We all have a choice to make. The consequences will be either to save or lose our lives. This daily devotional looks at what it takes to secure our souls.
Nuggets
- Where we put our priorities is whether we save or lose our lives.
- Gaining the world’s pleasures and benefits pale to losing our souls.
- We cannot reject Who Jesus is, His authority, and the salvation that He offers.
Devotions in the Who Is Jesus? series
In the other devotions in this series, we talked about how we should answer the question of who we say Jesus is and how we should deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Him. How we respond depends on whether we lose or save our lives.
Let's Put It into Context
Let’s review the nuggets from the other devotions.
- We each have to find the answer to the question, who do you say Jesus is?
- Jesus didn’t want the disciples to tell others that He was the Messiah because the Plan of Salvation wasn’t complete.
- When we first choose the accept the Plan of Salvation, there are some things we need to give up in order to follow God’s Will.
- Taking up our cross will be a daily activity for the long haul.
- Following Jesus means that we submit to imitating Him.
What Do We Really Want?
“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will save it” (Lk. 9: 24 CSB)
Where we put our priorities is whether we save or lose our lives.
Oh, man. Of course, we want to save our lives. Why was Jesus talking about losing?
Higgins defined lose for us. He wrote that lose “… is to be understood in the sense of parting with, giving up, surrendering; and when the act is done it is to be treated as something entirely gone, completely lost.”
Resource
The difference with this loss is it is our choice. We are giving it up.
It is not being stripped from us. It is what we say we want.
How in the world are we going to convince the worldview people we witness to that they will benefit from Who Jesus is?
No, God is not going to compromise. He is not going to make it easier so He can convince you to submit to Him.
Let’s do some substitutions to see if we can make it a little more understandable what Jesus was getting at. For whoever wants to save his/her worldview life will lose his/her eternal life, but whoever loses his/her worldview life because of me will save his/her eternal life.
We have to remember that God is in for the long haul. He is preparing us for eternity.
But what are we losing? We are losing the love of this world. We are giving up the things of this world — the possessions, the priorities, and the principles that the worldview prizes.
We benefit because we become new creations. When we choose to lose our worldview life, we gain spiritual life. We are no longer spiritually dead.
Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin. The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
Glossary
Hitchcock talked about “… the higher self treading down and treading out the lower self.” That is what happens when we navigate the Sanctification Road and work out our salvation.
Sanctification is the transformation of mind, body, and soul, which begins with regeneration, gradually changes our nature through the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and ends with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness. Regeneration is the change in us that God brings about when we go from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
Resource
Glossary
Herferd reminded us that gaining/losing our life also means something else. Disciples are called to give up thinking about ourselves. We are to think about others.
Resource
I think many worldview people would read that to mean Jesus was talking about being a Social Savior there. That wasn’t the case.
Pastor Tim touched on this concept this morning. He said that the central ministry of the church is not to minister to the poor and needy. The church’s priority is preaching salvation to a lost and dying world.
Resource
God and Jesus’ priority has always been and will always be our spiritual condition. So when we think about Paul saying, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1: 21 KJV), he is talking about giving up our worldview life and gaining godliness in this life and eternal life when we die.
Securing Our Souls
“For what does it benefit someone if he gains the whole world, and yet loses or forfeits himself?” (Lk. 9: 25 CSB)
Gaining the world’s pleasures and benefits pall to losing our souls.
Okay, most of the versions translate this verse in Luke basically this way. What keeps running through my head is how Mark says it. “And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?” (Mk. 8: 36 NLT).
The soul is the fundamental presence of a human being. Luke 23: 46 reinforces the fact that the soul does not end at death. Our souls are eternal, which means we need to focus on our eternal life.
The verses in Luke and Mark makes it clear that souls can be lost and saved.
- “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Lk. 19: 10 ESV).
- “Then he brought them out and asked, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’ They replied, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, along with everyone in your household’” (Ac. 16: 30-31 NLT).
Hood reminded us that our souls can suffer. This is one reason why Tourbe said that we need “to take care of our salvation at all times, and give it our own personal attention.”
Resource
Let’s continue our substitutions. For whoever wants to save his/her worldview life will lose his/her eternal life, but whoever loses his/her worldview life because of me will save his/her eternal life. For what does it benefit someone if s/he gains the worldview life, and yet loses or forfeits eternal life?
Don’t Be Ashamed of Christ
“For whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and that of the Father and the holy angels. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God” (Lk. 9: 26-27 CSB)
We cannot reject Who Jesus is, His authority, and the salvation that He offers.
How are we ashamed of Christ?
