24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? ~ Luke 9:24-25
In today's text the Lord Jesus continues to teach the disciples about discipleship. He begins with, "For whoever wants to save their life will lose it." The Lord Jesus is not taking the typical approach to identity, He is talking about living the life He died to give us. He is not talking about us getting into heaven, but heaven getting into us.This is sanctification teaching.
But the Lord Jesus doesn’t stop at, “losing self.” He says, “Lose yourself to find yourself,” which means, “die to your old approach to living and identity.” In context, the Lord Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem, He is going there to become the savior of all who would be defined by His teachings. He is instructing us to lose sight of being defined by our flesh or our sinful desires rooted in selfishness and fear. He is teaching us to be defined by the One who created us, to live out of His schematic for us.
In v.25 a penetrating question is asked, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?” Gaining things from this fallen world is the normal way we try to be defined. Instead of being defined by gaining things, the Lord Jesus suggests we build everything in our lives on Him. Once we begin to do this, we will discover the true self that God created us to be, people who are stable, secure and confident.
Now, there are three steps to being a disciple. The first is we must decide to follow Him daily. The Lord Jesus says that "if anyone would come after me, he must follow me." The second is we must view discipleship as a journey with Him. To go on the journey means saying, “I take my hands off my life.” And, the third is this process will produce a gracious Christlikeness. You could say this step is the willingness to be defined by His grace.
Like the disciples, the serious Christian is bent on showing the Lord Jesus how intensely committed we were, but our ways and thoughts most often do not align with the Lord Jesus thoughts and ways. More often, we are committed to the cause, rather than being persistent in our pursuit of Him and being changed by the His grace.
Later in this chapter the disciples ask the Lord Jesus. “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” This question was created in response to the unbelieving response of the Samaritans. God's way is not the way of condemnation, it is the way of grace. In fact, the Lord Jesus rebuked the disciples on the heels of their question. The more we grow in personal relationship with the Lord, the more we will reflect His grace.
Grace is the greatest change agent in the history of the world. It is not until we taste of His grace that we go into the depths of intimacy with Him. This translates into a more gentle disciple, one who is navigated by God's grace. But we think the opposite. We think that staunched commitment to truth and justice is evidence of our intimacy with God, but it is not.
In order to be the disciple of the Lord, we must come to Him much like the woman in 2 Kings 4. His fullness is welcomed by those who know they are empty, and the degree to which we understand our emptiness is the degree to which we can be filled.
This lady in 2 Kings 4 had lost everything. She lost everything but a small jar of olive oil and she was in danger of losing her two sons. Her husband had died and she was left penniless. Elisha told her to go to her neighbors and borrow their jars. She was in great debt. In a sense, Elisha is telling this woman that she is not empty enough. She had to humble herself before her neighbors and her emptiness would be exposed.
Out of her emptiness, out of her nothingness, she was filled full, and yet her little jar wasn’t empty. She filled a second jar, a third, a fourth and many more. Finally, she said, hand me another, and her son said, that’s it, there’s no more emptiness!
The more we die to self and live to Him, the less empty we will be. We all come to those times when we are not “empty” enough! We serve a Lord that specializes in filling emptiness!
In creation, the Lord Jesus flung the universe into an expanse of emptiness, He hung the stars upon nothing. He filled the water pots with the best of wine. He used five loaves and two fish to feed thousands.
Discipleship is being defined by Him, and His grace leads the way. God does His best work in the lives of those who are desperate enough to take the risks. Radical discipleship only happens in the lives of those believers who are desperate enough to be dependent on Him.
Finally, the grace of God that brings us salvation is the motivation for following the Lord Jesus in discipleship. In His grace, God values the vessel whereas everybody else values the contents in the vessel. He told the lady to borrow "empty" vessels. They had to be empty to be eligible. To be the disciple, we must be empty of self. Granted, we will not be perfect at this. But, to be full of His grace, requires the disposition of savior-confidence rather than self-confidence.
