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37 He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. 38 And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. 39 He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it. ~ Matthew 10:37-39
Today, we return to our study of Matthew 10 where the Lord Jesus Christ is informing His disciples about the cost of following Him. It is a high cost to be a follower of the Lord Jesus. It is an even higher cost to be a follower who is passionately seeking to live for Him. For sure, the benefits and the blessings are very much worth the price. No man earns his way into heaven, but as followers of Christ, when we walk with Him daily we will discover the true value of all things given by God.
In v.37 of today's passage we read, "He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me."
The Greek word translated "worthy" pictures a set of ancient scales consisting of two pans hanging from a balance beam. To measure out one pound of wheat, one would have to put a one pound weight on one pan and then a pound of wheat onto the other pan until the two pans hung level.The Lord Jesus desires for us that we love Him more than anything else in this world because everything else happens out of our relationship with Him. He makes life balanced for the believer. Our ability to love anyone is measured by His love for us and our understanding of His love for us. As the center spokes on a bicycle tire holds the tire together, so our relationship with our Creator enables us to relate to Him and others as we ought.
The Lord Jesus urges us to love Him most even above our family members. When we were born-again, the Holy Spirit came to live within our spirit enabling us the ability to grow in our ability to love. The more complete our understanding of the love of God the more we will understand how His grace has valued us. Once we come to understand that God's love for us has become the ultimate game-changer, the more we will love Him and others. The Lord Jesus did not mean that we earn our favor with Him through loving Him most. He compels us to become more intimate with His love which is most extravagant and real. When we have been immersed in His love for us, our value system changes. If loving Christ is worth anything, it is worth everything. Our love for anyone is predicated upon our understanding of God's love for us. We love Him and them because He loved us first.
In v.38 of today's passage we read, "And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me."
Taking up our cross must be preceded by us being defined by the fact that the Lord Jesus took the cross up first. Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us. It was our sin that put the Lord Jesus up on the cross. He went to the cross to redeem us from our sin. To take up our cross means that we die to ourselves. This only happens on the heels of understanding how intense and committed His love is for us. When we do this we demonstrate that we have a proper understanding or a worthy knowledge of His love for us. And, this makes sense since there will come many times when we will have to make the choice to love Him more than someone or something else. When we put Him first everything else falls into its proper or worthy place. When we do not put Him first, we tend to hold on too tightly to those things or people that we cherish the most. It is like the toothpaste tube, the more we squeeze, the less we will have. In God's economy we win by losing.
In v.39 of today's passage we read, "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it."
This verse appears contradictory, but it's the cornerstone of Christian discipleship. We all live with this continuous fear that God’s love has limits. We all find ourselves having to be convinced that His love for us cannot be diluted by our sinfulness. But, it makes so much sense that when we lose our lives in light of our pursuit of Him, we find it. And, when we lose our lives we will find out what our lives were meant to be. This, I am sure is what motivated Jim Elliot to say, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." That means that when we forsake everything in our life to be defined by Him, He will make sure that we find what we were created to be and do.
The Lord Jesus Christ created us; we will never know why He made us until we stop obeying ourselves and we start obeying Him. This is eternal life, this is the life of love, to lay down our life and put our Creator and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ first in our lives. When we keep our life by living for the self life, we will not know real life. Seeking gain, as defined by this world, ultimately leads to emptiness. Conversely, surrendering oneself to the will of the Lord Jesus, even at the cost of personal comfort and sacrifice, brings about a fulfillment that surpasses all earthly desires. This has a beauty to it, the beauty of losing because it can create an empty place in our lives for God to fill with something new. And, this is where real life is lived.
