In Mark 8, Jesus asked the great question … “Who do you say I am?” [v29 CSB]
Peter, of course, gave the great response, “You are the Messiah,” and then moments later turned around and said something foolish causing Jesus to rebuke him.
Jesus used that moment to teach his disciples about His purpose in coming and His upcoming death at the hands of the elders, chief priests and scribes. Then He invited the crowd to not just listen, but to join Him.
“Calling the crowd along with his disciples, he said to them, ‘If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me and the gospel will save it. For what does it benefit someone to gain the whole world and yet lose his life? What can anyone give in exchange for his life?’” [vs 34-37 CSB]
Jesus asks the crowd, and us, two profound questions. The first, what good is it to gain everything in this world and yet lose your eternal life, and the second, what does anyone have that could be exchanged for that eternal life?
How valuable a human soul! If lost, not even everything in this world can buy it back.
God values a human soul far more than we do. We look at the lost, at the openly hostile to everything sacred, and we write them off as unredeemable, or not worth the effort to pray for or witness to. Yet, I truly believe that God up until that last breath they take, does not write them off. He grieves for their choice to reject Him.
Do we?