Loving and Hating One’s Life

“Pour out thy love like the rush of a river
Wasting its waters, forever and ever,
Through the burnt sands that reward not the giver;
Silent or songful thou nearest the sea.
Scatter thy life as the summer shower’s pouring!
What if no bird through the pearl rain is soaring?
What if no blossom looks upward adoring?
Look to the Life that was lavished for thee!”1

Our Lord’s teaching is that only the life that is lost in love is really saved. The illustration is given in this little parable: “Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.”* (John 12:24)ASV The teaching is very clear and simple. You may keep your seeds out of the earth to save them from rotting; they will be clean and beautiful, but nothing will come of them. They will be only seeds. If, however, you put them into the earth, they will seem to perish, but presently from the dead seeds there will arise lovely plants, which in due season may be laden with fragrant flowers and abundant fruit.

It is easy to find the meaning of the parable in the life of the great Teacher Himself. The precious seed fell into the earth and died, but it sprang up in glorious life. Had Jesus saved His life from the cross He might have lived to a ripe old age, making all His years beautiful as the three or four He wrought in such wondrous way among the people. But there would have been no cross lifted up to draw all men to it by its power of love. There would have been no fountain opened to which earth’s penitent millions could come with their polluted lives to find cleansing. There would have been no atonement for human guilt, no tasting of death by the Son of God for every man, no bearing by the Lamb of God of the sin of the world. There would have been no broken grave with its victory over death, and eternal life for all who will believe.

It seemed a waste of precious life when Jesus died so young, and in such shame. No doubt His friends spoke together on those days, when He was lying in the grave, of the great loss to the world His dying was. Perhaps they thought He had been imprudent and reckless—almost throwing away His life. Peter may have referred to the time he had spoken so earnestly to his Master, begging him not to go up to Jerusalem to meet death (Matthew 16:21-26). It seemed to them all that His early death was a sad loss to the world, a wasting of most precious life. But it was not a loss, not a waste. He lost His life, but that seed became the world’s hope and joy. We understand it now. Christianity is the outcome of that “waste.” Heaven is the fruit of the Redeemer’s sacrifice.

There is more of the lesson. It carries in it the law of life for all of us. Jesus went on to say, “He that loveth his life loseth it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.”* (John 12:25)ASV All true life must bear the brand of the cross. If we love our life and try to save it, we shall lose it. If we keep ourselves from the hard service or the costly sacrifice to which duty calls us, we may seem to be gaining by it. We spare ourselves much toil. We have more time for ease, for leisure, for pleasure. We have the money in bank which we might have paid out in helping others. We have saved our life. Yes; but it is a saving which is losing.

There are many applications of this lesson. One has written:

If I should come to high renown,
And compass things divinely great,
And stand a pillar of the state,
And count an empire all my own,
And miss myself—I were a child
That sold himself to slavery
In that fair castle by the sea
That glimmered toward his mountain wild.

The finest thing in life is not to make a success of one’s career as the world rates success. One may “gain the whole world, and [yet] lose himself.”* (Luke 9:25) If he does this, he makes a mistake in whose shadow his eternity must be spent.

Perhaps we do not always realize how easy it is to make this mistake. We think of large services and great sacrifices, but we have much more to do with small ones, and the principle is the same. Every day brings to us opportunities of saving or losing our life. Here is a duty which is unpleasant, from which we shrink. We are not bound to do it; we can choose either the harder or the easier way, and may decline the duty. We weigh the pros and cons for a little while, and then decide not to do it. Worldly prudence approves our choice. We could not afford to pay the price. We have saved our life. Yes, so it seems. But really we have lost our life.

It applies in the matter of service. A friend or neighbor is in sore need or trouble. We learn of his condition, and it is in our power to relieve him, or at least to give him valuable help. It is not convenient, however, nor easy for us to do it. It will cost us much trouble, perhaps considerable outlay of money or effort. It will be much easier not to give the service. Yet the law of love says we should help our neighbor. Self answers up and pleads that it is not our matter, that we are not responsible, that we are not bound to do it. After more or less parleying between love and selfishness, we decide not to do the thing he needs. We have saved our money, our labor, our time, but we have lost our life; we have hurt ourselves irreparably.

