This is the fourth part of a series entitled “Short Sayings of Jesus.” Jesus was a master teacher, and He employed many teaching forms (such as lecture, Socratic discussion, parables, etc.). He also uttered short sayings that are easy to memorize and have wide application. He used two types of short sayings:
The truth expressed in this aphorism is what theologians call the “life-out-of-death” principle. The wheat seed illustrates this principle. It contains physical life, but this life cannot reproduce unless the seed “dies.” Only when it goes into the earth and the outer husk decays does the kernel germinate and produce wheat stalks with dozens of other seeds.
But Jesus is not giving a botany lecture. “Truly, truly, I say to you...” is the way Jesus introduced a solemn revelation of spiritual truth (as in John 3:3). Just as a plant must die before it can germinate and multiply, so also death is required before we can have spiritual life and multiply it to others. Jesus applies this truth in three ways – one in the immediately preceding context, and two more in the immediately following context.
See John 12:20-22. The setting is that certain Greeks ask to see Jesus. That they have come to Jerusalem to worship at one of the Jewish feasts shows that they are seeking God. The fact that they ask to see Jesus shows that they believe that Jesus has access to God and can guide them to God.
You might expect Jesus to answer like Buddha (“Follow the Eightfold Path”) or like Muhammad (“Observe the Five Pillars). Religion presumes that humans have the capacity to earn spiritual life from God or to generate spiritual life from within themselves. But instead, Jesus says verse 23. At first glance, this sounds self-absorbed and even narcissistic. Here the Greeks are asking Jesus to help them find God, and Jesus responds by talking about the time has come for God to glorify Him!
This is where familiarity with John’s gospel is helpful. Both phrases (“the hour” and “the Son of Man...glorified”) refer to Jesus’ imminent crucifixion (see John 12:27 and John 17:1). The Bible says that humanity is spiritually dead, separated from God because of our rebellion against Him and because of our violations of His moral character (see Ephesians 2:1). Jesus is God’s unique Son, the spiritual life of God incarnate (see John 14:6). He has come to provide access to God’s life to all humanity by dying for our sins, to pay the penalty of God’s judgment in our place.
In light of this, Jesus’ response to the Greeks makes perfect sense. “You are seeking for spiritual life. No set of spiritual disciplines that you perform for God can ever generate this life within you. Access to God’s life requires that I perform something for you – that I voluntarily die for your sins.”
So here is Jesus’ first application of the “life-out-of-death” principle. Let’s personalize it: “I am cut off from the spiritual life that I was created to possess and enjoy. Jesus is that spiritual life (a Person, not a principle), and He has come to make His spiritual life freely available to me by dying for my sins (see John 3:16).” There is only one condition – that I personally entrust myself to Jesus as my Savior and life-Giver. What good reason is there for not doing this? This was the famous wager of French mathematician Blaise Pascal.
But there is more. Once we receive spiritual life by entrusting ourselves to Jesus, God’s purpose of our lives is that He transmit His spiritual life both deeper into us and through us to others – to be seeds that bear much fruit. And for seeds to bear much fruit, they must first die. This is why in the immediately following context Jesus applies this principle to His disciples.
See 12:25. The present tense, active mood verb (“hates his life”) indicates an ongoing and voluntary choice of “death” for Jesus’ followers that ironically results in “keeping” (phulasso – “guarding”) the spiritual life we have received. What is this process?
Jesus is not prescribing literal self-hatred (e.g., habitual self-recrimination). God made us as creatures in His image, and He has adopted believers as His own beloved sons and daughters – are we are commanded to revel in this new and glorious identity. Nor is He prescribing being a doormat to others’ abusive or exploitative control. He taught that loving others involves respectful non-compliance and even discipline when needed.
But He is calling on us to deny our fallen self – that deeply ingrained egotistical desire to exalt ourselves above others, to protect ourselves from discomfort and inconvenience, etc. We think (and our culture tells us) that gratifying these self-centered desires will make us healthy and fulfilled – but Jesus says that this way is actually the way of death that will cause us to forfeit true health and happiness.
Jesus says this same thing slightly differently in Luke 9:23-24. Following Him involves daily deaths to self. Sri Lankan pastor Ajith Fernando writes about this in his book The Family Life of a Christian Leader:
Crucifying self is one of the most basic practices of the Christian life... Denying self and taking up the cross are daily practices for the Christian... Every day, we are faced with situations in which our wills clash with God’s. Knowing that our thinking and ways are so different from God’s thinking and ways (Isaiah 55:8,9), we should be asking God daily what he wants us to crucify. Our failure to crucify self in the home (leads) to an unhappy home.
According to Fernando, these failures can take many forms, such as: venting annoyances at family members’ besetting sins, insensitively demanding sexual gratification, reciprocating nasty words and/or refusing to apologize first in conflicts, complaining about interruptions to comfort plans, refusing to sacrifice career opportunities for the family’s health, bringing up past sins to punish family members, exerting illegitimate control over family members’ decisions.
These daily “deaths” to self are painful at the time – they wound our pride. But they also ironically lead to greater spiritual life: deepening appreciation of God’s love and grace, deepening experience of God’s Spirit’s empowering us to deny self (Romans 8:13), deepening alignment with His design for our lives, and deepening fulfillment and even joy.
I don’t know about you – but this is a great ongoing challenge for me! Which path will I choose today, in this situation – to gratify self and reap increasing spiritual defeat, or to crucify self and reap increasing spiritual life?
Jesus teaches yet another application of this “life-out-of-death” principle in 12:26. Jesus was heading into great circumstantial adversity and mistreatment and ultimately to death on the cross. Yet this was the path not only to honor from the Father, but also to the spread of His life to others. It will be the same for us. As we follow Him, our path will take us into circumstantial adversities and mistreatments that we could otherwise avoid. Yet God mysteriously works through these sufferings to release Christ’s life more potently through us to others. Paul expounds upon this “life-out-of-death” application in 2 Corinthians 4:7-12.
Look at 2 Corinthians 4:7. Note the same idea of the life trapped inside the husk. Like a diamond ring inside a peanut butter jar, Christians possess the treasure of God’s life inside our common and fallen bodies.
Now look at 2 Corinthians 4:10-12. Note the principle that for that God’s life to be manifested to and multiplied in others, we must undergo an ongoing divinely orchestrated process of death.
This death process is described in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9. These negative experiences are different from denying self, which we choose. They come upon us from without as we seek to serve others in the name of Christ. Consider Paul’s four-fold description of this “death” process:
Is this “death” process worth it? You bet it is! It leads to the experience of God’s sustaining power (the “but not’s” of 2 Corinthians 4:8-9; echoed in 4:16). It also leads to the mysterious release of God’s power to impact others in ways we could never have imagined (4:12, 4:15) – which is the greatest joy in this life (see 3 John 1:4). And all of this is just a foretaste of what we will experience when Jesus rewards us for our service in the next life. This is worth more than all the suffering we experience along the way! Listen to David Livingstone, a 19th Century missionary in Africa, not long before he died of malaria and dysentery:
For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this be only for a moment. All these are nothing when compared to the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.
