Among the many paradoxes we find in Jesus’ teaching is this: whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
When we think of the things we love, we automatically think of things we want to keep, not lose. And when we think of the things we hate, we automatically think of things we wouldn’t mind losing, or giving up altogether; things we certainly would not consider keeping for eternity!
So what are we to make of this teaching?
Let’s take a quick look at the verse:
Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
(John 12:25)
If we go back to the original Greek, we’ll find that the verse is even more forceful than it appears in the English. The word “loses” is ἀπόλλυμι apollumi which actually doesn’t only mean to lose but to utterly perish, to bring to permanent absolute destruction. On the other hand, the word “keep” is φυλάσσω phulassó which means to keep under uninterrupted vigilant watch, akin to “military guard”! So Jesus is telling us that if we love our life, we will bring it to permanent and absolute destruction and if we hate our life, we will watch over it so carefully to keep it for eternal life! Lord, how are we to make sense of this?!
Well let’s dig a little deeper and take a look at the context of this verse. Here’s the passage:
23 And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
(John 12:23-25)
Jesus is talking about His imminent path to the cross; that He must die like a grain of wheat that falls into the earth and as a result bears much fruit. Ok, Lord, so you had to die so that through your death, we might have life. Got that part. But why does Jesus seem to include us in verse 25, that not only He, but “whoever loves his life loses it.” Do we need to die too?! I thought Christ died so we didn’t have to die?
Do you recall what Jesus told His disciples about what it takes to follow Him?
Then Jesus told His disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
(Matthew 16:24)
The cross is an instrument of death; “it is a symbol of death to the self.”[i] Jesus is clearly telling us that we too must die. Christ had to die the death that we should have died because of our sins, but if we would have died, our death would have been the end of us.[ii] The death of Christ on our behalf achieved the reconciliation between us and the Father that our death could not have achieved. But to live out this reconciliation, we must be a different kind of people. Our sinful nature must be brought to permanent absolute destruction. It must utterly perish. Does that ring a bell? This is what the word “lose” means! To live the kind of life that is reconciled with the Holy God who desires to abide in us and we in Him (John 15), and to be His ambassadors to the world, we must permanently destroy our old lives.
The only way to permanently destroy our old lives is through death. To live the kind of life we are called to live, we must die with Christ in His death. But if we only died with Christ in His death, we wouldn’t have anything remaining in us to bear fruit through; we’d be dead! How does a grain of wheat that dies bear much fruit? It lives through wheat stalks. That’s why we are not only called to die with Christ but to live with Christ;
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.
(Galatians 2:20)
It is this new life that I live in Christ, which Jesus explained to Nicodemus, that I must place under “military guard” because it is the only life that is worth keeping “unto eternal life” and can actually make it for eternity! It is then that we can exclaim with the Apostle Paul,
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
(2 Cor. 5:17)
We will inevitably perceive this talk of dying as harsh if we don’t realize what we are dying to and what we are living for. Remember Jesus’ parables of the Kingdom of Heaven? As Dallas Willard brilliantly puts it, “Imagine that you discovered gold or oil in a certain property and no one else knew about it. Can you see yourself being sad and feeling deprived for having to gather all your resources and ‘sacrifice’ them in order to buy that property? Hardly! Now you know what it is like to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus!”[iii]
Father, open our eyes that we might see that this self-denial you are asking of us is “always the surrender of a lesser, dying self for a greater eternal one- the person God intended in creating us.”[iv] Father, we cannot see this with our limited eyes, for indeed you have taught us that what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal (2 Cor. 4:18). May we be so united with Christ in His death and resurrection that we begin to experience seeing what you see, thinking your kind of thoughts, doing your kind of deeds, indeed becoming your kind of person; becoming more and more like you and less and less like us.
I’m dying to live the only kind of life worth living!
But does this self-denial mean we are no longer ourselves? Does dying to ourselves mean we must abandon all our desires, dreams, and goals in life? That’s for another blog. Stay tuned ☺
[i] John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 714.
[ii] Ibid, 888.
[iii] Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2002), 97.
[iv] Ibid.