 By James H. Cagle |
“He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal” (John 12: 25 KJV).
Everyone loves living but everyone doesn’t love the life they’re living. Everyone is living a life, even the dead. All the dead are alive somewhere. There is no such thing as a dead person, just dead bodies. The dead are living their afterlife and where they are is based on what they did with Jesus Christ before they died physically.
King Solomon said he “hated life” (Ecclesiastes 2: 17). He didn’t hate living. He hated the life he was living. He was living as a king and as the richest man in the world and hated every minute of it. He was living the same miserable life most people are trying to live today.
Solomon didn’t always hate life. In the book Song of Solomon he was in love with life, and loved every moment he was living.
So, what happened? Solomon loved life when he was in the perfect will of God and doing God’s will was his priority. Solomon hated life when he was out of God’s perfect will and the will of his pagan wives became his priority (1 Kings 11). Life then became nothing but vanity and vexation of spirit. Solomon even hated his life’s work (Ecc. 2: 18), and went to the grave hating life.
A life and its quality are determined by ones’ priorities, for as our priorities change so does our life. When our family, friends, and plans take a back seat to God’s will and plan we have our priorities right.
There are only two lives offered that we can choose to live. There is the self life we choose, which is a life in sync with the world system and everyone who lives this life hates it, if they’re being honest. In the end, a person living the self life will lose everything. And then there is the life of Christ and of being His disciple. God offers this life, which is in sync with His will and all that love, lose nothing in the end. This is to lose a lower life to find and experience one higher (Mt. 16: 25).
We must decide early on to hate the self life (Luke 14: 26) if we’re to come to know and live and love the Christ life (Gal. 2: 20).
