Sermon on Matthew 10:24–39 by Finn Chirnside at Sumner Redcliffs Church
A sermon on the cost and worthiness of following Jesus, preached by Associate Vicar Finn Chirnside.
Summary
Finn Chirnside, Associate Vicar at Sumner Redcliffs Anglican Church, preaches on Matthew 10:24–39, in which Jesus sends out his disciples and gives them a frank account of what following him will cost. Chirnside opens with the story of Perpetua, a third-century martyr who was killed for her faith at age 23, using her account to frame the central question of the sermon: is Jesus really worth it? He explores the word Gehenna — commonly translated as "hell" — arguing that its Jewish historical context is essential to understanding what Jesus meant, and that Western readers have imported Dante's imagery in place of that context. He notes that Gehenna appears to be used once by James and once by Mark, though he expresses some uncertainty about this. He addresses the nature of holy fear, the character of God as rooted in love rather than wrath, and the real-world cost of Christian allegiance — including family rejection, loss of status, and in some parts of the world, death. He engages at length with the atheist argument — illustrated by Stephen Fry's challenge to God — that divine responsibility for suffering undermines belief, responding that Scripture locates the cause of suffering in collective human failure rather than divine indifference, and that God is more grieved by suffering than we are. He closes with a direct challenge to both committed Christians and those still undecided: Jesus is worthy of whatever it costs. Chirnside also announces that July will be "Fruit of the Spirit Month," during which the church will step away from the lectionary to focus on what faithful, Christ-like witness looks like in a culture increasingly hostile to Christian allegiance.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Opening Remarks and Acknowledgement of the Text's Complexity
Finn Chirnside: Sometimes with the Anglican liturgy thing, there are moments where I'm like, who put that together? Who thought that was a good idea to have that as one reading? That's crazy. There are so many rabbit holes. So I'm going to preface with just the acknowledgement that this will not cover everything that's just been said in the slightest. I am going to completely ignore the Beelzebul thing — although I could riff on it now, but I won't. I can talk about it later. There are things I'm just going to have to skip for the sake of time and for the sake of your brains. It is complex, and I acknowledge that. There are probably going to be things that I say that you either vehemently disagree with, or you'll go, "Jeepers, why did we hire that guy? That's heresy." So from the start, let's just — it's not heresy. I checked the Anglican constitution before I said any of this. I'm literally not joking. I looked through the Thirty-Nine Articles to make sure everything I'm about to say is actually in line with Anglican theology. So that's fine. That's a good start, isn't it? That's really encouraging for the theology nerds in the room.
The Story of Perpetua
About 200 years after Jesus, there was a woman — a young noblewoman named Perpetua. At the age of 23, along with a slave woman named Felicity, she was martyred in Carthage by the Romans because she refused to recant her faith in Jesus. History has left us her account. She left us a diary, and it was completed after she was executed by some other people who finished the story.
Her account opens with her in conflict with her father. She hadn't been a Christian for very long, as far as we can tell, because she hadn't been baptized yet. Her father was trying to get her to give up the Jesus thing. He was like, "You are going to die. They will kill you." And she said no. She's 23, by the way. She'd been a Christian for probably about a year, because she hadn't finished her catechism. She hadn't gone through that yet. At the time, you had a year of training before you were baptized — Anglicans and Catholics do a lot of that. I'm a Pentecostal at heart, so we're going to dunk whoever wants to get dunked. But at the time, that was the practice in the churches. You spent a year, and then you were baptized after a year.
Her father tried to get her to recant. She refused, and then she was baptized, and then she was sent off to prison. She describes the physical and emotional torment she went through. She had a little baby, and she suffered from really bad mastitis because they took the baby away from her a lot. Anyone who's had a baby before knows mastitis — my gosh. She had that real, real bad. So much so that it's the main thing she talks about in terms of pain. Eventually, they were able to bribe some prison guards to move to a safer part of the prison so that her and the other Christians could have their babies with them, including her baby. So eventually she experienced relief from that.
