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Jesus quickly gets the attention of His disciples by dropping a distressing dichotomy on them, telling them that they had to LOSE TO WIN: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." In effect, He was saying: “Hey folks, this isn't all fun and games. This isn't all wine and roses. Here's the way it is: Nobody is making you follow Me. If you want out, there is the door. But if you do want to follow me, you are going to have to pay a price. My grace is free, but it’s not cheap. It’s going to cost Me My life, and ultimately, it’s going to cost you your life, too. So you are going to have to count the cost and determine if you are ready to pay the price.” Jesus was essentially saying that His game is played by different rules, that losing means winning, and winning means losing. Let’s dig a little deeper. First, we must:
I. Lose Our Selves
The first thing a person must do is "deny himself." We must come to the conclusion that we just don't measure up, that we just can't measure up. We can't meet God's standards, so we might as well give up trying to do it ourselves. He wants us to lose our self-righteousness, self-centeredness, and selfishness and emulate His selflessness.
Denying ourselves recognizes that there are just some things that we can't do and that there is a cost in following Jesus. The virtuous young lady isn't always the most popular young lady. The ethical businessman is not always the wealthiest businessman. The honest politician is not always an elected politician. The Christian, who does what is right rather than what is expedient, is often treated with disdain. But for us to do less is to march to a different drum beat than the one Jesus sounds. Jesus says: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself..." We have to lose to win!
Secondly, He says a person must "take up his cross." Crosses were instruments of shame. They were intended to produce suffering and, ultimately, death. Crosses were painful. It was painful for Jesus just to carry His cross to Calvary. Just imagine how horribly it hurt to hang from that cross. What Jesus is telling us is that it isn't easy to be a Christian. We are told: "We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God." Sometimes we must suffer for Christ.
The early Christians counted suffering for Christ as a great honor. The apostles rejoiced "because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name (Christ)." Those early Christians were nailed to crosses or torched to provide evening illumination and cruel sport for Emperor Nero. These early Christians marched into the arena where they would be shredded and devoured by lions as if they were marching into heaven itself. They wore the badge of Christianity proudly…even if it meant they must die.
How willing are we to carry our cross and suffer for our faith? More and more, our society is becoming hostile to Christianity. Carrying the cross involves making sacrifices and even suffering for our faith. If we are truly presenting a Christian lifestyle in our daily encounters, we will be feeling some opposition, especially in today’s powderkeg society, which is ready to explode on Christians at the slightest provocation. If we are wearing and sharing our faith, we will run into opposition. It's not a matter of if but when. No one walks over the devil unscathed. Are we willing to suffer for the Lord? Jesus bore the cross for all of us. Are we willing to bear our personal crosses for Him?
The third directive in Losing Ourselves: Jesus says to "follow me." More literally, "keep on following me." We are to follow where He leads even in the face of opposition because we know the ultimate destination is heaven. He will lead us through the valley of the shadow of death. He will lead us to green pastures. Jesus is the "Way, the Truth, and the Life." Let us follow Him wherever He leads. Ultimately, our heavenly Pilot will lead us through this trail of tears to our home to heaven.
Jesus suggests a fourth way in which losing means winning: "For whoever wants to save His life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the Gospel will save it." If we commit our lives to Him, even to the point of being willing to suffer the loss of our life for Jesus, we will find that we have lost nothing but have gained everything. Christianity is literally a matter of life and death. We cannot lose ourselves in Christ until something else has taken place first. We must first…
II. Lose Our Sins
There is a whole world of people out there who would like to think there is no hell. And the idea of a devil went out with the Dark Ages. To most people, the devil is a harmless little guy in a red suit with a pointed tail carrying a pitchfork. We can see his picture on anything from Halloween costumes to canned hams. And the idea that God could possibly enforce a threat of damnation is absurd if God is truly a God of love. It all sounds pretty much like a fairy tale to most people.
Yet Jesus asks the question: "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?" Would we say the battle on Calvary's cross was a fairy tale? Would we say that hell isn't real when the Almighty Son of God cried out from the cross in utter anguish: "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" If hell isn't real and Satan doesn't really want our soul, can we explain why "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life?" If there is no devil and no hell, then Jesus didn't need to come. He didn't need to live a perfect life. He didn't need to pay for the sins of the world with His sacrificial death. He didn't need to go to the cross if God wasn't serious about His threats against anyone who would dare to break the least of His commandments with a wrong thought or word or deed.
There are only two conclusions we can reach: Either Jesus thought He was the world's Savior, and we don't need Him. Or He is the world's Savior, and we desperately need Him. We know what the world believes. In a humanistic society like ours, man is the measure of all things. Man sets the standards. Man makes the rules. Man establishes his own fate and destiny. Or so he thinks. Our own human nature isn't going to help much either in that regard because every one of us is chock full of pride that would love to say, ‘I don't need a Savior. I'm not that bad.' Every one of us has a built-in mechanism for remembering what we've done right and forgetting what we've done wrong. We probably figure we've got a lot of good in our balance. But what about the times we hurt someone with what we said, attacked instead of retreated, used destructive criticism instead of constructive criticism, or tried to get even instead of getting right with someone? Jesus' answer to those times and to every other sin is that it is a matter of life and death.
There is not a single thing that we can do to repair the damage that’s already been done in our relationship with God. If left to our own devices, we are all heading for hell because the one true God is not only a God of love; He is a God of holiness and a God of justice. He is a God who is so perfectly just that the entire weight and crushing blow of His holy wrath has already come crashing down. By God’s grace, it crashed down on His own Son, not us. There is only one way to WIN, and that is to LOSE. LOSE...our sins. And in Jesus, we can. Only in Jesus.
Jesus says very clearly: "If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels." Are we ashamed of Him? Are we afraid to stand up for Jesus when it means we might stand out? Are we more interested in what He can do for us than what we can do for Him? Is it a little too hard to admit that others can do some things, but we cannot? Or do we appreciate that we can ultimately WIN by LOSING out on some of these things? Can we hear the truth in Paul's words: "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." If we can, today will be a better day than yesterday because today, we will be able to LOSE OURSELVES by denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Him. But that only becomes possible after we LOSE OUR SINS by turning to Him in faith. That’s WHEN WINNING IS LOSING.
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