"He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that
loseth his life for my sake shall find it" -- Matthew 10:39
This is surely a very extraordinary
chapter. As its contents pass before us we are possessed by feelings of
ever-heightening surprise. Here is Jesus, gathering about Him a little company
of twelve men. No member of the little band belongs to the ranks of power, or
culture, or wealth. They are all inconspicuous, many of them unlettered, the
majority of them poor; it is just a company of working men standing nervously
on the borders of an unfamiliar publicity.
And now their Master is about to send them forth
to proclaim and perpetuate His ministry. With what kind of program will He
inspire them? What glory of possibility will He set before them? What light
will He place upon the distant horizon to cheer them in their mission? What
will He say to kindle in the hearts of these timid toilers a burning and
insatiable enthusiasm?
When I turn to the program, I wonder at the
oppressiveness of the shadow. I wonder that the Master uses such black colours
in depicting the coming day. "Ye shall be brought before governors and kings
for My sake." "Ye shall be hated of all men for My name's sake." "When they
persecute you in one city, flee ye into another." "A man's foes shall be they
of his own household." "He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after Me,
is not worthy of Me."
I am amazed at the almost audacious candour of
the program. There is no hiding of the sharp flint, no softening of the
shadow, no gilding of the cross. The hostilities bristle in naked
obtrusiveness. Every garden is a prospective battlefield "I am not come to
send peace, but a sword." The choice of the Christ involves a perpetual
challenge to war.
Now, if this be the program of the kingdom, what
shall we do? What are we tempted to do? We are tempted to frame for ourselves
a very perverted conception of the characteristics of a reasonable life. If
our surrounding can be so hostile, if our difficulties can be so stupendous, if
the hatred we may awake can be so intense, if we can call into being a mighty
army of aliens, surely the policy dictated by a sane and healthy judgment will
be this: Take the line of least resistance; keep your lips closed; go with the
stream; look after yourself!
This is the method of reasonableness! This is
the policy which assures self-preservation! This is the secret of a successful
and progressive life! Keep your lips closed -- the policy of silence; go with
the stream -- the policy of opportunism; look after yourself -- the policy of
self-aggrandizement. Such is the counsel of Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who
strenuously urges upon me this threefold policy of silence, drifting, and
suction, if amid all these sleeping hostilities I would attain to a roomy and
successful life.
Now, in the chapter before us the Master
absolutely reverses the counsel. Not by the policy of the world shall we ever
attain to self-preservation and enrichment; it is a policy which speedily and
inevitably leads to impoverishment and self-destruction. The policy of the
world leads to an apparent "finding"' in reality it is a terrible "losing."
Along these roads the apparent finder is the loser; the apparent loser is the
winner.
Let us proclaim the methods of the Lord. It is
not by silence, but by expression that we win; "Whoever shall confess Me before
men." It is not by drifting, but by endurance that we win; "He that endureth
to the end shall be saved." It is not be self-aggrandizement but by
self-sacrifice that we win; "He that loseth his life for My sake shall find
it." This is the secret of Jesus; life is sustained and enriched by
expression, by endurance, and by sacrifice.
Let us now apply these principles of the Master
to the individual life. Take the first -- life is secured and enriched by
expression. Apply the policy of silence to the domain of the feelings.
Feelings which are never expressed languish away and die. It is equally true
of the noble and the base. Refuse expression to an unworthy passion and we
slay it by suffocation. Love that never tells its story, that never utters
itself in word, or gift, or service, fades away into drowsy indifference.
Sympathy that never becomes incarnate congeals into cold benumbment. Gratitude
that never testifies soon ceases to be felt.
Pursue the policy of silence in the matter of the
sentiments, and we shall speedily be despoiled of our wealth. Our feelings
require an outlet; they are oxygenated in speech. The price of retention is
expression. We must give them out if we would keep them in. We must lose them
if we would find them.
Apply the policy of silence to the acquisition of
a truth. A truth that is never proclaimed is never really known. Truth
reserves her rarest beauties for the moment when she is being shared. If we
retain her we only see her partially; if we give her away we see her "in new
lights." In the moment of communication she reveals an unsuspected wealth.
The teacher gains more knowledge while he is giving away what he knows. Truth
is vivified in the very ministry of expression. "What I tell you in the ear,
that proclaim ye upon the house tops!"
Perhaps our Master intended to suggest that we
never see the full glory of truth when we receive it; the full glory will break
upon us only when we proclaim it. Never tell the truth, and the truth will
always remain dim; proclaim it, and it will emerge from the mist in clear and
most alluring outline. The price of retention is expression. We must lose if
we would find.