Her brother was also a Christian, and he encouraged her to ask for and receive a vision — and she actually got it. She got a vision, and she wrote this down:
"I saw a ladder of tremendous height made of bronze, reaching all the way to the heavens, but it was so narrow that only one person could climb up at a time. To the sides of the ladder were attached all sorts of metal weapons. There were swords, spears, hooks, daggers, and spikes, so that if anyone tried to climb up carelessly or without paying attention, they would be mangled, and their flesh would adhere to the weapons. At the foot of the ladder lay a dragon of enormous size, and it would attack those who tried to climb up. Saturus, who was her brother, was the first to go up. When he got to the top of the staircase, he looked back and said, 'Perpetua, I am waiting for you, but take care. Do not let the dragon bite you.' She said, 'He will not harm me in the name of Christ Jesus.' Slowly, as though he were afraid of me, the dragon stuck his head out from underneath the ladder. Then I used him as my first step, and I trod on his head and went up. Then I saw an immense garden, and a gray-haired man sat in a shepherd's robe. He was tall, and he was milking sheep. And standing around him were thousands of people clad in white garments. He raised his head, looked at me, and said, 'I am glad you have come, my child.'"
Some days later, Perpetua was murdered by the Romans, along with other Christians. The execution style in Carthage at the time was a sword — head straight off. The journal, whoever wrote it and finished it, concludes that the man who was in charge of killing her didn't do a great job. So this is how it ends:
"Perpetua, however, had yet to taste more pain. She screamed as she was struck on the bone. Then she took the trembling hand of the young gladiator and guided it to her throat. It was as though so great a woman could not be dispatched, unless she herself were willing."
Welcome to church!
Context: Jesus Sending Out the Disciples
So let's just address the obvious. This is a massive text. As I've already said, rabbit holes galore. If you want to challenge me, come talk to me afterwards. Flick me an email. Sounds great. Bring it on. It's awesome.
The start of the passage, and the preceding part of it, really gives us the context here. Jesus is in the middle of sending out his band of disciples to proclaim the gospel to the tribes of Israel. This is from Matthew 10, verses 7 to 8:
"As you go, proclaim this message: the kingdom of heaven has come near. Heal the sick. Raise the dead. Cleanse those who have leprosy. Drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give."
The disciples are proclaiming and enacting that the kingdom of heaven — which is probably best described as the rule and reign of God — is breaking through from eternity into the present moment. What will happen in its fullness at the end of the age is beginning to take place amongst Jesus and his disciples.
But before he sends them out, he gives them a pep talk. And the pep talk is not super encouraging for most of it, particularly the part we read. Most of it, you're like, flipping heck, alright. This text in general ultimately is asking: is Jesus really worth it?
The Jewish Religious System and God's Grace
Last week, Harry talked about how the Jewish religious system had gone super legalistic. They'd taken the ideas and premises of the Old Testament law and restricted God's grace to be this kind of thing that you had to game for your own desires. And that was not what God had wanted. God had set up a system and set up everything so that he could pour out his favor — first upon the Jews and then upon all nations. This is really the story of the Old Testament: Israel is blessed to be a blessing, so people can come to follow Yahweh, and ultimately follow Jesus through the blessing that Israel was. But they don't get it.
So if you could describe the Old Testament and then the problems in the New Testament, it's humans failing to understand the heart of God — just not getting it, and imposing our own structures and understandings on God. And what Harry was talking about is actually good news — the way that God works. You don't have to earn God's favor. It is freely given. But the thing is, you have to respond to it when it's presented to you. You respond either with, "Oh, thanks but no thanks," or some people respond viciously to the idea that they need help from God.
But the idea in the Bible is that God has been so absurdly kind to you that the natural response is one of wanting to follow in his way. And this is where you get into this idea of sanctification. So you start following Jesus, and this inward reality — that you have become a new creation on the inside — over time forms you more and more into the image of Jesus. You are transformed into someone who looks like what's true of you inside. And the longer you follow Jesus, the more and more you'll come to experience God's unmerited favor, to know God as he desires you to know him, and to be the person he has made you and called you to be.
Holy Fear and the Word Gehenna
But then the text — and this is Jesus, he's so complex, and these are all the words of Jesus — following Jesus requires a thing called holy fear. This is Jesus' words:
"Do not be afraid of the one who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell."
Now I'm going to start triggering people. Let's talk about the word Gehenna. The word that is translated as "hell" — the word Jesus used — is the word Gehenna. It is translated as hell. Matthew pretty much exclusively uses it. It's used, I think, once by James, and once by Mark. No one else touches it. That's a really interesting thing we need to acknowledge: no one else touches it. When Paul and Peter and others talk about post-death judgment, they use different language. And that's actually a really interesting little caveat.
