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TO GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (Matt. 16:24-26).
The theocentric principle here is the final judgment of God. Every man faces the final judgment. Compared to the loss of one's soul at this judgment, the gaining of everything life has to offer is nothing.
Free Grace Is Not Cheap Jesus here warned His disciples that there are no free lunches in life. There is free grace, but it comes at a price. It comes, first and foremost, at the price of the death of Jesus Christ. Redeemed people owe a lifetime service to God through Christ (Rom. 12:1). But this service is insufficient to pay for eternal life. We know this because of the subsequent comparison: all the world could not redeem one man's soul. Anything less than this is also insufficient.
Obviously, these words are not to be interpreted literally. Nobody is asked to take up a literal cross. Perhaps some follower was asked to do so under Roman rule, but we are not informed of this. Crucifixion is no longer any nation's means of execution except possibly in rare cases where Christians are executed this way as a symbol of their subordination to an anti-Christian State. In any case, one does not carry a cross through a lifetime of service.
The imagery here is that of a burden that costs a person his life. The cross is heavy. At the end of the journey, it becomes the means of execution. Taking up the cross means taking up the pre-resurrection life of Christ. It means death to the things of this world. A man carrying a cross is not going to be easily distracted by the things of this world. He has other things on his mind . . . and on his back.
The text warns: "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." This is not a call to literal suicide. It is a call for covenantal death. The old man is executed. The old adamic nature is executed. Paul provided a commentary on this passage:
Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof (Rom. 6:3-12).
To say that we pay a price is to say that we give up something. What do we give up? The old ways. The sins of the flesh. We forfeit the use of these attributes of Adam. Whatever pleasures or benefits they bring in history, we must give them up. This is the economist's meaning of cost: the most valuable thing foregone. There are no free lunches. We must give up something to gain eternal life. But the basis of our entrance into eternal life is not our payment.
The Fearful Exchange "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (v. 26). There is a joke about lawyers. Satan comes to a newly certified lawyer and says: "I will give you the gift of persuasion. You will become a world-famous defense lawyer. I will enable you to get juries to declare guilty criminals innocent, for which these evil men will pay you huge fees. You will become the envy of your peers. All I ask in return is your eternal soul at the end of a life of enormous success." To which the lawyer replies: "What's the catch?"(1)
Jesus warned against this exchange. If gaining the whole world is a bad bargain for the loss of one's soul, then gaining anything less is a worse bargain. This is what present-oriented men do not acknowledge. They either reject the thought of eternal judgment on these terms or else they discount the future cost to such a low level that the exchange seems worth it. This exchange of the eternal in favor of the temporal is the essence of foolishness.
Time offers what appear to be ways out of trouble. There is always an option, a way of escape. This faith is a reflection of an ethical truth: "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it" (I Cor. 10:13). But eternity does not possess this characteristic feature of time. In eternity, there is no escape. This is unimaginable to the time-bound sinner who thinks he can find a way not to pay for his sins. There is only one such way: "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation" (Rom. 10:9-10). But this way of escape places a new perceptual burden on man: his recognition of the high price of sin. As the price of sin rises, less of it will be demanded, other things being equal.
The problem is, when sin is involved, other things do not remain equal. Sin has the characteristic feature of being addictive. The more you get, the more you want. The insatiable nature of sin leads some men into early death. They cannot control their addiction. Sin is like a ratchet upward: one level becomes normal, so new sins are sought out. But in a redeemed person, the insatiable nature of sin is reversed. He reaches a level of sinning that he recognizes as self-destructive. He sees the high price of sin. He then demands less of it. In fact, he can create an ethically positive ratchet: as he indulges in fewer sins, he finds that his taste for old ones and even new ones is reduced.
Redemption increases a man's perception of eternity. It lengthens a man's time perspective. It increases his future orientation. This makes it possible for him to count the cost of his thoughts and actions (Luke 14:28-30). Man always discounts the future. The more distant in the future an expected event, the less it affects a person's decision-making today. The payoff, discounted to the present, is too low, for benefits or losses. But if a man discounts eternity's effects to nearly zero, the way he discounts events a century hence, he has made a disastrous miscalculation. He does not grasp how important time is for the outcome in eternity. He compares time to time. He should be comparing time to eternity. The discount he applies to very distant events is influenced by his knowledge that he will not be here to see the results of his actions. But eternity is different. He will be there to see the results of his actions, and to experience them.
Conclusion Men set their priorities in terms of their values and their expectations about the future. Jesus said that our values should reflect the future -- specifically, eternity. Any set of values that does not incorporate expectations about eternity must be wrong, He taught. The soul survives beyond the grave. Thus, any cost-benefit analysis in history should include costs and benefits in eternity.
The price of eternal life is sacrificial living in history. Christ's life of complete subordination to God and His undeserved death have set the judicial standard. He definitively paid the price. Taking up the cross and losing one's life for Christ's sake are aspects of the great exchange: a costly eternity vs. a beneficial eternity. Life is the constant exchange of one set of conditions for another. This includes eternal life. One way of life is exchanged for one kind of eternity. This exchange is definitive in history: God's judicial imputation to sinners of Christ's righteousness (Rom. 3:24-25; Phil. 3:9). It is also progressive: working out one's salvation in fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12). It is also final (Matt. 25; Rev. 20:14-15).
The marketplace of the soul is history. A man cannot buy back his soul. Either it has been bought back by Christ or it cannot be bought back at all. From whom is it bought back? From God, who is sovereign over the souls of men.
Footnote:
1. The existence of thousands of anti-lawyer jokes in the United States indicates a widespread distrust and resentment against lawyers as against no other profession. The public understands that the legal profession offers great wealth to those who pervert the intention of the law, i.e., to be a terror to evil-doers. Lawyers are not penalized professionally for misusing the law in order to get rich by terrorizing the innocent.
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