- Sorry that there is only one way to the Father (Jn. 14: 6).
- Guilty that it is hard to follow God’s laws and commandments.
- Regretful that those who have not ABCDed won’t be given a pass into Heaven.
- Apologetic that God has declared that certain things are sin.
- Embarrassed that God has high standards.
- Uncomfortable when we have to stand up for our beliefs.
- Distressed when we have to witness.
Bottom line is we are rejecting Who Jesus is, His authority, and the salvation that He offers us when we feel these things. Salvation is deliverance from evil and the consequences of sins to replace them with good and eternal life.
This plays out so that we compromise with the worldview and try to straddle the gap between the worldview and Godview.
But God is an all-or-nothing kind of God. For whoever wants to save his/her worldview life will lose his/her eternal life, but whoever loses his/her worldview life because of me will save his/her eternal life. For what does it benefit someone if he gains the worldview life, and yet loses or forfeits eternal life? If we prioritize the worldview life, He will be ashamed of us.
Liddon felt that our failures could be categorized in three categories.
- Disobedience
- False profession of faith
- Failure to confess the faith we have
Resource
How Are Our Souls Saved?
Repentance is acknowledging our separation from God and expressing sorrow for breaking God‘s laws and commandments by making the commitment to changing ourselves through obedience so that we no longer do the wrong things. We need to repent of the sins we’ve committed by doing something that is wrong or not don’t something that is right. Sins our actions by humans that disobey God and break one of his reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose he has for us, or follows Satan‘s promptings.
God designed a Plan of Salvation so that we could be delivered from the consequences of sin. The consequences of sin are spiritual death and separation from God.
This was accomplished through His grace. Grace is a free and unmerited gift from the Heavenly Father given through His Son, Jesus Christ that enables salvation and spiritual healing to believers by the work of the Holy Spirit. Because of God’s infinite grace, Jesus our Redeemer in order to forgive us of our sins.
Redemption is where something is used in exchange for something else to gain or regain something. Jesus is our Redeemer because He was born of a virgin, making Him 100% God and 100% man; gave His life on the cross for us so that His blood could pay the price for our sins; and because of God’s great might and power, rose from the grave, conquering death and paying the price for our sins.
We access this grace through faith. Faith is the conviction that the doctrines revealed in God’s Word are true, even if we do not understand all aspects of them, a belief which impacts our lives. Because we have faith and believe, we gain the forgiveness of our sins. Forgiveness is, when we ask, God pardons us because we have broken His laws and commandments.
We accept the pardon by letting go of the guilt and remorse that we feel because we have done something wrong. It is a conscious decision to accept His forgiveness. We also commit to changing ourselves so that we no longer do the wrong things.
By doing this we gain eternal life in heaven. Heaven is the opposite of hell. It is a perfect existence.
Making the Connections
Ooo, baby. Look what else Higgins said. He wrote, “No man is forced into a sinful life, nor is any man compelled to become a Christian; in both cases the will of the actor is left free and unfettered, hence his responsibility.”
Resource
How many times do we want to say that it isn’t our fault? We think about having the free will to choose Jesus as our Savior.
The flip side of that is, when we don’t choose Him, we are choosing a sinful life.
How Do We Apply This?
Our goal shouldn’t be to acquire worldly things.
- “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you” (Mt. 6: 33 CSB).
- We have to be ready to give up things of this world if required to do so by God.
Hitchcock challenged us to look at unhappiness in our lives as our only partially denying ourselves in taking up our crosses for Christ.
Resource
We said in Peace and Safety Are the Rewards for Morality that God is an if…then God.
- If we lose our worldview life, He will give us eternal life.
- If we prioritize the worldview life, then He will be ashamed of us.
It is our choice.
Father God. You are omnipotent, but You are not a dictator. You give us free will to make the decision to submit to You. If we choose not to submit or become ashamed of that decision, You will be ashamed of us and address us accordingly. Lord, we choose You. Amen.
What do you think?
Leave me a comment below (about this or anything else) or head over to my Facebook group for some interactive discussion.
If you don’t understand something and would like further clarification, please contact me.
If you have not signed up for the email daily or weekly providing the link to the devotions and the newsletter, do so below.
If God has used this devotion to speak with you, consider sharing it on social media.
Thank you for sharing that not only are the lost called to shun the world and gain their souls but we who have accepted Christ are called to reject the worldview and accept His word as truth and walk it out in our lives. That is real abundant life. A life that brings God glory. Linking up from Blessing Bloggers.
This was so awesome. Keep shining for HIS glory! So glad to see your post via Debs FB!