^‘Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.’  (John 12:25).  

The word ‘hate’ translates the verb μισέω miseó and it embraces both the unconditional: ‘detest’ and comparative: ‘love less than’.

In the Gospels, we see both meanings:

‘Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!’  (Luke 6:22)

This can be readily seen as the absolute and unqualified rendering of the verb miseó.

‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.’  (Luke 14:26)

Given Jesus reiterates the fifth commandment, (Matthew 15:4 – as does Paul Ephesians 6:1), and commands love of others (Matthew 22:39) he would not contradict himself, so we are obliged to understand this as ‘love less than’.

It is likely that Jesus, in the head quotation, is employing both senses.  This can be seen if we seek his meaning.

Firstly, we must understand that Jesus is not saying that we should not rejoice that we have life.  Life is the gift from the Creator to the creature, literally life is the making of the creature.  Eternal gratitude for our very existence is the very least we owe God.  And while Jesus is not saying we should hate life, neither is he saying we should hate the world, for once more it is to repudiate the second of the Great Commandments, because ‘world’ translates κόσμος kosmos, which less describes the earth or universe, as the inhabitants of the earth, the arena of worldly affairs and its actors, people.

One’s ‘life in this world’ is then understood to be the attachment to the edifice we create based on a delusion, that is all we what we see.  In the Book of Revelation, chapter 18, John refers to this construction as Babylon, the sum total of humanity’s creation apart from God.

The Fall occurs when the woman, already knowing ‘good’, which is her and her husband’s intimate union with God upheld by his perfect providence, is encouraged to think there is something outside of that relationship worth attaining.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil produces fruit that satisfies that urge.  This desire is based in autonomy and a sense of unique worth – both part of being made in God’s likeness.  Evil is not an essence or power but everything sought, attempted or undertaken outside of God’s will and purpose.  The very act of eating of the forbidden fruit is thus evil, and thus Adam and Eve come to know evil.

Subsequently all are born morally innocent yet stained with original sin; thus every child immediately begins building a life in this world based on the delusion that there is something better they can build for themselves than what God desires for them.   Spiritually dead, we see only what is front of our eyes.  In this delusory state, men and women respond to make a life for themselves.  This natural state of moral innocence is quickly lost and whether a person dedicates themselves to improving the lot of others or indulging in every pleasure (frequently a blend of the two) it matters not a jot, all is evil-doing – for ‘without faith it is impossible to please God’ (Hebrews 11:6) and that faith is in believing God exists and we exist for His good will and purpose.

Jesus comes to cure this inevitable and inescapable myopia that limits us so.  His first teaching is ‘repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand’ (Matthew 4:17) and ‘repent’ is to rethink or reconsider (μετανοέω metanoeó), while the Kingdom of Heaven is the reality, the true realm of significance and meaning, the expression of God’s will and purpose soon to be accessible.  Jesus is the Healer that brings the cure for the disease that leads to lives spent looking to ourselves or other people to provide significance, meaning and purpose.

Jesus promises that all can recover what was lost in Eden.  Although innocence can never be restored, at last, the way is to made in order that we can look on what is good, which is God.

When through faith, the Holy Spirit indwells, a person is spiritually reborn and their eyes now glimpse something of the spiritual reality.  Imperfectly, fleetingly and intermittently, the flashes of reality break into their ‘lives in this world’ and every time this happens, there is a choice, to accept and seek this truth, or retreat into the familiar, the comfortable – the arena, in which we believe we maintain control.

‘Repentance’ represents not an attitude but a decision (actually a series of decisions) to put aside the flimsy construction of ourselves based on self-ascribed worth – an insecure identity cobbled together by achievements and accomplishments built on the unstable foundation of espoused allegiances and causes – in favour of a glorious reality. More than simply awareness or clarity, to  repent is to choose to understand and accept that the only worth we have is that given by God and that all his creatures are at his disposal.  Moreover, only by doing God’s will can we obtain peace and come to realise for what we were created – and surely all desire peace and purpose?

Yet this realisation does not come without worldly cost and God in his mercy, leaves the choice to esteem mortal life over the promise of eternal life to each freely.  For choosing eternal life requires repudiation and worldly loss as to acknowledge spiritual reality is to realise that we are not in charge and that we exist not for ourselves but for God alone. In other words, we choose to give up our apparent choices. When Jesus says, ‘you will know the truth and truth will set you free’ (John 8:32) it is in context of mortal slavery, he is not speaking about the freedom Adam and Eve sought.  Serving God is the state of man and woman and grasping the implications thereof and thereby puncturing the bubble of delusion, explains why fear, humility and subservience are the necessary attitude of the enlightened person in respect of God.

While fear of God is essential to repentance, what Jesus brings is ‘gospel’ or good news, as here when the angels announce the birth of Jesus, only heard by the shepherds:

‘Glory to God in the highest,
    and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!’ (Luke 2:14)

God declares that he will find pleasure in those that seek him, and that on the basis of being God-fearing, we may trust in his goodness and perfect justice.

So, with eyes that now can look on God, not simply the work of his hands but the author of all, just as Adam and Eve did, this new vision brought by and through His Spirit requires the rejecting that which our worldly senses serve to us.  We reject the counterfeit for the real thing.  But the allure of false is immediate and threatens to overwhelm.  Keeping the commandments of God, as iterated by Jesus, are the only sure way to resist their magnetic draw.  In this we see the obedience that Jesus demands (Matthew 28:20) is not something to be gained through faith, it is basis of faith.  It is part and parcel of repentance.  The Apostle John in summarising the appeal of the ‘life in this world’, links obedience to salvation – which is nothing less than life eternal.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world – the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life – is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.  (1 John 2:15-17)

Jesus tells all those who would seek the true life to think less, far less of the life they have so far lived.  Yet to alter that perception means, means coming to detest it for what it is, temporary, insubstantial and ultimately fruitless.  There can be no half-measures or compromises, no cake-and-eat-it; you seek and esteem the eternal life or cling to the temporal variety.   It is a life and death choice.  

Jesus revealing the fallacy that ‘seeing is believing’, to continue in this understanding dooms all to continue in myopic delusion.  In reality, ‘believing is seeing’; only through faith can we truly see the reality of God’s kingdom, for faith is the prerequisite (Ephesians 2:2-9).  Jesus would have us take that step by trusting him; but of course, entrusting our all to the heavenly Father merely recognises the true order of things.  We are at his disposal, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.  God is in charge of heaven and earth and that is the Truth.  To continue to love ‘life in this world’ means at best, enjoying the little time allotted to each by God.