“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
– John 12:24
Oh, think about what Jesus just said in John 12:24. So these are the words of Jesus as he’s preparing to go to the cross and he says, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” So according to Jesus, what’s the key to a seed-bearing fruit? It has to die. Can you hold a grain of wheat in your hand? You keep it there? It won’t do anything. But you plant it in the ground and it dies, it bears all kinds of fruit, life, that you couldn’t have imagined before. Jesus is saying in order to live, you have to die. Death is necessary for life.
In Order To Live, We Have To Die To Sin
Now the context here as I mentioned, Jesus is about to go to the cross. He’s literally, physically about to die. He’s talking about the life he will bring to others through his death. He died on a cross so that we might live. The fruit from his death is life in you and me and for the nations, Jesus died so that we might live.
But what’s interesting is right after this in John 12:25, he says, “Whoever loves his life loses it, whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” So Jesus is not just talking about his death, he’s also talking about our lives. And Jesus is saying to us, in John 12 here, to you and me, like right now, if you and I want to live, we have to die. Like that’s what the language he’s using there, whoever hates his life in this world.
This is what we see all over Jesus’ teaching, this is what we see all over scripture, the New Testament. Like in order to live, you have to die to sin. In order to live, you have to die to yourself. In order to live, you have to die to the ways of this world. If you want your life to bear fruit, you want your life to count, you want to experience eternal life. Like that’s what he says, whoever loves his life loses it, whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If you want life, you have to die.
John 12:24 Wants Us To Live For Treasures In Heaven
So God help us, we pray to understand what this means and to experience what this means. God, we pray today, based on your word, in John 12:24–25 as we’ve read that, we pray that you would help us today to die to ourselves if we don’t want to live according to our ways. We want to live according to your ways, your word. So help us to die to ourselves, help us to die to sin, and every temptation that we face today, help us to die to it. We don’t want to give into temptation. We don’t want to live in sin and think that’s life when you just said it here in John 12:25, “Whoever loves his life loses it.”
So God, we pray that we would die to sin, to ourselves and to this world, to the pleasures and pursuits and possessions of this world, that we would not live for the ways of this world, that we would die to the ways of this world. God, help us to live totally differently, we pray. Help us to live not for treasures on Earth, but for treasure in heaven. Not for possessions on Earth, but for possessions in heaven, not for our own glory, not with our own wisdom, but with your wisdom, for your glory.
John 12:24 Prays That We Leave Fruit Behind When We Die
God, help us to live totally different than the ways of this world. Help us to die to the ways of this world. God, we pray, that you would help us to die in all these ways, to live according to your word, and to bear fruit. God, we pray that there would be fruit from our lives. Fruit from our lives, from our death to sin, our death to self, our death to the ways of this world, our life in you. God, we pray there would be fruit that lasts forever because we’ve lived for what matters forever. God, we pray that you would help us to learn and live in this lesson from John 12:24 every day. That in order to live, you have to die. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
