God Sees Our Sacrifices
Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” (Mark 10:29–31)
The positive nature of this saying of Jesus should serve to encourage us. He does not chide us for not doing more, rather he assures us that all that we have done and will do for God is seen and rewarded by God.
No good deed goes unnoticed by God. Whatever we have left or lost will be more than compensated for by God. William Barclay subtitles this section as “Christ Is No Man’s Debtor.” In Peter’s words that brought this response from Christ was the suggestion that they had given up a great deal to follow him, and that, perhaps, although he did not say it, Christ was in their debt.
This is dangerous thought territory to go traipsing in, for it is the threshold of a perpetually embittered spirit. “God, you owe me. Look at what I have given up for you!” We would do better to complain to our parents for having to do a few household chores, when they have given us life and shelter and nourishment. Christ has done for us immeasurably more. Christ said, “So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’” (Luke 17:10).
We have seen many Christians like this, who give to the work of God with complaint, who keep a mental record of every single thing they have endured or sacrificed for God. They are all joyless and relatively useless — at least until this attitude changes.
Love does not ask such things. It keeps no record of wrongs and does not consider sacrifice to be sacrificial. After Christ rose and ascended, after the Spirit descended upon the church, then the disciples after persecution rejoiced “that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name” (Acts 5:41). If we love Christ we will serve without complaint, sacrifice without comparing ourselves to others, and do it all with joy for the honor of suffering for his name.
Christ refuses to consider that he is in our debt. We are in his debt eternally, but he owes us nothing. Yet he lavishes on us his love. He is far, far better to us than we deserve and we may safely trust our souls — and everything about us — into his hands. Having borne our sins in his own body, having won us back to God’s favor, having poured his love into our hearts, having prepared for us an eternal home, he has done far beyond what we could ever think we deserve.
Christ’s Promise: The disciples had left everything to follow Christ. He had become their business for the three years that they followed him. They had left family, careers, friends, and worldly prospects, but here Christ boldly promises them that they will receive “a hundredfold now in this time.”
What he did not mean: Some have taken these verse from their context and tried to invent in them a promise of worldly wealth for the disciples. If they had only looked a few verses above this passage where Christ explained of spiritual dangers that a wealthy person faces they would see that this could not be the meaning. We read later where Paul wrote about the challenges the apostles endured:
To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world — right up to this moment. (1 Cor. 4:11–13)
Christ took the worldly values of pride, lust, and materialism and put them down to the lower levels, to the baser thoughts of the human heart, where they belong. He elevated the more important spiritual values of righteousness, holiness, love, faith, and hope. About materialistic matters, he only taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” and even then it was in the plural tense, that we might not pray only for our own daily bread, but for the needs of others as well. “Better is a dry morsel with quiet than a house full of feasting with strife” (Prov. 17:1).
What he did mean: Christ prophesied of the coming fellowship of the church and the closeness of the new Christian community. The new love of God that implanted itself in the hearts of followers of Jesus Christ was a revolutionary presence. Initially Christian communes sprung up, then when abuse of the world corrupted them they ceased to be as they were at the first, but the sense of Christian family and love still persisted — as it does to this day!
Paul would have found a cold rebuff from his family after coming to Christ, and we never see him mention them in his epistles. But he found a new family in the church. He called Rufus his mother (Rom. 16:13). He felt like a father toward the new believers and they were like his family. He was willing to “spend and be spent” for them — a great expression of fatherly love (2 Cor. 12:14–15). Timothy had served him “like a son to a father” (Phil. 2:22). He found homes and friendships everywhere because of the gospel (Acts 16:15). This is all said in joy, that in Christ our entire lives have been changed and now we find friendship, family, love, and shared joy.
Secular communism has sought to do through law what can really only be done through the Spirit. The Bible does not condemn private ownership, but neither does the grace of God leave us cold and stingy in our hearts. God opens up our hearts through Christ so that we receive others, and share with others. We find increased joy in everything material because we have a loving family to share it with. Paul could write, “For all things are yours” (1 Cor. 3:21), meaning that we have the capacity in Christ to see his ownership of all, and his Lordship over all. In Him we own the world.
And Persecution: It does not mean that all will always be wonderful. We will find those who are opposed to the message of Christ and will experience rejection and persecution. It is better to be counted among the righteous, even if we are rejected and persecuted.
Applications for us: Surely the chief thing here that we will take from this passage is the freedom of the Spirit in our souls, that refuses to consider us followers of Christ as victims to anything that reflects poorly upon God. Even if we are rejected by our loved ones, and impoverished in the eyes of the world as we follow Christ, we will find feasts and lavish sharings of love among Christians as long as we are on this earth. This should take worry off of our hearts. We can entrust all things to him.
Not all Christians are as yet as they should be — not all are as kind, as generous, as gracious, as open-hearted as they should be. But yet the Lord calls us to help one another grow into the image of Christ. So we have a mission with one another, to model and teach generosity. The joy of having anything is increased when we are able to share, and it is dampened when we are not. We should not look just to see what others will share with us. We must also seek to share with them, to carry their burdens and help to lighten their loads.
