| Devotional Hours with the Bible |
Chapter 19 |
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Jesus might have saved Himself from the sacrifice and death if He had sought to do so. He might have turned away from His enemies and have found an asylum among the Gentiles. He might have lived to old age, teaching, healing, and blessing the world. Yet, He would not in His years of comfort and quiet usefulness have done the work He had been sent into the world to do. Life is not measured by the number and length of its years, but by the completeness of its devotion to the will of God. Jesus never would have glorified God by fleeing from the sacrifice of the cross to an asylum which would have given Him continued years of comfort and ease. By giving Himself up to death on the cross He became the Redeemer of the world. Christianity, with all its marvelous fruits and blessings, is the real glorifying of Christ. If He had not gone to His cross, this glorifying would never have been attained.
Jesus taught His disciples further that not only must He Himself reach His glory by way of His cross, but that those who would follow Him must also walk in the same way. “He that loveth His life shall lose it; and he that hateth His life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.” There are two ways of living, and we have our choice. WE may live for self, taking good care of our lives, not exposing them to danger, not making any sacrifices, caring only for our own interests. We may then prosper in this world, and people will commend our prudence. We may reach old age robust and well-preserved, and may greatly enjoy our accumulated honors and possessions. That is one way of living — loving our life and saving it from the costly service to which we were called, but in the end it is only that wheat kept from falling into the ground to die. There will be no harvest. That is the outcome of selfishness. Its end is death. “He that loveth his life loseth it.”
The other way of living is to forget self — not to care for one’s own life or to try to preserve it, but to give it out at God’s call, to throw it away in unselfish service. People will say you are foolish thus to wast your golden life, thus to sacrifice yourself for the sake of others, or in the cause of Christ. But was Christ foolish when He chose to go to His cross? The redeemed Church is the answer. Ignatius said, when facing the fierce lions in the arena: “I am grain of God. Let me be ground between the teeth of lions, if thus I may become bread to feed God’s people.” Was the martyr foolish? Did he really waste His witnessing for His Lord? The way to make nothing of one’s life is to take too good care of it. The way to make one’s life an eternal success is to do with it as Jesus did with His.
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