Saving Life: Matthew 16:25

In my readings this past week, I have gained a lot more perspective on life, death, and the meaning of the gospel. Before this week, I had never had the pleasure of reading N.T Wright. Well, quite to my surprise, instead of dense theological treatises, I found out that his writings were quite practical and close to the heart.

He spoke of how Christ's physical resurrection means our lives do, in fact, matter. We suffer from death in many ways besides the physical kind. We see death in the end of relationships, poverty, transitions, loneliness, and grief. Christ's defeat of death includes all of the above in addition the physical kind. In the end, Wright argues that there are remains of what we do here in the life after life after death. The details are a bit foggy, but living intentionally in this life is not like oiling the wheels of a cart that is headed towards a cliff.

This news is great to hear and gives us hope for this life. Also, it gives us the hope to stop using death as a means to get life. Whenever porn, drugs, or alcohol is used to dull the pain of different deaths we experience, we are serving death and trying to fight death with death. When we settle for bad relationships instead of meaningful solitude or theft and vanity over poverty and unpopularity, we do the same thing. We are trying to fight death with death. And, without the resurrection, death is the best tool that we have. When we see tyrannical governments, we see that they are immensely threatened by Christianity because it takes their only true weapon, death, and removes it from the picture entirely.

So, when we get to Matthew 16:24-25, we see Jesus saying to his disciples: "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it." If we believe the mistaken gospel and say that Jesus came to save us for a disembodied heaven, we make Jesus out to be a liar here. We see members in our church who don't serve Christ and we are left to either sigh or threaten them with the loss of their salvation. And if the threat works, they ask how much sin is allowed and where the line is that salvation ends and live on the edge of the line. And if all we have to look forward to is a disembodied heaven with no remnant of this life, living on the edge is the best place to be! As one person says, "He who dies in debt, wins". Why plough through life when the easy life awaits and both work and sloth produce the same result? I used to try to answer this question through "fulfillment", with the concept that living in Christ is more "fulfilling" in the long run over the easy life. While this may be true for some, for others it is not. Not only so, but if this were the reason for sanctification, pastoral work would be like being an anesthesiologist, only there to take the pain away. If sanctification is just about pain management, sin does a better job of making us forget our pain than virtue does, even if morality has some greater long-run return on investment. We gain the hope that morality in this life matters. Yes, all Christians go to heaven, but some by the skin of their teeth (like in 1 Corinthians 3:11-15) while others get to enjoy some legacy of what came before. Again, the details are foggy, but this life matters. Poetry, fun, relationships, serving the poor, and virtue all matter!

I have often envied my friends who got to enjoy sin while I had to choose the hard road. Sometimes, this envy would result in actual sin. Most of the time, though, it grew and harbored bitterness in my heart, especially as I failed to see virtue result in blessings, better job positions, and relational bliss. Additionally, every time I have moved to a new city, I had despair from seeing how those who chose sin consistently walked away with connections, popularity, job positions, and financial security while I moved away to somewhat the opposite. The death of transition made them the victors. It would seem that their spiritual death had gained life while my spiritual life gained death. There is a way in which those memories become increasingly lonely, with me being the only person who can remember what really happened, with both the moments of pain and the moments of joy. But I see now that God is in every moment of life. I see that choosing life in Christ daily is actually saving life for the resurrection. Something is carried on. God is truly present in all things. Life matters and we have a chance to save it each day.