Upside-Down Christmas: Luke 9

Luke 9

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I’m glad you’re here joining us for our Upside Down Christmas podcast where we’re looking at how Jesus turns things on their heads. And we’re doing that by looking through one chapter of Luke’s Gospel for the season of Advent; today, we’re in chapter nine.

And chapter nine is full of these types of things that we’ve been talking about, so much so that you could write a lot of podcasts on them. So I just want to focus on this classic teaching of Jesus—perhaps the most “upside down” teaching in the whole Bible. Here’s what it says: And Jesus said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his  life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” (Luke 9:23-24)

You know the most obvious way to pursue the good life is to just pursue the good life. It’s to pursue wealth, or maybe comfort, or maybe fame and approval if that’s what you prefer. It’s even to pursue good things like a family and a good reputation or a legacy. If you want the good life, just seek the good life. That’s the conventional wisdom, and on the face of it—of course that’s what you’d do.

But according to Jesus that’s not how you would actually come to life. In fact, the pursuit of that stuff ends up with you losing out on life altogether. And Jesus explains why. He says in v. 25, “For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” It turns out, you can gain all those things that make for a good life only to lose the very life enabling you to enjoy them.

Instead, Jesus says the only way to come to real life is to lose your life for his sake. The only way to gain your life is to give it up for Jesus. You gain life by giving it up.

So how do we make sense of this?

The only way to understand this is to pair it with some of Jesus’ other sayings in this chapter. In fact, just before this teaching, we read this: the Jesus said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered, “The Christ of God.” And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” (Luke 9:20-22)

You see, Jesus was essentially saying that he himself was going to gain new life in the very way that he described it to the disciples. He was going to willingly lay down his life, to submit to arrest, shame, persecution, torture, and even death. But on the third day, he was going to be raised again from the dead. He was going to give away his life, but in the end he was going to gain it back.

And when we go a little further we learn that this life that he gains when he’s raised from the dead is a life that can never be taken away from him again. It’s not a life that he can lose or forfeit. It’s what the Bible calls eternal life. In other words, Jesus gave up the life he had in order to gain the greater resurrection life to come. And he’s teaching us to do the same thing.

We think the good life is full of good things, comfortable things, easy things, successful things, and so on. And much of that really is good. But if we train our minds on gaining those things in life, in the end we will lose the very lives we have we need to enjoy them.

But if instead, we give up our lives, submitting ourselves to Christ and to his kingdom for his glory, we will end up dying to ourselves but gaining a new life in God. We will gain the eternal life that only God can give.

It’s completely upside down. The only way to gain life is to willingly lay your life down. The only way to live is to die to yourself everyday. The only path to eternal life is the one that leads down into death. Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.

Let’s pray: Lord Jesus, it’s so easy for us to train our minds on the good life, on what we want. Forgive us. Teach us to walk away from that fool’s errand, that dead end way of living. And instead teach us to focus on your kingdom, living for you. Teach us to walk according to your ways, to give up our own lives for the life you would give us.

Family Devotion:

Sometimes we get our priorities out of whack when we live life day by day. Often times, the most important things to us really don’t matter as much as they should.

Let’s make a list. Make a list of the ten most important things in your life right now, #1 being the MOST important answer and #10 being the least important.

After the list is made, read Luke 9:23-25.

What do you think it means to “deny yourself?”

Let’s look at our list again. First, did Jesus make the list? If not, let’s add him. Now let’s reorder our list. Jesus should be first. Where can we deny ourselves?