Jesus Is for Losers
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“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39).
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!
Mark Allen Powell tells this story in his book, Loving Jesus:
I once saw a teenager at
a shopping mall wearing a T-shirt that said, “Jesus Is for Losers.” At first I
thought this was a cynical put-down of Christianity on the part of some
adolescent who’d decided he was too cool to be associated with religion. Then I
noticed the shirt had a Bible reference in parentheses beneath its bold
statement. It was actually a Christian T-shirt, witnessing to the gospel. Of
course! Jesus is for losers, not against them. Jesus came into this
world to dine with outcasts and misfits and to proclaim good news to the
disadvantaged, the neglected, the marginalized, and the abused. Tax collectors,
harlots, Samaritans, lepers ... losers, all. Jesus is for them. [i]
To say
Jesus is for losers is to say two types of things. First, it reveals something
about the kind of people Jesus calls to follow Him. Such people are, in more
than one way, losers. They should own it. But that’s not all this means. It
also says something about Jesus.
Let’s
start with what it says about Jesus’ followers. When Jesus first called His
disciples to follow Him, they started out well. Jesus walked by, called to them
unexpectedly, and they dropped everything that they were doing (Matthew 4:18-20).
Peter and Andrew left their nets and followed Him. James and John left their
boat and father and followed Him. (Matthew 4:21-22). When Jesus passed by
Matthew’s tax booth, and said, “Follow Me.” Matthew “rose at once and followed
Him” (Matthew 9:9-10).
But after
this good start, things went downhill quickly. Repeatedly, they misunderstood Jesus’
identity and mission. They were eager to call down fire on Samaritans. They
argued about who was the greatest. Cowered in fear while He slept during a
storm on the sea. They tried to prevent Jesus’ passion, until it was upon them
and then they ran away from it. In the end, they found themselves hiding behind
locked doors with great fear and weak faith.[ii]
Today, we
might name our churches after these disciples and call them saints, but apart
from Jesus, they were just losers. They were weak and unworthy human beings who
were a disappointment to themselves, to others, and to God. We don’t remember
them because of what they did, but because of what Jesus did for them
and through them.
To say Jesus
is for losers is to notice that Jesus calls people to follow Him who are weak,
unimpressive, and ultimately undependable. As Paul pointed out to the
Corinthians, “Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not
many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish
in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame
the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that
are not, to bring to nothing things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:26–28). Jesus is
for losers!
Losers
like you and me. Those who know we bring nothing to our Lord but our sin. Those
who look for mercy. Those who consider our unworthiness and confess before God
and one another that we have sinned in thought, word, and deed, and that we
cannot free ourselves from our sinful condition. Those who take refuge in the
infinite mercy of God, our heavenly Father, seeking His grace for the sake of
Christ and saying God be merciful to me, a sinner.[iii]
Jesus’
followers are losers in another sense as well, which is more directly at play
in our text from Matthew 10:39: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and
whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
This is
related to Jesus’ first words in our Gospel: “Do not think that I have come to
bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew
10:34). Jesus Himself will cause division between people, a division so severe
that He uses the brutal image of “a sword” (Matthew 10:34). Some will hear
Christ’s call to faith and discipleship, and by God’s gracious action through
the Gospel they hear, they will repent and believe. Others will hear the same
call, but due to their own ingrained sin and stubbornness, they will reject the
Christ who summons them to salvation. Even the family, the closest and most
fundamental unit in human existence, will be affected (Matthew 9:35-37).
In these
divided families, the believer will eventually face this challenge from
unbelieving loved ones: “Choose me and my ways rather than your Jesus and His
ways.” This is merely an application of the broader principle that Jesus has
just taught concerning confessing Him before men (Matthew 10:32-33). To be
sure, Christians will be more loving, more patient, more accepting of non-Christian
family members than otherwise would be, since the love they receive from Christ
enables them to display Christlike love, whether or not it is requited. At
times, God will use such a loving witness as part of His way of bringing
unbelievers to faith; they may be won “without a word” (see 1 Peter 3:1-2).
Other times, however, the non-believing spouse or parents or children will
demand allegiance and conformity in many ways to which the Christian simply
must not agree. Then, the disciple must love Jesus more than father or mother
or son or daughter.
At
various times and places in the Roman Empire, to be a Christian and refuse to bow
down to Caesar and the pagan gods was considered a capital crime; many
Christians literally bore a “cross” or perished by fire or wild beasts or
gladiators. Disciples of Jesus in less-hostile regions may not face bodily
harm, but may still lose cherished relationship with loved ones because of
their confession of faith. Those losses may feel insurmountable and will be a
“cross” to bear.
Because
the issue is the identity of Jesus and faith in Him, however, the disciple
knows there is no middle ground.
Strangely, if a Christian were to long for the old way of life and cave into
family pressures to reject Christ and His work, He would thereby lose the only
real life there is: eternal life with God through Jesus (Matthew 10:39).
Paradoxically, when a Christian accepts the sword, carries the cross, and
suffers the loss of His former relationships and status—perhaps even giving up
his bodily life (Matthew 10:28)—because he clings in faith to Jesus, that
believer will discover that he has found real life forever.
