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Saving Our Lives

                 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. (Matthew 16:24-27)

                There’s a saying that has been going around for a while. “When God put a calling on your life, He already factored in your stupidity.” Peter seems to me to be a great example of this. The passage above comes right after Peter gets done scolding Jesus because Jesus told the disciples He was going to die. Jesus had just called Peter, “Satan” (which is part of my argument against the nonsense taught by some that Satan’s goal was for Jesus to die on the cross). Then, Jesus turned to all of his disciples with the teaching quoted above.

                Peter might be an example of God factoring in stupidity when He calls someone, but He also seems to factor in cowardice. Consider Moses. Consider Gideon. Consider Barak, who wouldn’t go to war without Deborah. And then there are folks like Jonah and Samson. And David, who could go into single combat against a giant one day, and cower in a cave the next.

When God calls someone, He takes into account our humanity, our fallenness, our stupidity, and our other weaknesses. But that doesn’t mean God smiles indulgently and accepts these things. When we cross some line (we may not have known was there), He does respond. When we do something stupid, He will correct us. And He regularly challenges us to step beyond ourselves as we are.  In today’s passage, that’s made clear. If we seek to save ourselves, we’ll lose ourselves. It’s only by losing ourselves in a Godward direction that we can be saved. 

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