So why does Matthew use it so much? The reason Matthew uses it is because every biblical scholar worth their salt will tell you that Matthew is the main gospel addressed to the Jews. The way that Matthew is designed is that Jesus is replaying the story of Israel as the true and faithful Israelite. There are so many different layers going on in Matthew. Everything he's doing — the way the Sermon on the Mount is structured — it's interplaying with this idea that Jesus is what Israel failed to be. That is the summary. Jesus is the true and faithful Israelite. He has come along to be that person. So he's addressing Jews, and the entire book is a Jewish theological case for Jesus as Messiah. That's the idea. Luke is more facing Gentiles and some Jews. John is interplaying with Greek philosophy. Mark's doing his own thing. Matthew is really going for a Jewish audience.
So he uses the word Gehenna because the Jews understand the background of this word. We miss it because we imprint Dante. I'm being serious — we imprint Dante. And Dante's whole thing of demons running around with spikes and stuff like that — which is also not what Dante actually thought; it was just an image he used, not what he actually believed — anyway, that's a whole other thing.
Gehenna was a valley. It was a name for a valley off the side of Jerusalem called the Valley of Ben-Hinnom. And it was a valley where the Jews, five or six hundred years before Jesus — I don't mean the exact time — started sacrificing their children to Molech, to the gods of Babylon and other different gods. What they would do — do I want to say what they would do? It was pretty horrific. I probably shouldn't say what they would do. I'll read the room. It was brutal. It was more than just a generic child sacrifice. It was awful. And they sacrificed their children to Molech.
And then one of the Old Testament prophets starts saying, "Hey, you're going to end up in the same place they did if you don't sort it out." So much of the Old Testament story is God going, "What are you doing? This is an abomination. This is purely evil and unacceptable. This is breaking my heart." And Israel just keeps doing it. And the Old Testament prophets, part of what they're saying — along with "you're going to go into exile" — is that your bodies will be thrown into Gehenna, into the Valley of Ben-Hinnom. And that's what happens. Babylon comes along, Jerusalem gets destroyed, and the bodies of the Jewish people — the ones who are executed, which is most of them, apart from the poor, which is really interesting; the poor make it out — the oppressors, the Pharisees and the different kinds of folks they had back then, the priests, their bodies are thrown into Gehenna. And they are probably set on fire.
So when Jesus uses the word Gehenna, talking about a place where people's bodies will be and all these different things, the Jews instantly go to that. That's the first thought.
The second thought is that Jesus lives in a tension of apocalyptic prophet to the Jews and a prophet to all nations. That's an interesting tension. He is trying to get the Jews to repent in their cultural moment because he knows that if they don't change their ways, Rome will come and smash them. So much of Jesus' teachings is addressing us as followers of Jesus 2,000 years later, but is also addressing the Jews at the time, saying: if you want to follow the way of God and not get wiped out, this is what you should do. The Sermon on the Mount is actually interplaying with Roman laws — that's a whole rabbit hole. But what I'm trying to say is that when Jesus sometimes talks about Gehenna, he's talking about: if you don't sort this out, Rome is going to crush you.
And they rejected him. Jesus laments over Jerusalem and says, "You did not know the time of your visitation. The enemies are going to surround you and destroy you." In 70 AD, the Jews try and revolt. They don't listen to Jesus. The Romans come in. They crush them. The blood is flowing up to the knees or to the legs, depending on who you read. They throw their bodies where? Gehenna.
So Jesus is doing a thing — and this is not me saying there's no post-death judgment. I'm not saying that at all. I am saying that we have a both-and. Sorry to tell you, we have a both-and. And most of the time when Jesus is probably talking about Gehenna, there is this tension at play — which we don't actually fully know — of when was he referencing this valley on the side of Jerusalem, and when was he not? That's fun. I've opened a bunch of rabbit holes.
And to be honest, really quickly — because I've opened this can of worms and now I'm getting distracted — God, if we have come to trust a God who ultimately loves his creation and wants to see justice done and doesn't delight in the punishment of anybody, a basic understanding of a post-death judgment would be that it is chosen by humans. God does not choose for you. You choose whether you reject him or whether you don't. So then you choose where you go or you don't. And whatever that looks like, whatever kind of terrible thing that is — if it is just a place where you fade into the black instantly, as some Christians have thought throughout history — whatever it is, it's not good. Jesus doesn't want you to go there, but it is freely chosen. But God is so merciful and kind. It's such a rabbit hole. So if you really want to go into this, either email me and get angry at me, or come talk to me tonight. I will go more into the historical views on this, because it's complex. We are 2,000 years removed from Jesus' contextual understanding of these things. We need to think more carefully than they did back then. We can't just imprint our Western ideas onto Jesus on something this intense. It doesn't work. I'm sorry. It doesn't work.