Take the second of the principles given us by our
Lord -- the purposes of life are not served by the policy of drifting, but by
the ministry of resistance. Life is energized by endurance. Drifting may be
the secret of easy living; it never discovers the entrance into a spacious
life. To go with the stream may be a luxury, but it is a luxuriousness which
is productive of a perilous enervation. We can never drift into any really
worthy and permanent wealth.
We can never drift into rest. The only people
who never find rest are the idle and the indolent. The preparative to rest is
labour, and rest only reveals its rich and essential flavours to those who have
plodded the ways of toil. It is the men who have lost who find. Rest never
visits the idle man, even though he have an easy chair in every room in the
house. "Strive to enter into rest."
We can never drift into joy. The only people who
are strangers to joy are the people who shirk every difficulty, and never
contend with a troublesome task. It requires a little pressure even to get the
juice out of a grape, and it does seem as though the fine juices of life are
only tasted where there is a certain stress and strain, a certain pressure, a
certain sense of burden and task. The precious juice of joy is never the
perquisite of the drifter; it visits the lips of resistance and is the fruit of
conquest. "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord"; that is the commanding issue
of prolonged strife and resistance.
We never drift into strength. Drifting makes no
muscle; the muscle is impoverished. The man who drifts with the stream appears
to be conserving his strength, while in reality the ease is just the measure of
the leakage. It is the man who appears to be expending strength who is really
gaining it; the man toiling at the oar and resisting the stream, he acquires
the power of the stream he resists. The policy of drifting appears to find,
but it loses; the policy of resistance and endurance appears to lose, but it
grandly finds. "He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his
life for My sake shall find it."
Take the third of the principles proclaimed by
the Lord -- it is not by the policy of self-aggrandizement that we can find the
secrets of an enduring progress. Life is not enriched by selfishness, but by
sacrifice. Life becomes fruitful only when it becomes sacrificial. This is
true concerning our influence upon one another. It seems ordained that life
has to attain a certain fervour of sacrifice before it can become contagious
and multiply itself throughout the race. On the cold planes of calculation and
selfishness life is unimpressive, and its products leave the general life
unmoved.
It is even so with a poem, with a painting, with
a sermon, ay! With a courtesy; the measure of its impressiveness is just the
measure of the sacrifice of which it is the shrine. What is there in the poem
of the heart, of energy, of blood? What has the man put into it? What did he
lose in its making? What "virtue" has gone out of him? Just so much will be
the measure of healing. Just what he lost will be our gain; he becomes
fruitful where he touches sacrifice.
But let us say more -- the poet himself is the
gainer by so much as he lost. The spirit of sacrifice not only impresses
others, it fertilizes self. In the fervent atmosphere of sacrifice buried
seeds of possibility awake into life, which in an air of cold calculation
remain in their graves -- powers of perception, of resolution, of effort. In
the tropical heat of sacrifice they spring into strength and beauty.
I say, therefore, that the spirit of sacrifice
enriches self while yet it fertilizes others. Our giving is our getting.
"With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."
Here, then, are the gates to a rich and roomy
individual life; not silence, but expression; not drifting, but endurance; not
self-seeking, but sacrifice; for "he that findeth his life shall lose it, but
he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it."
Now let me lift up the principles to a larger
application. I have tried to reveal their relationship to the individual, but
they are equally applicable to wider relationships -- to families, to
societies, to states, and to the Church.
Let me confine this larger outlook to the life of
the Church. Here is the Church of Christ placed in an environment of sleeping
hostilities. If she moves, her foes awake and arrange themselves in serried
ranks. Here and there she meets with violent hatred, and everywhere she is
confronted with gigantic tasks. The difficulties are here in our homeland, and
they are multiplied in lands afar.
What shall be our policy? We may not definitely
formulate the policy, and by the very absence of a clear and strong decision we
may be snared into the three perilous worldly policies of silence, drifting,
and self-aggrandizement; a policy of silence, not proclaiming in every place
the evangel which we have received; a policy of drifting, evading the enormous
tasks and difficulties of the almost immeasurable field of service; a policy of
self-aggrandizement, appropriating the ministries of grace to our own
consolation, and sitting and singing ourselves "away to everlasting bliss."
And here, again, is the word of the Saviour. By
the methods of the world the Church will never gain her life. Life gained in
such conditions is miserably delusive. The vitality is only apparent. The
growth is dropsical. The finding is only a losing. The Church that would grow
rich must externalize and invest its treasure. The Church that would live must
die. If she would have her Olivet of enriched communion, she must seek it by
the way of Golgotha and the Cross. If she would gain, she must lose. She must
be a missionary Church, working out her salvation by the ministries of
expression, endurance, and sacrifice.
