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Death is Necessary - Part 2

John 12v25-26

17th January 2015

We read last week about the time, a few days before He was crucified, when Jesus told us that His death was necessary:

John 12v24
I tell you the truth, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

We who repent and believe will live for ever as children of God, but that would have been possible had Jesus not died. Had Jesus not died, you and I could not be forgiven our sins, and so could never be acceptable in God's sight. There would be no church. There would be no Christians.

Jesus continued by saying that death is necessary for us, too:

John 12v25
The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

The word "hate" in the New Testament usually means "consider to be of comparatively little value" or "disregard". Jesus says here that if we love the life we're leading now more than we love the kingdom of God, then we will lose both. But if we love God and His kingdom more than our lifestyle preferences, then we will know eternal life.

We become Christians through repentance and faith. There comes a moment in our lives when we definitively believe that if we turn from our sin, give over the lordship of our own life to God, live His way and not our way, and if we embrace His atoning sacrifice on the cross, then we will be forgiven, we will receive the Holy Spirit, we will be adopted as a child of God, and we will live for ever. And we choose to die to our old lives and give our lives entirely into God's hands. At that moment we're transformed; we become new people.

Death is necessary for us, too.

The moment we become Christians is the death of the person we were before. Paul understood this. He wrote:

John 12v26a
Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be.

Jesus had come to Jerusalem to go to the cross. Here, a few days before He was killed, He says that His followers - we - must go with Him. As Jesus said in Matthew 16v24-25, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it."

We all know, doctrinally, that everything we have, and everything we are, belongs to Jesus. The moment we became Christians, we died to everything we had, and everything we were, before that moment.

But I'm still not completely surrendered to the will of God, and nor are you. We still like to make our own decisions. We still cling to the things we enjoy.

Many Christians live a half-life, where God is half king of our lives and we are half king. But real happiness in Christ comes from real abandonment to Jesus. Death to our old life, to our old selfishness, to our plans, to our own desire to control our present and our future, is necessary.

To really enjoy belonging to Jesus, we have to really belong to Jesus. To the degree that we refuse to accept that God might want us to change, we miss out on God's best for us. To the degree that we try to control the future, we miss out on God's peace. To the degree that we complain to God that our present circumstances are not what we would have chosen for ourselves, we miss out on God's joy.

If we were to really trust Jesus, and abandon ourselves to Jesus, and accept that whatever trial God is allowing us to go through is God-given and so must be good for us, we would know righteousness, joy and peace in the Holy Spirit. But we find it hard because we don't really want to abandon the idea that we are in control of our lives.

Do we pray about all the major decisions? Or do we buy a car, or a house, or a holiday, without asking God if He wants us to have it? Do we change job, or church, without asking God if that's what He wants us to do? Do we make a major investment of money or time is something without enquiring if God wants us to? Who is our Lord?

And yet there is a real part of us that wants to do whatever Jesus desires, to have what Jesus wants us to have. But we don't allow Jesus to rule, because we don't fully trust Him.

We believe, in theory, that whatever Jesus gives us is good for us, that whatever Jesus takes from us, we're better off without. Let's put it to the test.

The death of Jesus was necessary. In order to be a disciple of Jesus, our death is necessary. He went resolutely to the cross, and He calls us to do the same. We must die to our desire to live for ourselves, and genuinely live for God.

John 12v26b
My Father will honour the one who serves me.

If we obey this call to self-crucifixion, then God will honour us. There is no sacrifice too great for the amazing privilege of a sinner like me being honoured by a God like Him.