The Fear of God and the Love of God
Now, the use of the word fear. Once again, with the Jewish audience — people who have all of his teachings and the story of the Jewish people ingrained into their souls — the fear of God is such a key theme in the Old Testament, particularly in wisdom literature like Proverbs, where it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And the fear of God might be quite a jarring idea to Westerners, but to most people throughout history, having an appropriately placed fear of the transcendent just kind of makes sense. Something's bigger than you, that stands outside time itself — you probably should be a little bit afraid of that. Because that's ridiculous. That's actually so much bigger than you could possibly imagine. But us moderns, we're enlightened and we're special.
I don't know if some people might have come across this, but Stephen Fry — spectacular comedian, bad theologian — said that if he died and ended up face-to-face with God, so that he was wrong, because he's a roaring atheist, he would say to God, "How dare you?" How dare you be responsible for the evil in the world? How dare you be responsible for children who die young?
Firstly, he has a bad biblical theology. It's actually an intrinsically good thing to look at the world and go, "Man, the world is really messed up," and to recognize it. But in the story of Scripture, God is not sitting there selecting which children die young. He's not going, "That one, that one, that one." Instead, he is amongst them and weeps with them, and will have a mercy on them that we cannot begin to fathom. Which is, once again, going back to the whole thing — why this is complex and why you have to root everything in the character of God. We don't know. But God is so good and so kind and so rich in love that we can trust that whatever the heck he does, it will be so much better than what we could have thought.
He is so much more angry and heartbroken about those children dying. Failure to care for the poor and for children is one of the main reasons God judges Israel so strongly in the Old Testament. Humans are given dominion over the earth — this is the premise of Genesis 1 and 2 — and we have squandered it and brought death into the world. The suffering child is a result of the collective human failure that fractured creation itself. It's the result of both individual failure and systemic failure, whatever that looks like. That is the argument of Scripture. It's not on God; it's on us.
But can you also imagine standing before Yahweh — which is the biblical name for God, if you're new to church — and saying, "How dare you?" Can you actually imagine dying and then the bright lights and just kaboom, and you sit there and go, "I'll stand up and say, how dare you? I'll shake my fist"? Really? Like, in Scripture, the biblical understanding is this: that God is holy. He is so other, so extraordinary, so pure, so majestic, so loving, that humans in their frailty and sin are unable to stand before him. Isaiah 6 — "Woe to me, for I am ruined." Isaiah, one of God's great prophets, is like, "I'm going to die. I can't stand before you. I am going to die."
In the language of Greek philosophy, they would use the phrase of something like "the Good." You stand before the Good. You are overwhelmed by just how small and frail you are in comparison. Overwhelmed by the sheer force of purity, of goodness, of love. So overwhelmed that it can — and in our current state, it will — kill us. Not because God wants to kill us, but because we just can't stand to be in his presence. We could not handle it. That level of holiness is something that rightly demands fear. It is acknowledgement that someone, something else, is at the center of the universe and not you.
But then Jesus also says, "Don't be afraid," right? So do we fear or do we not? And this is a consistent biblical tension at play. Jesus isn't whipping out a new contradiction for the atheists on Reddit to go, "Well, now there's no Christianity because Jesus said this and then he said this." That's not what he's doing. Jesus is kind of smart. He knows what he's up to.
So here's the tension. God is holy — we should keep that at the center of our attention. But he should actually be the only thing that holds our fear. Not Pharisees, not persecutors, not anyone else. And this is what is rooted in this truth: you are more deeply loved than you could possibly imagine. This is the good news of the gospel. Yahweh is holy, but his holiness is rooted in what is the very nature of his being, which is love.
