Why Would I Want to Die for Jesus?

What Does It Mean to "Die Young"?

To "die young" is to live for Christ and nothing else, to be set free from the bondage of sin and self, and to live a new kind of life. Those who die young are emotionally bulletproof (or close to it), because they have already died to everything in them that another person could damage or break. In the 1800s, missionary James Calvert left for the Fiji Islands to share Jesus with the cannibals living there. The captain of the ship that brought him tried to dissuade his going by saying, “You will lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among such savages,” to which Calvert replied, “We died before we came here!”

Jim Calvert knew what it was to die young, and because of that he could do what other men were too afraid to do. His confidence was built on the fact that he had already given his life away, so no one else could harm him. His life, and the lives of those like him, are a shining example of the beauty of the death and burial of self.

When you die young, you give all of your needs,  fears, worries, wants, hopes, dreams, and failures over to the One who can handle them.

Death Is the New Life

Life is good. Who doesn’t want more life? The end of life is not something anyone wants to think about and something everyone wants to avoid. The fountain of youth, should it exist, would be the busiest water feature in the world if it could truly make us live forever. Human beings want to live; they don’t want to die. Death is a permanent end to life as we know it that often comes after excruciating pain.

If you only die young because you believe it will improve your life, gain you something, or get you in with God, then in the words of Oswald Chambers, it is only your “miserable commercial self-interest” you are acting on, and the death that brings you to life is only an illusion. But to truly die young is to abandon all claim on yourself, either your improvement, salvation, or success, and to give everything to your Lord and Savior.

Up is the New Down

Let’s face it -- it’s easier to fall down than it is to get up. It’s easier to descend than to climb. Gravity is against going up and insists that we all go down.

Yet, according to Jesus, down is the new up, and it all started for the believer when Christ came to earth (Phil 2:7–8). With his arrival, weakness became strength and death became life. His meekness confounded his followers. His kindness angered his oppressors. And his sacrifice shocked his world. He didn’t live like people imagined the Messiah would. He didn’t wield his omnipotence and come down from the cross, he didn’t turn the rocks into bread, and he didn’t beg people to follow him. He didn’t disgrace sinners. He wasn’t what most of the world thought he would be. Unlike a king, he owned only what he wore. Unlike royalty, he had no place to live. He didn’t argue with authority but lived under it. He didn’t start a rebellion but taught his followers love and sacrifice. He didn’t arrive as a giant among men but as a child in a manger. God could have arranged for him a castle and guards, but he didn’t even have a room. He could have had a fancy endowment, but he was a poor carpenter. Getting the picture? Down is up and up is down.

Weak is the New Strong

Since the dawn of time strength has been a yardstick of success. Strength is bragged about by the strong and dreamt of by the weak. We make heroes of strong men who consistently defeat weaker men and of strong nations that rise above the weak peoples of the world. Weak is another one of those ugly words that people don’t want to hear about themselves when being described. Who wants to be considered weak? The weak man is pitied. The weak woman, who can stand? But strength, strength is coveted.

The man who doesn’t know the love of God often goes kicking and screaming to his grave. The idea of death (the ultimate weakness) repulses him, scares him silly, and so death and anything like it is despised by natural man. But for the one who believes in God and the resurrection of the dead to life in heaven, death is a welcomed thing. And so it is with the little deaths of life, those weak moments when we die to self and refuse to serve our own end, no matter the cost. This idea of selflessness, of the importance of God’s will over man’s, has been seen in the lives of countless men and women who have risen above the rest to serve in ways that can’t be imagined by the unrepentant.

Slavery is the New Freedom

There are a lot of ugly words—words the world hates and wants nothing to do with, but slave takes the cake in the prize for ugly. No one likes the idea of being someone else’s slave. Freedom is all important in the life of man. Freedom means you are free to come and go as you please. You can make your own way, do your own thing. Freedom means never having to be told what to do or when to do it. And so the world covets its freedom and tends to look down on anyone who voluntarily chooses to obey another person and become a servant. The word obedience is tied closely to slavery. And both terms give the idea of someone who has given up thinking for themselves, or at least is no longer allowed to. And freedom of thought as well as action feels right to man, therefore slavery is unacceptable in any form.

But what the world doesn’t know is something that the philosopher/musician Bob Dylan did know, and that is that we all have to serve somebody.

Confession is the New Innocence

Confession is the act of admitting you were wrong, and no one likes the feeling this brings. In fact, men have died, countries have gone to war, and marriages have been destroyed because of the human aversion to admitting our own error and sin. The act of confessing is humiliating. It threatens self, exposing it to the one who hears the confession, and makes agreement with the “enemy” that the unfavorable ideas about us are actually true. This tears at the very walls of self, threatening to shake it to the foundation. How many times have you seen a politician avoid confession for fear of losing a position or a parent resist confession for fear of looking weak in a child’s eyes? Even a peer will refuse a confession out of the fear of looking beneath other peers. The resistance to confession promises to protect us, to keep up the charade, to help us to maintain our power and our image. Confession is a dangerous thing to a life built on the goodness, rightness, and excellence of self.

Without confession of guilt there is no innocence for the sinner. That means confession is a requirement for us all.

Red is the New White

The color red conjures up a lot of images in the human mind. A woman in red symbolizes seduction. The scarlet letter, assigned to the adulterous woman, was a shade of red. Red flags are meant to be warnings of impending danger. A thief is caught red-handed. Prostitutes live in the red light district. The character of the Devil is often seen in red. Red is the color of blood and a symbol for guilt, sin, and even anger. It is under- stood by most that if you drive a red sports car you will be pulled over more times by the police than if you drove the same car in white. Red gets our attention; it has a sense of danger, sin, and guilt associated with it.

White carries an entirely different sentiment. For centuries brides have worn white as a symbol of purity. White is considered a clean and bright color. Doctors and nurses often wear white. Some cultures view white as a sign of royalty. In early Westerns you could always spot the good guy because he rode a white horse and wore a white hat. A white knight is a man who rescues someone in need. If you were to see two women, one dressed in red and the other in white, you would probably associate  innocence with the woman in white and looseness with  the woman in red. You would never expect to see woman wear red to her wedding; the imagery is just too incongruent.

So how is it then that red is the new white—the new innocence and purity? In this ultimate act of turning things upside down, making red white, God takes red, the color of blood, and applies it to our ugliness and sin in order to make us white as snow, justified in his eyes, no longer held guilty of our sin. As red covers white so well and so permanently, so blood covers the sins of man.