Gaining the World

Jesus made the statement: "For what will a man be profited if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?"  (Matt.16:26) Have you seriously considered what it really means to "gain the world." When Jesus was tempted (Matt.4) the devil offered Him all the kingdoms of the world if He merely fell down and worshipped the devil. Jesus' reply was "We must worship the Lord our God and Him only must we serve." The combination of worship and service (latria which is used in Romans 12:1-2) is powerful in the picture that is painted for us. The path to gaining the world is worship and service. But it is not Christian worship and service. It is a worldly style that turns Christian worship upside down (as Satan often does). Christian worship/service is about "give, give, give...let go, let go" but the kind of worship/service that gains the world is about "take, take, take...hold on, hold on...."

The word "world" is cosmos and means primarily to order or arrange. If I owned the world, then I could have the power to order and arrange it as I saw fit. I could change things. I could make things better and provide a much better quality of life for me, my family, my friends, and all mankind. Gaining the world implies that I will have some great ability to fix everything. We despair often over the quality of our lives. We seek to order our own world. Frankly we really don't like what God has done with it. Is that over the top? I don't think so. We want it, or at least a significant part of it so we can be more OK. Most of us sober up from this thought and are more content to seek to have just enough of the world to make our lives better. So we gain stuff, and influence, and freedom and the like so as to have some measure of control over our lives. We moan as these things are taken from us either through loss of employment, loss of health, loss of influence, and the like. We struggle mightily in this way always looking at our balance sheet, investment versus return to see if we are really gaining or losing.

This morning I wrote, "Learning to be content with what we have and using what we have for Him and His cause insulates us from seeking to gain the world. Why we do what we do. This is key! Any pursuit here that is not kingdom oriented contributes the the losing of our souls (psuche). Our natural lives dwindle away day by day when we do not live them with kingdom purpose. Our thinking should be "'f I do this or that, the kingdom will grow and prosper.' The connection between personal salvation, family life, employment, church, and mission causes us to properly integrate the various aspects of our lives so as to not be seeking to gain the world. So if we do good works without kingdom purpose we forfeit our lives for the world. If we leave church (local) out of the equation we exchange our souls (earthly existence) for a man-made order (our cosmos). God's order includes all the above."

I am reminded of the old hymn: Take the world, but give me Jesus. It is time for Christians to renounce the world, and whole-heartily seek to gain Jesus.