395. Save Your Life—Lose Your Life

“For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.” Luke 9:24.

Every young person should take these words of Scripture diligently to heart right from the very beginning of his or her life of faith. If we set our mind on the things that are visible, and our hope is to advance to a good job with honor and financial rewards here in this world, we are seeking to save our life; this is what most people in the world do. A person who turns eighty after living a wayward, sinful life will be forgiven when he prays for forgiveness. Yet he will still lose all of the life that he has lived in darkness under the power of Satan, and according to what people know naturally—like senseless beasts. The forgiveness of sins will not free the eighty-year-old from losing his life. All those years were wasted, and he can never in all eternity get them back again. He has sought to save his life, and he will lose it.

On the other hand, a person who begins to serve God in his youth and has made up his mind to live according to the will of God will consequently lose his own will. There is a battle between the flesh and the Spirit, but he chooses always to obey the Spirit and deny his own lusts and inclinations. A good career and a lot of money are not the principal thing for him, for he does not pursue what is on the earth, but what is in heaven. He continually loses his life in this world, the life that he hates, and he walks on the new and living way according to God’s holy laws and commandments. He is made more and more alive by the last Adam, who has become a life-giving spirit.

Let us now assume that this person also turns eighty. He has taken up his cross daily and followed Jesus. He has continually given himself to the death of Christ, so that the life of Jesus could be revealed in his mortal body. Every single day he has found his life in Christ. He stands there on his eightieth birthday full of grace and truth; he has suffered in the flesh and has ceased from sin.

Which of these two old people do you believe has made the right choice?