Gospel of John 12:25

Everyone wants to cling to life; to seek any remedy that will make life easier and prolong it. There is nothing wrong with that! Why then does Jesus say: “Whoever loves his life loses it and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for life eternal?”

The answer is that there are different meanings of life. Jesus did not come to condemn the world, He came to save it. The world that is compromised by sin; by greed, rapaciousness, war, torture, hatred, and enmity of all sorts; is a world that promotes not life but death. That is why Jesus says: “Whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for life eternal.” He wants us to possess true life by rejecting the false way of life which the world offers.

There are many people who embrace the false way of life the world offers. They give themselves over to lives of greed and ruthless competition. They accumulate large fortunes of money at the expense of God’s environment, God’s children, and God’s word; and they get away with it for they are protected by the principalities and powers of this world (which they helped create).

The Christian, on the other hand, is called to live the good life of the Gospel in the world while not being of it. (John 17:15-16). The Christian gets into trouble when he/she mixes the life of the Gospel with the life of the world. The Gospel is meant to be a leaven in the world. It is meant to purify the world; to save the world from itself; to renew it and redeem it. There are many wonderful things in our world, however, which enhance and improve the human condition. Advances in medicine, technology, and education, for example, have improved the quality of human life for so many people. The gospel does not seek to reject these worthwhile improvements in human living; it builds on them to create a better world that is free from the corrosion of greed, self-interest, inequality, hubris, vengeance, and hate. In this way, the gospel is described as a leaven in society because it brings to fullness the possibilities of man in the world.

The way to guard ourselves against mixing the life of the Gospel with the “life” of the world is to be familiar with the scriptures. By familiar, I mean: living according to the scriptures, not just reading or listening to them in Church. Before the scriptures were ever written, there were people who lived them. Jesus lived what we read about in the New Testament, but He did not leave us anything in writing. It was His disciples who wrote down what He did and what He said, for our benefit. If Christians are genuinely familiar with the scriptures, they will be protected from the world, and the world with all its false values will not overpower them.

They will indeed inherit eternal life.

Fr. Hugh Duffy