NOTES for Luk 9:23-27
The Savior's words about the cross, it would seem, would not have been very clear to His listeners: His death on the cross still lay ahead. But the Jews of the Gospel era knew firsthand what a cross was: about a century before the events described by the evangelist, when Judea was still independent, during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus, there was an uprising under religious slogans, led by representatives of the Pharisaic movement. It was brutally suppressed, and hundreds of its participants were crucified.
Such an execution was not only agonizing and shameful: death on a cross defiled a person religiously, and the authorities clearly wanted to humiliate the rebels in this respect as well. That is why Jesus' words were understandable to every one of His listeners, especially the Pharisees, who, of course, had not forgotten their martyrs. But Jesus clearly has in mind not religious and political questions at all, although those who were ready to see Him as the Messiah expected from Him precisely a call to struggle, to an uprising against the Romans, to a holy war against the Gentiles who occupied the holy city.
The Savior speaks of the Kingdom that is "not of this world," and of the new life lived by its inhabitants. And He says: whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever gives it up for My sake will save it. These words sound paradoxical. But if we think carefully, if we look at earthly life from the point of view of the fullness of the Kingdom's life, everything falls into place.
In fact, sooner or later one has to part with what the fallen world calls life: in essence, it is not life at all, but only its pitiful remains, flowing away like water into sand. And even if a person, having refused the Kingdom, receives the whole world in exchange, that very untransformed world into which the Savior came in order to bring the transforming Kingdom, the life of the one who refused will not become fuller from such power. But to give up a part and receive fullness in return is an entirely reasonable and entirely real way out. For the life of the Kingdom is not some other life flowing in some other dimension. It is the same life of ours, only brought to fullness. To the fullness possible in the Kingdom, but unthinkable in the untransformed world.