The Sacrifice

....is it really a loss?

Mark 8:35 (CSB) “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me and the gospel will save it.

This world and this life will come to an end. We know that this must be true, because all that we see and know eventually corrodes, dies and disappears. It dies. There is nothing that we can lay our hands on that has Life and does not die. Even though we can find some trees that may be hundreds of years old, we know that there are many millions more that have passed away and are no more.

However, there is this message from Christ that says that there is something that is greater than this life and that through Him, humanity can receive it. There is a life that is not temporary and is available to all. Jesus Christ is the only recorded life that was put to death but then after 3 days, received Life back into Himself and rose up from the dead. This is part of what is known as the gospel. Jesus spells out the entire message of the gospel during His life of 33 years on this earth. He tells of a greater life that is eternal. He points to the Israelite nation with its heritage and history. He points to the promises of God to Abraham and Abraham’s faith and belief in those promises. He points to the recorded words of Moses (the Torah) and the Israelites (also known as the Hebrews and Jews). He points to a loving Father Whose children have left Him and how He has done everything possible to make sure they find their way back home. This Father lives in eternity. The children have left eternity to explore and find their way outside of eternity. The only thing outside of eternity can only be described as temporary. In more brutal terms, eternity could be called Life, and temporary called death. This is what Jesus is trying to communicate.... Give up your quest for a temporary life with temporary benefits and turn your attention and intention to live a life that cannot die. A life that has been lived as an example and paid ticket back into the relationship with The Father Who truly birthed you. A person may think that they were born by a father and mother, but it is God Who created those first parents who are the parents of your parents and so too, you. All of humanity are separated from God because of the first couple’s turning away from God and seeking to find their own way without Him. This turning away was done in The form of disobedience. The was a tree in the garden of God called The Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil. God told the first human not to eat from it. Eating from the fruit from that tree would result in death. But the commandment of God was ignored. The first couple chose not to listen and obey. Somehow they did not believe God and in their self-willfullness, they rebelled by disobedience and chose to know Good and Evil. This disobedience, this unbelief is sin. The penalty for that disobedience was death.

We have already discussed that “eternity” is akin to Life and that “temporary” is antecedent to it... in other words, death. With this picture in mind, The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil could also be called “The Tree of the Knowledge of Life and Death, of Eternity and Temporary.”

But there was another tree in the garden of God. The Tree of Life. The first couple were cast out of God’s garden and lost access to that tree once they disobeyed the command of God. But God, being the greatest loving Father that ever was or ever will be, did not leave His disobedient children forsaken. What truly loving father would do that!? He sent Jesus Christ, The Son of The Trinity, The Son of God, into the temporary life where we the children are now living. He came to show the way back to The Father. More than that, He came to BE The Way. Only Jesus Christ could and does perfectly obey the command of The Father. It is only in Christ that the penalty for the disobedience of the first parents is satisfied and the sentence of death reversed. Christ is that Tree of Life, planted in the dirt of this disobedient, rebellious world. Hung on a tree, fallen to the ground, planted in the earth only to burst forth from the grave in new life, the Tree of Life. Find that Tree and eat from its fruit and you too will have eternal life. “I am the vine and you are the branches. Stay attached to Me and your Life will be filled and fueled by Mine. I Am rooted in the Father. Because you are rooted in Me and I in The Father, you will produce fruit yourself and many will eat of it and become like you, rooted in Me and The Father. Together we will once again live with The Father in His garden. Never to die again. No longer temporary, but permanent.”

Daniel 12:2 (CSB)

Many who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to eternal life, and some to disgrace and eternal contempt.

Matthew 19:29 (CSB)

“And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields because of my name will receive a hundred times more and will inherit eternal life.

John 3:13-15 (CSB) 13 “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven -- the Son of Man. 14 “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 “so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.

John 3:16 (CSB)

“For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:36 (CSB)

The one who believes in the Son has eternal life, but the one who rejects the Son will not see life; instead, the wrath of God remains on him.

John 5:24 (CSB)

“Truly I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not come under judgment but has passed from death to life.

John 6:40 (CSB)

“For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

John 6:47 (CSB)

“Truly I tell you, anyone who believes has eternal life.

John 12:25 (CSB)

“The one who loves his life will lose it, and the one who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

John 17:3 (CSB)

“This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent -- Jesus Christ.

Romans 6:22 (CSB)

But now, since you have been set free from sin and have become enslaved to God, you have your fruit, which results in sanctification -- and the outcome is eternal life!

Romans 6:23 (CSB)

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Titus 1:2 (CSB)

in the hope of eternal life that God, who cannot lie, promised before time began.

1 John 2:25 (CSB)

And this is the promise that he himself made to us: eternal life.

1 John 5:11 (CSB)

And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.

1 John 5:20 (CSB)

And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know the true one. We are in the true one -- that is, in his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

Jude 1:21 (CSB)

keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting expectantly for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ for eternal life.