For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever will lose his life for my sake will find it.For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.For whosoever would save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.
7 sermons cite this verse
… right? What does Jesus say in the gospel? He says, whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, 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. Then he says this massive line. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life. Jesus is making it so clear that we can lose, but no one ever gets beaten out of their soul. They simply forfeit. And we do it in a bunch of different ways. We make little trades, right? We make little compromises. We make little exchanges. We forfeit. Or we violate the rules and we forfeit. Or sometimes we concede. Sometimes we just simply stop playing and we forfeit. And the question we hear is Jesus saying, what profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his life? Another way to say it here at the beginning of school year is the reality is this. …
… self, we'd be in trouble because we'd be hating and running from something to nothing. We need something to run to. Here's what Jesus says in Matthew 16 25. He says, for whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. He doesn't just call us to die. No, when you lose your life for Christ's sake, it's because you're truly finding something new, rising to new life. And this is the secret. If there were a secret of true Christian repentance, I think it's this. And it's what makes Christian repentance so distinctive and so powerful more than any other religious experience. We see repentance as reformed believers, as the Heidelberg states, and it's very consistent. across some of these other Reformed catechisms, just as much focus should be on examining Christ's mercies as it is on examining our sin. That's what true repentance is. There's two parts. You examine your sin deeply, but you examine Christ's mercies. The Westminster Shorter Catechism puts this so well. …
… we must deny ourselves, we must surrender our self-serving expectations and follow Him. See Matthew 16.24-25 From the Christian perspective, there is some truth to this answer, that the path toward patience involves eliminating our expectations. However, the picture the Bible gives us is not a snuffed out candle, but a holy fire that bursts from hiding and can't wait to be found. That's what Moses saw when God met him on the mountain in the bush. The bush was on fire, but not burning up, not being consumed. It was an unextinguishable fire. Exodus chapter 3 tells us the fire was lit by God's own expectations for his good creation. God's world, where he wants to be found. In the Bible, the problem with the world is not expectations. It is the all-consuming self that tries to be God and won't make space for others. It is the fire we started when we rebelled against God, our Creator. We started treating each other like fuel for our own desires. But God met Moses as a holy fire that cannot be snuffed out so that we might find the God who can't wait to be found. In all of God's dealings with Moses, with the people of Israel, even with Pharaoh and all the enemies of God, repeatedly God shows himself patient. In the Hebrew language, patience doesn't mean acceptance, but rather slow to anger. God is slow to let his anger burn. See Exodus 34 verse 6. Slow to anger, but not empty of expectation. God does not eliminate his expectations because he desires …
… take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. I got this whoop band. It's an athletic flex. Yep, doing high rocks in December. This thing tracks everything. And if you don't know what a whoop is, it just tracks your sleep, optimize all the stuff, you know? And they got this new feature and it's like your life expectancy. So based on your habits, how long you're gonna live. The problem with this is I have a seven week old and a two year old. So every morning I wake up and it's like, you got 12 years left to live if you keep sleeping at this rate. And I just had me thinking in the current age and culture that we're in, have you noticed that there is this desire, this pressure to optimize, to push, to grind, to succeed, to achieve. And I am not against wisdom. I am not against being successful. …
… he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and yet lose or forfeit his very self? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of Him when He comes in His glory. In the glory of the Father and the holy angels. Listen to verse 27. I tell you the truth. Some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the what? Kingdom of God. You come after me. You deny yourself. Take up your cross. Follow me. You lose your life for the kingdom. Some of you will not taste death until you enter the kingdom of God. Same chapter over in verse 57. Some guys come up to Jesus. They are eager to be His disciples. We want to follow you. …
… If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. Whoever desires to save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Back to verse 24 again. If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. Let me address one more point that I addressed last week, and we'll probably do again in the next several weeks, is that there are some who have taken the teachings of Jesus, what he did, he closed out the Old Testament. Are you with me? His last three and a half years of life and ministry on the earth ended with the death and resurrection, that the blood shed, the resurrection, that was the moment of the new covenant the New Testament began. So his teachings actually existed in the Old Testament time frame. But they had a double-edged effect. They closed the Old Testament but introduced grace for the new. …
… to the disciples, if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he's done. And this is God's Word. Now, Jesus, as we just mentioned, right here in the middle of this passage, says if you do this, this, this, and this, and this, you will find it. Find what? Well, in verse 25 and 26, over and over again, a Greek word is used, and it's the Greek word psyche, from which we get our word psychology, of course. And the translators translate it differently, so in a sense, it masks the fact that the word is being used so prominently. …