“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Jesus said these words to His followers as they discussed persecution. This very passage has had a great deal of impact on my own life. I remember once reading this text and immediately being moved by it. For it was in that moment that I had wondered its true depth as well as the reality of its practical implications. Was I really called to “lose” my life? Did Jesus really demand my everything for sake of His glory? Was I offended that He would ask such a thing as this?
J.C. Ryle once wrote something telling about what it truly means to be a Christian. More so, he says something telling of the mistake made by many Gospel ministers and their drive toward conversion.
“Yet nothing is more common than to see people receiving the Word with joy, and then after two or three years falling away, and going back to their sins. They had not considered what it costs to be a really consistent believer and holy Christian.”
J.C. Ryle is making a valid point concerning the text we see in Matthew. The simple fact is that few people at the point of “conversion” truly seek to understand the “cost” of a life lived with Jesus. As Ryle continues he says, “it is what a man must be ready to give up if he wishes to be saved. It is the amount of sacrifice a man must submit to if he intends to serve Christ”.
How different might Christ’ Church look if individual believers were called to live in light of this? Yet, they are not called to do so by those that should in fact, call them to such a life, those being the very “ministers” of the Gospel! Instead many of us are encouraged to cling onto the worldliness that we have been so luxuriously incapacitated by. We do not embody a life that has been lost for the sake of Christ. Instead we live a life that is constantly seeking to find the common ground, to define ourselves by our own perceptions and grandiose ideas of self. Yet all the while Christ proclaims, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it”
Ann Judson was the wife of the first American missionary in India, Adoniram Judson. As a young woman she was married and forsook all the life she had known with her happy family in New England. In her diary the night before leaving for India she wrote the following:
“Took leave of my friends and native land… Had so long anticipated the trying scene of parting, that I found it more tolerable than I feared. Still my heart bleeds. O America, my native land, must I leave thee? Must I leave my parents, my sister and brothers, my friends beloved, and all the scenes of my early youth?
One can sense in the voice of this young woman, the great pain that it must have been for her to leave all that she had ever known to do the work of Christ. Not only did she leave but also she left to a world, which possessed not any of the modern things we hold dear. In the words of Weird Al Yankovic in his song Amish Paradise, “No phone, no lights, no motorcars, not a single luxury. Like Robinson Crusoe it’s as primitive as can be.” Which begs an important question for us today. Would we be willing to do the same? What would be too much for us to give up? Where do we draw the line on God’s commandments of our lives? Ann herself even suffered greater things than described above.
Ann eventually died of spotted fever. She was only thirty-seven. Her husband who was away, received the following letter:
“My dear Sir, to one who has suffered so much and with such exemplary fortitude, there needs but a little preface to tell a tale of distress. It were cruel indeed to torture you with doubt and suspense. To sum up the unhappy tidings in a few words—Mrs. Judson is no more.”
It was said that as Ann lay dying she said the following:
“The teacher (her husband) is long in coming, and the new missionaries are long in coming; I must die alone and leave my little one, but as it is the will of God, I acquiesce in His will. I am not afraid of death, but I am afraid I shall not be able to bear the pains.”
Adoniram would continue his work in India and Burma, eventually losing even his daughter to the same sufferings as his wife. She was 2 1/2. Some may think it morbid, and others may think it sad. Yet I think that in light of what Christ said in Matthew we might, for a moment, envy the clarity to which Ann lived her life. She understood that her life was not her own. She understood what it meant to count the cost.
So, today I ask the same question R.C. Ryle asked. Have we counted the cost? Have you taken stock of your worldliness, your perception of self, your grandiose ideals concerning personal glory and comfort? Have you as a result of these consideration decided to lay it all before the feet of Christ? Will you do it no matter the cost, no matter what may be lost? This is the question that we must define ourselves by today.
