Look For The Diamond

Jesus Christ has given us a very strange formula for living when he said: “The man who loves his own life will lose it, and the man who hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.” (John 12:25)

What did he mean? We have heard it said, that “a person who is wrapped up in himself makes a very small package,” and this is part of the meaning. All of us, from childhood on, tend to be selfish and self-centered. And unless we stop that line of direction and change it to something else, we become like a top, spinning around ourselves, but having no meaning.

Jesus said that we must not center life around ourselves...don’t love your life to the point that your eyes turn inward instead of outward. If we do that, we will lose all that we have, he inferred. If we discount ourselves, if we push down our egos, bury our self-interest...Jesus used strong language, “hate your own life,” then we will find that what we have despised, God will love. What we have hated, God will preserve through all eternity.

But someone will say, “I doubt that! I don’t think that Jesus went around hating himself, and I don’t think we should either!” But Jesus loved some things so much that by contrast, it might be supposed he hated himself. He so loved the leper that he seemed to care little about danger to himself. He loved people so much, that it didn’t matter that he ran smack into a wall of iron resistance that finally led to a cross.

Perhaps this is what it means to “hate” our lives. It is not that we should neglect our bodies or take chances with our health...but rather that we become so obsessed with finding God’s will and doing it, of serving Him, and laboring under His divine command, that by contrast, our own wills mean nothing.

This was Christ’s formula...to give and give and give of Himself for God, and others, that finally what is left over, is the essence boiled down, the valuable nugget filtered through, which has value in the coin of heaven.

Suppose someone were to deliver to your home a load of coal, and say that somewhere in that load is a diamond of great value. You could do several things. You could guard and preserve that load of coal forever. Or you could tell everyone who comes, “Look at that pile of coal. I have a diamond there.” And they would laugh at you in scorn.

But if you gave away that coal, piece by piece, finally when all of it had been given away, the diamond would have filtered down and be preserved at the bottom of the pile.

Somewhere within you, there is a diamond in a soul of tremendous value. It must be preserved, it must be carefully handled. But it will not be done by hanging on for dear life to that which surrounds it. Spend your life, lose it for Christ, give it away in service until it is all used. And before your very eyes, you will discover that what is left, is of far greater value than all the other put together.