Both the priest and the Levite in the parable saved themselves a great deal of trouble, time, toil, danger, and sacrifice, by not stopping to help the unfortunate man they came upon on their journey. But, after all, was it a saving that was profitable? It cost the good Samaritan a great deal to stop and care for the wounded man; but who will say that he made a mistake? It was a losing which was a saving.

We all come every day to similar points in life where we must choose whether we will save or lose our life. Difficult duties face us continually; what are we doing with them? It is less trouble not to take them up. It is easier to be self-indulgent on Sunday or on week-evenings, when we are weary or disinclined or the weather is unfavorable, than it is to go to the church services; so we save our life by putting on wrapper and slippers, and quietly staying at home. It is easier not to be a teacher in the Sunday-school—it ties one down to have to go out in all seasons to meet a class, and besides, there are others who can teach; why shouldn’t they do it? It is easier not to give money systematically to God’s cause—there are so many things of our own we can spend it for, and it is comfortable to have our bank account grow. It is easier not to be forgiving, but to hold grudges, and remember wrongs done to us, and to let our heart cherish its bitterness; it costs far less struggle just to hate people who have been unkind and hateful to us than to try to love them and repay them with kindness. It is easier not to try to be active in Christian work, taking part in meetings, working together in harmony, visiting the sick, but rather to fold our hands and let others do the work. It is easier not to trouble ourselves much about lost souls, just to look after our own life; it is hard to be always feeling the responsibility of the saving of others. It is easier just to think of self, and go on doing business, making money, building up our own fame, marching toward the goal of our ambition, and giving no thought to other people. Other people are in our way; they take our time; they hinder us; they keep us back; it costs to wait for them, or to stop in our busy life to help them.

These are illustrations of what loving our life means. It is taking good care of one’s self, keeping one’s self back from inconvenient and burdensome serving. We do not need great occasions to give us chances to save or lose our life, we have plenty of chances every common day. Every time we decline a duty of love because it is hard, unpleasant, or costly; every time we choose the way of selfishness; every time we take the easy path to save ourselves trouble, we are saving our life. But in such saving we are losing. Our life may seem easier, but we are doing damage to our own foundations.

Look at the other side. “He that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.”* (John 12:25) This is of course speaking of priorities, and does not mean that we are to despise our life, or be careless of it, or waste it. Life is sacred. It is God’s gift to us, and we must never do anything to harm it, to lessen its value, to mar its beauty. To be reckless of life is a grievous sin. The life we bear is not our own. It is God’s, and we must cherish it, use it, then answer for it. We must love our own life (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

But Jesus’ teaching is that love for God and valuing His will must always be first. To love one’s life too much is to care more for one’s own safety, comfort, and ease than for doing God’s will, keeping His commands. To hate one’s life is to deny one’s desires for pleasure, comfort, ease, and even safety, when these desires come in conflict with the will of God. Jesus hated His life when He gave it up to suffering, shame, and death rather than fail in doing His Father’s will (Luke 22:42; John 10:17-18). So must we all hold our life if we would worthily follow Christ. The first thing must ever be our duty. No cost is too high, no danger too great where God’s will is concerned. The duty of love must be done, though in doing it we empty out our whole life on His account (Revelation 12:11; 1 John 3:16).

“If you sit down at set of sun
And count the acts that you have done,
And counting, find
One self-denying act, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard,
One glance most kind
That fell like sunshine where it went,
Then you may count that hour well spent.

But if, through all the livelong day,
You’ve cheered no heart by yea or nay;
If, through it all,
You’ve nothing done, which you can trace,
That brought the sunshine to one face;
No act most small
That helped some soul, and nothing cost,
Then count that day as worse than lost.”2

We need never fear that the losing of life in service of love, in Christ’s name, is losing indeed. But rather saving one’s life is ultimately one’s loss. He who keeps his life from duties involving suffering and sacrifice is the real loser. He who gives out his life in doing God’s will shall find it again. He who sows his life in the furrows of human need shall reap a harvest of blessing (Colossians 1:24; 2 Corinthians 4:17).

“Wherever through the ages rise
The altars of self-sacrifice,
Where love its arms has opened wide,
Or man for man has bravely died,
I see the same white wings outspread
That hovered o’er the Master’s head.”3