The Goal of Life—4

The gospels record our Lord Jesus Christ as teaching exaltly the same thing Paul does in Philippians 3, only in other words.  Luke 9:23-26 is one of several passages which deal with this subject: “”If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.  For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.  For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself?  For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.”  As with the words of Paul, some Christians have not known quite what to do with what the Lord says in this passage and the others like it.  Christ demands all from those who would follow Him as His disciple.  Such demands can be perplexing because they appear to be teaching salvation by good works.  As a result, theologians have tried to get around the obvious meaning of Christ’s statements in two ways.  First, being a disciple is distinguished with being a born-again Christian.  Christ’s requirements therefore do not apply to all believers, only to those who want to go on in the spiritual life by becoming a disciple.  The claim is that these passages have nothing to do with being saved, but with growing in spiritual maturity by following the Lord as His disciple.  But the Bible knows nothing of a two-stage Christianity.  There is not a shred of evidence to support dividing the body of Christ into two levels: basic believers, who remain inferior members of the Church, and disciples.  These verses are clearly not concerned with rewards for Christian service when they refer to “losing your life,” and “saving it.”

The second way these statements are dealt with is by robbing them of their relevance to Christians today.  I have seen many books by prominent theologians that relegate these controversial passages to an Old Testament context.  So these verses do not apply to believers in the New Testament era.  In the Old Testament, God dealt with people in a different way, so the claim goes.  Many dispensationalists contend that people in the Old Testament were saved in a different way as well.  There was much more of an emphasis on works.  The statements of Christ were spoken in a time of transition.  His demand that disciples must save their lives by losing them for Him, and other like statements, reflect the lingering Old Testament mind-set.  Only with the writings of the apostle Paul do we finally and fully cast off the vestiges of legalism.  Such evasions of the truth are as faulty in their conception as they are difficult to understand.

The Lord’s statements on discipleship are describing the basic heart attitude of the saved sinner.  Salvation by faith creates in the new child of God a heart to follow the loving Father and the Lord Jesus wherever they lead.  We are not saved on the basis of our following Christ, but salvation sets us on the narrow road of following Him as a trusting disciple, willing to forfeit all for Him.  This squares exactly with Paul’s attitude, that he was pressing on to reach the prize, and willing to lose all to attain it.