Jesus’ Top Teaching
Matthew, Mark and Luke are together and are known as the synoptic gospels. Synoptic means 'seen together' or similar because these three gospel accounts present a similar outline, stories, discourses and parables. John's gospel is believed to be written at least 30 years after Jesus' time on earth.
The gospel of John is very different, it covers a different period than the other writers; much of Jesus' ministry is in Judea, and John gives lengthy discourses (John 13-17) and stories (woman at the well and the woman caught in adultery) that aren't found in the synoptics.
But here’s what the Gospels have in common: All of them record four stories and three predictions. The four stories they all mention are
the baptism of Christ,
the feeding of the five thousand,
the triumphal entry,
and Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection.
All four Gospels record three predictions:
Jesus predicted His betrayal,
Jesus predicted Peter’s denial,
and Jesus predicted His crucifixion and resurrection.
But there is no teaching of Jesus found in all four Gospels but one.
And what's also interesting about this teaching of Jesus is that it is present in six places in the Gospels. When you read them in context you see that Jesus is teaching this on 4 different occasions.
On His third tour of Galilee
After visiting Caesarea Philippi
On his final journey to Jerusalem
During his final week in Jerusalem
Now if Jesus mentioned something this often, I would want to make sure that I am doing what He has said. So here it is….
If you find your life, you’ll lose it; but if you lose your life, you’ll find it.
Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. Matthew 10:39
For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. Matthew 16:25
For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. Mark 8:35
For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. Luke 9:24
Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it. Luke 17:33
Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. John 12:25
If we are seeking how to advance and keep our own life in our own hands, Jesus said we will in fact lose our lives. We won’t find true meaning and purpose through keeping our own lives but through giving it away for the Kingdom of God.
History is full of examples of people, who by giving away their lives, gained life eternal in the age to come. Late in the fourth century, there was a monk named Telemachus. Listen to his story as quoted from William Barclays Daily Bible Study Commentary in Mark.
“He had determined to leave the world and to live all alone in prayer and meditation and fasting, and so to save his soul. In his lonely life he sought nothing but contact with God. But somehow he felt there was something wrong. One day as he rose from his knees, it suddenly dawned upon him that his life was based, not on a self-less, but on a selfish love of God. It came to him that if he was to serve God he must serve men, that the desert was no place for a Christian to live, that the cities were full of sin and therefore full of need.
He determined to bid farewell to the desert and set out to the greatest city in the world, Rome, at the other side of the world. He begged his way across lands and seas. By this time Rome was officially Christian. He arrived at a time when Stilicho, the Roman general, had gained a mighty victory over the Goths. To Stilicho was granted a Roman triumph. There was this difference from the old days--now it was to the Christian churches the crowds poured and not to the heathen temples. There were the processions and the celebrations and Stilicho rode in triumph through the streets, with the young Emperor Honorius by his side.
But one thing had lingered on into Christian Rome. There was still the arena; there were still the gladiatorial games. Nowadays Christians were no longer thrown to the lions; but still those captured in war had to fight and kill each other to make a Roman holiday for the populace. Still men roared with blood lust as the gladiators fought.
Telemachus found his way to the arena. There were eighty-thousand people there. The chariot races were ending; and there was a tenseness in the crowd as the gladiators prepared to fight. Into the arena they came with their greeting. "Hail, Caesar! We who are about to die salute you!" The fight was on and Telemachus was appalled. Men for whom Christ had died were killing each other to amuse an allegedly Christian populace. He leapt the barrier. He was in between the gladiators, and for a moment they stopped. "Let the games go on," roared the crowd. They pushed the old man aside; he was still in his hermit's robes. Again he came between them. The crowd began to hurl stones at him; they urged the gladiators to kill him and get him out of the way. The commander of the games gave an order; a gladiator's sword rose and flashed; and Telemachus lay dead.
Suddenly the crowd were silent. They were suddenly shocked that a holy man should have been killed in such a way. Suddenly there was a mass realization of what this killing really was. The games ended abruptly that day--and they never began again. Telemachus, by dying, had ended them. As Gibbon said of him, "His death was more useful to mankind than his life." By losing his life he had done more than ever he could have done by husbanding it out in lonely devotion in the desert.
God gave us life to spend and not to keep. If we live carefully, always thinking first of our own profit, ease, comfort, security, if our sole aim is to make life as long and as trouble-free as possible, if we will make no effort except for ourselves, we are losing life all the time. But if we spend life for others, if we forget health and time and wealth and comfort in our desire to do something for Jesus and for the men for whom Jesus died, we are winning life all the time.
If attempt to live our lives in the constant pursuit of safety, security, ease and comfort, if every decision we make is based up worldly wisdom and taking care of number 1 (ourselves), we are losing and in the end life won’t be worthwhile. Life becomes dull, monotone, boring and void of true purpose. Life is not meant to be selfish, as that goes against God's design. Life becomes merely “earthbound” instead of heaven on earth. There was once written on a tomb in French “Né homme—mort épicier”, "Here lies who, born a man, a grocer died." Any trade or profession might be substituted for the word grocer. The Father destined something greater for us.