“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” — Mark 8:36 (HCSB)
When we read the word “cross” today, we don’t flinch. We even wear them around our necks as jewelry. But when Jesus told the crowd standing in front of him to take up their cross, the people listening to him would have reacted very differently to that word. In their world, crucifixion wasn’t a religious symbol. It was one of the most brutal and humiliating forms of execution ever devised. It was public, it was agonizing, and actually where the word “excruciating” comes from. It was reserved for people Rome wanted to make an example of. Wearing a cross as jewelry in that culture would have been like wearing a miniature gallows around your neck today. It would have been absurd and offensive.
This makes what Jesus says here all the more powerful. Throughout history, revolutionary leaders have rallied their followers with promises of glory, triumph, and victory. Jesus does the exact opposite. No rousing speech. No promise of earthly reward. Just a call to pick up the most shameful instrument of death in the Roman world and follow him.
He uses a rhetorical device common in classical literature called a chiasm, named after the Greek letter chi, which looks like an X. If you try to save your life, you’ll lose it. If you lose your life, you’ll save it. The ideas cross each other and form that X shape. The next thing he says is a gut punch. What does it profit a man to gain everything the world has to offer, if he forfeits his soul in the process?
I was reading about John Chau lately. He was the young American missionary who died a few years ago trying to bring the Gospel to an isolated, uncontacted tribe on an island near India. The world has mocked him. People called him reckless, naive, even foolish or crazy. And maybe there are legitimate questions about his methodology. But his passion for the Gospel can’t be questioned. And according to this passage, Jesus would not have called him a failure. We don’t know yet what fruit, if any, came from his sacrifice. But that might not be the point.
When Jesus mentions eternal life, he’s talking about a quality of life available to us today, right now where you sit, not after death at all. Now, don’t think he’s negating a life that continues in heaven after we shuffle off the mortal coil. But, it’s something deeper and more real than anything this physical world can offer or take away.
I had a poster on my wall when I was a kid, a BMX biker mid-jump, totally airborne. I was never into that sport, but the words on it never left me. “God, grant that I am a winner first in your eyes, then in my own.” That’s really what Jesus is getting at here. If you are living for an audience of One, and that One has already secured the outcome, then you genuinely cannot lose. In that sense, John Chau couldn’t actually lose. He wasn’t playing a game where he could be a winner in the world’s eyes. The question is, what would you do differently if you knew you couldn’t lose?