Whoever saves his life will lose it

In Mark 8 Jesus says that whoever wants save their life will lose it. Like many of Jesus' sayings, this seems counter-intuitive. Surely saving a life is a good thing? Don't we congratulate and celebrate those who save lives, whether they are surgeons, firefighters or quick-thinking passers-by? Surely saving your own life isn't different from saving someone else's? Is it bad to save your own life?

This isn't what Jesus is talking about. He's not talking about rescuing yourself (or anyone else) from a burning building. This is part of Jesus' teaching about what it means to be a disciple. He says that anyone who follows him must take up their cross. There is only one outcome for the person who takes up their cross: they will die. There isn't an option of taking up your cross on a part-time basis, or doing a bit of occasional leisurely cross-carrying. Taking up your cross is a full-time, and final, commitment. It's in this context that Jesus talks about people who want to save their lives. But what does he mean when he says that those who want to save their life will lose it?


There's a helpful modern analogy, which also involves saving. Think about playing a game on your Playstation or X-box or PC or phone. Whether you are playing for the whole of Saturday afternoon, or for five minutes at the bus stop, chances are that you have an option to save your game. This means that you can stop, come back to it later and pick up from the same point. But anyone who's ever played a game where your character might get killed, or things might go wrong, knows that there's another use for the save button. You save the game just before you go through that dark doorway or jump off that ledge or meet the end-of-level boss. And if you're really cautious, you save your game at frequent intervals. There are some players who save frequently. They don't want to lose half an hour of gameplay, so they save every five minutes. This is the kind of lifesaving that Jesus was talking about. This is an approach to life that says "Things might go wrong, and I don't want that to happen, so I'm going to be extra-cautious." 

Jesus promises life to the full. That means life with ups and downs, with consequences for actions, with the messiness of real relationships. Jesus asks for a life of commitment, a life that involves taking up your cross. Jesus doesn't want disciples who worry that things might go wrong, so decide it's better to save now. Life to the full isn't for disciples who will give to charity once their own bank accounts are full. Life to the full isn't for disciples who will volunteer once they've got everything done at home. Life to the full isn't for disciples who don't commit to relationships in case they go wrong, who don't start conversations in case they're awkward, who don't talk about the good news of God in case they're laughed at. Jesus wants disciples who are prepared to lose their own lives in the messiness and complexity of life with God and with other people. And he warns us that if we try too hard to save what we've got, we may find that instead we've lost everything.