This is why when God talks about himself in Exodus 34, and he says, "My name is Yahweh, Yahweh" — he doesn't say, "Yahweh, Yahweh, the Holy One." He could do. He does say that at other points. But when he first introduces his name, he says, "Slow to anger, gracious and compassionate, abounding in love." The power of his love is what makes him want justice. You actually can't love someone and care about them if you're just going, "Oh, that terrible thing just happened to you. Not fazed." Right? So it would be odd if God looked at all the horrific things that happen in this world and went, "You know what, I don't need to care about that." So actually, judgment is rightly good. Like, if we look at a murderer and go, "Hold up, the government just let that guy off — are you crazy?" Everyone would be in an uproar. So why would we expect God — who understands the hearts and minds of everybody — to not go, "Hmm, actually, that probably needs some justice here"? But it's all rooted in love.
It is the power of his love that seeks and finds people and cares deeply for them. It is love that moves the Father, Son, and Spirit in eternal harmony and unity. It is love that moved the Trinity to create the heavens and the earth. It is love that was the cause of our creation and our calling to be carers over the earth and its creatures. It is love that caused him to call Abraham. It is love that caused him to redeem Israel from Egypt. It is love that caused him to send the prophets to warn Israel and the surrounding nations of the consequences of their evil. It is love that promised the coming Messiah. It is love that caused that same creator to enter creation as a man and die on our behalf to heal creation itself. And it is love that means that though we are so infinitely small, selfish, flawed, and sinful, and utterly ridiculous, we are given a value and a status and a place in God's kingdom that we couldn't possibly deserve. And Jesus, through the power of the Spirit, will be faithful to keep us and bring us into what we were always made for and where the story starts — in the fullness of the presence of God, in a united heaven and earth, caring for and enjoying God's restored creation with him. As Harry said last week: the unmerited favor of God.
God should be feared because he is wonderful and extraordinary, beyond compare and description. But his love moves us from being based in fear to become ever increasingly based in trust and love. Isaiah 30:
"This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: in repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it."
The Cost of Following Jesus
And if this is the true thing — if this is the good, this Jesus story — he makes it clear that some people will not be on board with your pledge of allegiance to him. He's saying this to disciples. If you start running around Israel saying that actually Jesus is the king of the world and Yahweh in the flesh, people might not like that. And actually, that is what following Jesus is. It's not just going, "This guy's teachings are kind of great, I'm going to stick with this guy." You could translate faith as "believing loyalty." So one, you believe him. Two, your allegiance goes to him. When we choose to follow Jesus, he receives our allegiance above all others.
And the reason Jesus hits the family thing in the text here is because in ancient Near East culture, family was everything. To leave your family religion or culture was a cause for shame and would result in shunning and sometimes death. You'd be killed. And this still happens today. I'm looking at Andy — he knows all about this. Nigerian Christians currently are just constantly getting slaughtered.
At the start of Nabeel Qureshi's book, No God But One — which is a spectacular story of the journey from Islam to Christianity — he talks about a woman who had become a Christian. I think she was in Iran; I can't quite remember. And then her brother finds out that she's a Christian. And he kills her. She chose — there are the kinds of things that happen.
And let me just quickly do a quick caveat here, because this is something I'm noticing culturally at the moment which is starting to worry me a little bit. Sometimes people can use this idea of being persecuted for being a Christian to justify their bad behavior. People will say, "Oh, I'm being persecuted for being a Christian." No, you're a narcissist. You're a bully. That's why people are getting mad at you. You're actually just not very kind. That's your root problem.
And this is why so much of the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus address: how do you follow Jesus in the midst of conflict, persecution, and public disdain? How do I be like Jesus, and what does that look like? There is a rise in a type of violent Christianity that Jesus would abhor. It is public, and it is an abomination, and it's becoming more and more of a thing in the culture, and it is horrific, and it is sucking people in — honestly, sucking people into a way you couldn't even begin to understand, particularly young men. Flipping heck, don't get me started. It is bad. It is such an antithesis to what Jesus envisioned for the church.
And this is why they spend so much time talking about how the heck do you do this Jesus thing in a culture that does not like you. And this is why July is Fruit of the Spirit Month. We've taken a wee break from the lectionary, and we're going to go Fruit of the Spirit style, and we're going to talk about what do Jesus' people look like. Because instead of being reactionary, let's be proactive — and actually, how to be faithful witnesses to Jesus in a world that probably is going to like you less and less and less. And to be honest, if you say in public, "I'm a Jesus person," that means you chose Jesus above everything else. You're going to get some stares at the very least, and you'll get it ripped out of you at the worst. How do we live from a place of love? God's love.
The Challenge of Allegiance to Jesus
Jesus then ends with this challenge. Verse 37:
"Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it."
