Jesus calls us to do some pretty radical things; things many of us are not comfortable with at first glance. Sometimes it takes two or three glances before we really get to the heart of what Christ is saying in the Bible, and the implications for our lives today. It's tempting to try to relegate Jesus' words to two thousand years ago and pass them off as irrelevant for us now. To do so would be to deny our purpose in life. Everything that Jesus said in the Bible very much applies to you and me and has drastic implications for our lives.
In Matthew 10 Jesus is speaking to his disciples about going out among the people and preaching about the kingdom of God. He explains to them that they will suffer persecution for their faith, and the mission may demand their very lives. In verse 16 he says, "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves." I think his point here was to show them that they would be vulnerable to those who wish to harm them. But if we keep reading we see that in verse 28 Jesus says, "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell." Do you catch the implication of this verse? As disciples of Christ, we might be asked to give up our lives, but we are still told to not be afraid. The worst they can do is kill us. Wow.
These are the verses we like to skim over. We like to pretend that Jesus didn't really mean it when he said we would suffer for his name. We don't want to think that we might be called to die for our faith. But if your faith isn't worth dying for, what's the point? Jesus is worthy of all our worship, all our love, and all of our lives. When we abandon our lives for him, we have no need to fear.
David Platt says it well in his book. "We don't need to be afraid to go anywhere in this world, because the worst that could happen is that we might be killed. The only way this can comfort us is if we have already died with Christ. The only way this can encourage us is if we are so focused on an eternal God that temporal human beings strike no fear in us." (P. 175) To die with Christ means to die to ourselves. We die to ourselves when we are willing to give up the desires of the flesh such as wealth, prestige, or even physical safety. When we give these things up for the glory of God, we die to ourselves so we can live in Christ. Jesus says this in Luke 6, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it."
The whole idea of suffering stems from the command that we go to all the nations to share the gospel. Too many Christians want desperately to believe that God would never call them to suffer or lose their lives. They want to live safely behind their white picket fences and never step out in faith in what God has commanded them to do. This is not the gospel. This is not what we were created for. Jesus sends us out among the wolves so we can reach out to them and show them the love of Christ. Yes, we will face persecution, suffering, and maybe death. But our reward in heaven makes the sacrifice on earth seem like nothing. We have nothing to fear when we serve the Lord. Paul reminds us in Romans 8:18, "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed in us."
These verses are an encouragement to me today as we contemplate our future work on the foreign mission field. The idea of persecution and suffering is very real in my mind because we plan to work in an area that is relatively hostile toward Christians. We want to go where the gospel has not been proclaimed, and share the grace of God with people who have never heard it. There is risk involved, and we may be called to suffer greatly for the glory of God. We may even be called to give up our lives. So the promises of God in these verses are precious to me, because I can trust that our sufferings here are nothing compared to eternal life with Christ. I want to be able to echo the words of Paul when he says, "I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." May we all be so in love with Jesus that even to lose our lives for his glory would be a blessing.
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