John
12:23-25 is a hard saying. "The
hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless
a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.
But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose
it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal
life."
Jesus is basically telling
His disciples that to live they need to die. That’s not a comfortable teaching.
Most of us are not in a big hurry to die. Many of our Christian songs may talk
about going home to heaven, "When the roll is called up yonder..,"
"When we all get to heaven," etc.. , but when the time comes to
leave this world, even the most spiritual tend not to be too homesick. We’ve
grown accustomed to this world. We’ve trained ourselves to defend our lives,
our loved ones, our possessions. We’ve trained ourselves to survive.
Jesus
tells us our very usefulness - our
fruitfulness for God - is tied to our willingness to surrender our lives (etc.)
even to die for Him. There are 6 instances where Jesus mentions bearing fruit as a Christian - and 5 of those are tied to the cross or dying.
In Short - it is in dying...
not in doing... that we bear fruit for God. To put it another way: Placed in
the position of obeying God when it might very cost you what will you choose?
Remember Jesus said, Come
follow me!
Be wise today and always –
follow with your life.
