two different vantage points.

Or even this way — He was evaluating something, a thought or a behavior, first based on the values of this world, but then based on God’s values, the values of the Kingdom of God. He was holding them both up for you to see, hoping you would realize which one was better.

One of the better examples was when He said: “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”

What?

Jesus is telling us what will be required if we want to “come after” Him, to follow Him, to truly dedicate our lives to Him. We must deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him. Interesting, because He had not yet died on the cross; this greatest of sacrifices had not yet been made. Up until Jesus was killed on a cross, and truly, only after His ascension and His status as the true Messiah fully confirmed — the only association anyone could ever have with crucifixion was that it was a brutal way to die, for criminals, a curse even. And so, maybe this statement was just something He wanted the disciples to file away, something that would only make sense later, like other things He said.

But, if we can get past this one thing, and look at the rest of His words, what can we learn?

If we want to follow Him, truly, to dedicate our lives to Him and be godly disciples, we will have to deny ourselves. Deny ourselves, how? But then He goes on to say if we wish to “save” our life, we will “lose” it. Normally, any pains we take to save something, hopefully will work out just the way we wanted. He must mean something else. And only if you can look at these words from a totally different perspective, will they finally make sense.

As fallen humanity, as sinners, our tendency will always be to take matters into our own hands. We do this, because most of the time, we trust our own judgment. In any given situation, when we feel threatened, we may trust our initial impulse to save something, regardless of what this is.

It may be our young child who is getting ready to jump out into the street. It would be very good to trust that impulse and grab them. But it may be an impulse to shut our mouths, to not say what we really think because we may lose someone’s confidence. Maybe we shouldn’t say it right now, maybe they’re not ready to hear it; or maybe there’s a better way to say it. But if our only motivation is codependent, that is, if our reluctance is only because we’re afraid they may not like us; then it’s bad, it’s selfish, it has nothing to do with what’s really right. The truth is that we are a coward.

And so, Jesus is saying that our first impulse is usually fallen, for we are fallen. Our first impulse is often motivated by some selfish concern, for we are selfish. We think our motives are good, we usually think we are “saving” something that should be saved, but we are often wrong. Only when we can confess the fact we are a fallen sinner, only when we have truly done this and become a disciple of God, do we become aware that on most days we cannot trust our first impulse. Too much of us has become influenced by the fallen world. Too much of us has become addicted to things of this world. Too much of the time we believe we need the approval of the world to survive.

And so, Jesus is asking us – can we finally in humility accept just how broken and fallen we are? If so, we won’t trust our own judgement and first impulse and try to save things ourselves. We will allow the Holy Spirit to convict us, to open our eyes to the greater truth and allow It to give us the courage to do the right thing, in spite of any worldly consequences that may come our way.

Just as Jesus was silent before his shearers, and chose death, for us; we can choose to “lose” our life, not anything good, but all of our sinful and worldly impulses. We will choose to “lose,” or let go of our sinful and selfish impulses. And when we do this, “for My sake,” for His sake, we will be honoring God. And hopefully we will strive to do this, over and over again, for the rest of our lives. This will be our salvation.

Next time, let’s continue with this, but also speak of the true self and the false self. I believe these concepts will help us to understand these critical things even better.

Sam