Jesus isn't pulling his punches. Either he's a roaring narcissist, or he's right. And people like Perpetua and the Nigerians who are being murdered pretty much on the daily in Nigeria right now — they think he's right.
And here's a quick thing. That doesn't mean you don't love your family. Love for your family is all throughout Scripture. There's a reason the church is called a family. It'd be weird if Jesus was like, "Hey, don't love your family," but also, "You're all a family." That feels like a contradiction. But here's the thing: if your family comes to denounce you or ostracize you over your faith, to be a Christian is to take up your cross and follow him anyway. It's to not succumb to the pressure. That doesn't mean you don't love and care for your family.
And here's the big thing: you don't push your family away. If they push you away, that's different. And that's what would have happened in Jesus' time — they would have pushed you away. And Jesus is like, "Don't stay if they're going to kill you. Go." But if you're pushing your family away because you're just being a bit mean about how you follow Jesus, then that's actually not what Jesus has called you to do. You don't seek to ostracize and demean and exclude. But if you are ostracized, demeaned, and excluded, and even persecuted by those whom you love, you still follow Jesus. That is the cost. And just as Jesus was rejected by others, there is a high chance that you will experience that rejection too.
I'm really selling it today, aren't I? Simply because you live as if he is the king of the universe. Pledging allegiance to something and also saying that politics isn't going to fix the world. Because two things are happening right now. You've got one kind of stream that's saying, "If we can just get a new government, then we'll be fine and things will get better." You've got another stream that's saying, "Let's burn it all down and let's start again." If you haven't noticed, that's getting more popular. Neither of them work, because you're both placing loyalty and trust into something that has been proven — have you studied human history? — time and time again to just not work. And Christian confession is saying that there is one who has already healed and will heal. And you can place your trust in him because he rose from the dead.
Revelation 12:11:
"They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death."
James 1:12:
"Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial, because having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him."
He Is Worthy
We will probably not be killed for our faith. Let's just be straight up. However, there are things you will lose. You may lose your family. You may lose your job. You may lose friends. You may lose respect. You may lose your status. You may lose your sense of identity.
But I want to say something. Jesus is worthy of that.
If you lose your family, you find a better one. You lose your job, you find a calling you couldn't possibly imagine. You lose friends, you find the best friend in Jesus. You lose respect, you find honor and glory from God himself. You may lose your sense of identity — you find identity as a child of God. It's better. Jesus is worthy.
Revelation 5:9:
"Worthy are you to take the scroll and open its seals, because you were slain, and by your blood you purchased for God those from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign upon the earth."
When Jesus says all these things that we've looked at today, he is issuing the challenge to the disciples. But to whoever hears his words: I am worth it. Are you in? Do you believe me?
And here's the thing. We all implicitly place worth in something, whether we know it or not. If this is your first time at church, welcome. What a fun one to have your first time at church for. Maybe you've been coming for a while and you're still on the fence, and maybe you're afraid of what it will cost you if you sign up for the Jesus Club. He is worthy. I can't actually begin to express how worthy he is.
Here's a rundown. The infinite God made himself nothing for you. He was cancelled by the nation he formed and called, for you. He was abandoned by his deepest friends, for you. He wasn't taken seriously by his family at key points in his life — the mother who was the virgin in the virgin birth still didn't get it. I mean, we love Mary, but that's part of the story, right? No one understood him. He was brutally murdered by an empire that he had the power to vaporize in an instant if he wanted to. He entered the grave, and Scripture says it literally couldn't hold him, and he shattered it from the inside out. Death will die at his hands. The world will be renewed by his word. And all who follow him receive him now — receive his Spirit now, his peace now, his joy now, his life now, his power now, transformation now — and you receive the kingdom of God. What you were always made for and called to participate in and enjoy as a reality that begins now and extends into forever.
He is worth you losing whatever it takes. I am going to just say that straight up. Whatever the cost, there is something far greater on the other side. And it is your life as it was always meant to be, and the one who made you calling you deeper and deeper and deeper into something you can never fully understand, but which will change you from the inside out.
This is why the church has endured. This is why the church endured under persecution. This is why people like Perpetua got in — because they were like, there's something far better here. Something that's not just pleasing to my carnal senses, but it's utterly transformative, and it makes so much sense, and it makes sense of the world itself.
So for those of you who are Christians already, I remind you: he is worthy of you sticking it out. And if you're not a Christian, he is worthy of you jumping in.