Friday, December 2, 2022
And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? Mark 8:34-37
Lose Yourself – Gain Eternal Hope
We have been talking about hope this week and how Jesus came as our Promised Hope. There is nothing at all that we can gain true hope from except from Jesus – the Promised Hope.
We can have hope – eternal hope – if we follow the commands of Jesus in the passage above. He gives three things we are to do if we want to really follow Him wholeheartedly.
Deny himself… Denying ourselves does include denying ourselves of some things or privileges, but that is not all it means. It means that we are to get ourselves off the throne or our lives in order to let Jesus have the spot that belongs to Him. We have to get ourselves out of the way so God can have His way in our hearts. Denying ourselves means to say no to ourselves sentence that a criminal would pick up his cross. The cross meant death, it was how they executed people. A person carrying his cross could not save himself. We cannot save ourselves either as we are dead in our sins. Sin is a death sentence without the shed blood of Jesus to was us clean and wipe away our sin. Because of His sacrifice, we can have hope. We have remission of sins and eternal life, and that eternal life is the hope we need to cling to. “And follow me.” Denying ourselves means to put others first – with God first of all. Jesus did this and we are to follow in his steps.
“Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.” – When we lose ourselves for Jesus’ sake, we will find everything. We have to die to all our idols, to all the things we have put our hope in. We have to die to all our own dreams and desires. We surrender them to Him and He either resurrects them or replaces them with better ones. When we give it all to Him and invest all we are and have for Him, we lose our lives for Him.
But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Philippians 3: 6-11
The world and the people in it will break your heart and steal your hope. Until this happens, we don’t usually learn the lesson of trusting Jesus and only looking to Him for hope. Jesus is the only one who won’t break our hearts and steal our hope. He takes our heartache and hopelessness and exchanges it with healing, fulfillment, and eternal hope. We find hope in Him because He loves us and always gives us the very best.
