Bible Verse of the Day Friday June 30th, 2023

Matthew 16:25-26 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

The essential element of life is looking past ourselves, accepting Jesus, and surrendering to His will, not our plans and schemes. It should not be difficult to give our lives to the one who gave His life so that we might know freedom from Satan and eternal life. When Jesus sacrificed His life on the Cross of Calvary, he took it back up again on the third day so that we could have our life back eternally with Him. Jesus points out two primary impediments to true discipleship: the desire to avoid trials and tribulations and the desire for earthly fame and fortune. We do not find a truly surrendered life in sacrificing our lives to some worthy cause, but only in sacrifice to Christ Jesus. 

The only path to eternal life is following Jesus because only he holds the keys to Heaven. There is a gospel song entitled “The Keys to Heaven” In the piece it states that Jesus left the keys to Heaven hanging on a nail. Of course, this is about His sacrifice on the Cross. The world is perplexed when they hear that we do not live until we walk to our death with Jesus. However, that is the truth; we cannot know a resurrected life until we die to ourselves. When I surrendered my life to Jesus, one of my family members, who did not know Jesus as their Lord and Savior, asked me if I was about to die; they told me I didn’t seem like myself lately. When we sacrifice our lives to Jesus, we become a new person; the old person is dead, and we walk in a newness of life.  

Jesus addresses two questions in this verse of scripture. The first is a dilemma concerned with the preeminence of one’s soul measured against all the world’s wealth. Of course, the question is rhetorical; all the wealth in the world would be of little value when compared with knowing that we have eternal life. The second question poses the value of our life compared to anything the world offers. There is no compromise here; the world has nothing to provide us with that is more valuable than knowing we have a home with Jesus for eternity. When we reach the point that death is knocking on our door, every tangible article we hold as valuable will grow strangely dim.