How would she gain? Turn again to our
principles. The life of the Church is secured and enriched by expression. I
do not think the Church ever discovers the manifold wealth of her evangel until
she begins to proclaim it to the varied and manifold needs of the race. Its
adaptability to diverse circumstances brings strange corroboration to its
truth.
It is even so on the plane of matter. On the
material plane a scientific discoverer hungers for a multiplicity of tests. He
longs to give his theory the trial of multiplied experiments. The larger and
more varied the range, the more illumined and assured becomes his conviction.
And here is the evangel of the Christ. We can only apprehend it partially if
we confine its application to our own needs. Set it in a different light, and
it will reveal an unsuspected glory.
Take it to India; bring it to bear upon the
Hindoo; set it side by side with his sad and dreary religion; let the Father of
the Lord Jesus Christ be seen in contrast with his own deity, inaccessible to
human affection, or, indeed, to anything else; proclaim the duty and privilege
of holiness amid conditions which give little emphasis to morals. Do all this,
and it requires but little imagination to see that our evangel will assume an
undiscovered majesty and glory, which will warm and illumine the minds and
hearts of its own heralds.
Take it among the primitive islanders of the
South Pacific; take it among the keen and sinewy natives of Central Africa;
take it among the half-awake and conservative people of China; take it among
the alert, absorbent, and prospecting Japanese; and every new application will
reveal a new adaptability of "the exceeding richness of His grace."
We discover while we evangelize. Our torch emits
new flame while we light the lamps of others. We get while we give. "He that
findeth his life shall lose it; he that loseth his life for My sake shall find
it."
Again, the principle is true in wider
relationships. The life of the Church is energized and enriched by endurance.
The difficulties of home and foreign missionary work are gigantic. No field
has been discovered where the difficulty is absent. The line of least
resistance is to remain at ease. But the path to ease is not the way to life.
A difficulty should always be interpreted as an invitation. If the Church be
healthy, a great task will always be an allurement. For difficulties are only
rightly interpreted when they are regarded as promises.
Every difficulty contains prospective wealth.
Break it open, and the wealth is yours! We appropriate the strength of the
enemy we vanquish. Overcome a difficulty, and its power henceforth enlists on
our side. That is a grand evangel, having application both to individual and
to common life.
There are monster difficulties in China. Let the
Christian Church overcome them, and the force of the monster difficulties is
added to her strength. We are energized by our tasks. Our muscle is made by
our resistances. And, therefore, you will find that the seasons of commanding
difficulty have ever been the seasons of the Church's exuberant health. The
strong negative has begotten mighty affirmative. The forces of persecution
have produced sterling muscle and inflexible resolve.
Let us, therefore, look at difficulties as
promises in the guise of tasks. They are treasure houses presenting the
appearance of bristling forts. Break them open, I say, and the treasure is
yours. To dare is to win! "He that loseth his life shall find it."
And as for the third principle, only a word need
be said. The life of the Church becomes fruitful when it becomes sacrificial.
When the church is easeful she loses the power to redeem. I remember the old
story of Pope Innocent IV and Thomas Aquinas, who were standing together as
bags of treasure were being carried in through the gates of the Lateran.
"You see," observed the Pope, with a smile, "the
day is past when the Church could say, `Silver and gold have I none!'"
"Yes, Holy Father," was the saint's reply, "and
the day is past when the Church could say to the lame man, `Rise and walk!'"
When the church's life is lived on the plane of
ease, and comfort, and bloodless service, she has no power to fertilize the dry
and barren places of the earth. When the Church becomes sacrificial, she
becomes impressive. The sacrificial things in history are the influential
things today.
It is the men and the women who give away their
being, the bleeding folk, who are our present inheritance. The woman who gave
the two mites still works as a factor in the life of the race. Sir John
Kelynge -- have you ever heard of him? -- the brutal, cynical justice who thrust John Bunyan for
twelve years into Bedford gaol, his very name is now a conundrum! John Bunyan,
the sacrificial martyr, is still fertilizing the field of common life with
energies of rich inspiration.
The finders have lost. The apparent losers are
at the winning post! The sacrificial are the triumphant. "They loved not
their lives unto the death, and they overcame by the blood of the Lamb." A
sacrificial Church would speedily conquer the world! "He that findeth his life
shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it."