Jesus is
for losers. The Bible verse quoted on that T-shirt was 1 Timothy 1:15: “Christ
Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” By God’s
grace, we can be in a relationship with Jesus, but we’re not just going
to be buddies. The relationship He offers us is one of patients to
physician, sinners to Savior (Mark 2:7).
To lose
your life is not simply to be a loser to begin with. It is to continue to lose;
to lose your pride, boasting, or anything else you might presume to offer God
as significant or worthy of commendation.[iv]
Again, Paul says: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth
of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all
things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found
in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that
which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on
faith” (Philippians 3:8–9). We lose our lives as we recognize we have nothing
to offer God, no claim, no entitlement.[v]
In the
process, the Christian lives abundantly now and will live in eternal glory with
his Savior hereafter. But those who concentrate on the things of this life
jeopardize their eternal salvation. He who gains the whole world but loses his
soul has made a poor bargain indeed!
To say
Jesus is for losers is also to say something about God. The one who
chose the disciples was also the one who chose Israel, that small nation with
an even smaller role to play on the world stage.[vi]
This fits a God who humbled Himself by becoming a human from the hometown
good-for nothing Nazareth.
Jesus
chooses the people He wants to follow Him. Supposedly, He might have found more
capable candidates; He might at least have interviewed the applicants, asked
for some references, or done minimal background checks. But, no. His selection
of the inept almost seems to have been deliberate. His choice of peasants over
scribes, laborers over merchants, tax collectors over priests, seems almost
calculated to ensure exclusion of the wise, the noble, the powerful. “I came
not to call the righteous, but sinners,” Jesus says (Mark 2:17).
Jesus
enlightens His disciples with special knowledge and teaching (Mark 4:33-34). Jesus
teaches His disciples the mysteries of the kingdom, explaining His parables to
them and instructing them in “the way of the cross.” It doesn’t seem to make
any difference. They don’t understand him. A scholar once said, “The amazing
thing … is that, although Jesus keeps teaching His disciples, they never learn.”
I would turn that around. The utterly amazing thing … is that, though
Jesus’ disciples never learn, He keeps teaching them. Simply put: He
never gives up on them, no matter how aggravating their dim minds and hard
hearts seem to be.
Jesus empowers
His disciples to be holy people of God. Jesus gives His disciples the
“spiritual authority” they need to triumph over evil. Notice that they don’t
really make much use of this authority. Occasionally, they able to help others,
but they don’t use the power Jesus has given them to overcome the evil in their
own lives. They don’t become better people themselves. Still, He doesn’t take
back what He has given. Rather, He constantly reminds them of the power they
have, claiming that they would be able to move mountains if only they would put
their faith in God (Mark 11:22-24).
Jesus
keeps His disciples despite their complete faithlessness to Him. This is surely
the most crucial point of all. Jesus never rejects any of His followers, no
matter how inadequate they turn out to be. Even when they desert Him, deny Him,
and leave Him to die, even then the message goes out from the tomb on
Easter morning is, in effect, “Go, tell Peter and the others that I will be
waiting for them in Galilee.” This is incredible! We might have expected Him to
fire the whole lot and find twelve new disciples who would prove somewhat
worthy of Him.
This may
be the ultimate illustration of God’s grace in action. Jesus calls inadequate
people who, despite His assistance, never improve. Indeed, they get worse,
until finally, they reject Him altogether. Still, He does not reject them.
This
self-effacing God delights in showering His favor upon those of low estate. He
lifts up the humble, reaches out to the downtrodden, welcomes the outcast, and
befriends the foreigner. In other words, He is for the loser, which is to say
He is for you, me, all of us.[vii]
We are sinners, outcasts, foreigners, and losers all. But God has chosen us to
be His losers. We are His disciples and we have been given life in Him. This is
the promise I am called to proclaim to you this day.
The other
side is also true. To say Jesus is for losers is to recognize that He humbles
the proud and bring to nothing those who think they are something. This puts us
in our place, which is needed more often than we would like to admit. But this
not only reminds us of our place before God, it also makes room for faith,
which is saving faith. This kind of faith recognizes we are totally dependent
on God and His call to follow. We have nothing to offer. We simply follow Him
to and through death into resurrection. As we lose ourselves in Him, we find the
only possibility for real and lasting life.
Go in
the peace of the Lord and serve your neighbor with joy. You are forgiven for
all your sins.
In the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Unless
otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English
Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
[i] Mark Allan Powell, Loving
Jesus (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2004),
[ii] Gospel: Matthew 10:34-42 (Pentecost
5: Series A),
https://www.1517.org/articles/gospel-matthew-1034-42-pentecost-5-series-a-2023.
[iii] Lutheran Service
Book, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2006. p. 203
[iv] Gospel: Matthew 10:34-42 (Pentecost
5: Series A),
https://www.1517.org/articles/gospel-matthew-1034-42-pentecost-5-series-a-2023.
[v] Gospel: Matthew 10:34-42 (Pentecost
5: Series A),
https://www.1517.org/articles/gospel-matthew-1034-42-pentecost-5-series-a-2023.
[vi] Gospel: Matthew 10:34-42 (Pentecost
5: Series A),
https://www.1517.org/articles/gospel-matthew-1034-42-pentecost-5-series-a-2023.
[vii] Gospel: Matthew 10:34-42 (Pentecost
5: Series A),
https://www.1517.org/articles/gospel-matthew-1034-42-pentecost-5-series-a-2023.
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