I’m always amazed when I consider that one
of the best selling books of all time – not just Christian books, but all books
– begins with these words, “It’s not about you.” If you’ve ever read The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren,
you know what I’m talking about.
This is so upside down, backwards and inside
out from everything that we learn in our culture from a young age. But this is the truth of what it really
means to be a follower of Jesus.
Life is not about us. Life
is not about what we want. Life is
not about what we get out of it.
Life is not about karma.
Really living, being fully alive in Jesus Christ, is about losing our
lives and our identities in Him to receive what He has for us in His
upside-down, inside out Kingdom.
In today’s reading from Matthew 19, Jesus
talks about this in a way that’s really uncomfortable for me. Why is it so uncomfortable? Because I realize that I’m not even
close to living a life that’s not about me and what I want. I have such a long way to go to learn
to live like this.
In v.16, we find a man coming to Jesus
asking what he must do to inherit eternal life. After a little back and forth about keeping God’s
commandments, Jesus lays the smack down in v.21: “If you want to be perfect,
go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in
heaven. Then come, follow me.”
Matthew tells us that the young man was devastated,
“because he had great wealth.”
A lot of people like to take this verse and
twist it around to say it’s a sin to be rich. I mean after all, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man
to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
He didn’t say it’s impossible! There are examples all throughout
Scripture of God blessing people with great wealth and possessions. Wouldn’t it be nice to be one of those
people? Almost makes me want to go
out and buy a Powerball ticket and pray really hard!
But when we really cut to the chase of
what’s going on here, we see that this isn’t a call to poverty. It’s a call to love God above
everything else that we have. It’s
a call to whole-hearted obedience.
It’s a call to value the Pearl of Great Price above everything else in
our lives. If Jesus came to you
and spoke to you and told you to leave it all behind for His Kingdom – your
money, your house, your possessions – and you didn’t do it, it would be
disobedience.
But what Jesus calls all of us to do is to
love God and to love people above everything else in life. This is upside down and inside
out. Jesus says this in v.v. 28-30
in response to Peter’s question about what the reward is for obedience: Jesus said to them, “I tell you the
truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious
throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the
twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left
houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or
fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit
eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and many who are
last will be first.”
When Jesus returns in glory to judge the
world, those who have given it all for him will receive a hundred times as much
and will inherit eternal life.
Jesus talks about this so much, about the cost of following Him. There really is nothing on earth
compared to the riches of knowing Jesus, and the riches of eternal life in
heaven for those who lose their lives to find life in Him.
So how about it? Is it all about you or is all about Jesus?
No comments:
Post a Comment