"He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it" (Matt. 10: 39). Here is a saying of Christ Jesus that requires some measure of spiritual discernment to understand.

The Master constantly appealed to his followers to devote themselves to establishing the reign of harmony and peace on earth. He considered this to be the cause to which all should eventually commit themselves. He urged his followers to surrender their lives to Christ, the spiritual idea of God, as he was doing, that their lives might be spiritually enriched as his was being enriched. He knew that as the yielding was motivated by selfless love, a totally new life would be brought forth. In this way the Christian would lose his false sense of life in matter and find the true sense of his life in Christ, Truth.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, points to the nature of this spiritual selfhood when she writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 316), "Christ presents the indestructible man, whom Spirit creates, constitutes, and governs." The greatest achievement to which anyone can consecrate himself is to seek and to find his life in Christ.

Such consecration means dedicating one's life to the will of God, which is infinitely good. It means living in accord with the demands of divine Principle, which are epitomized in the Ten Commandments. And this means committing oneself to the way of life that Jesus accepted for himself. Is not this what takes place in losing one's life in order to find it?

In Science and Health we read(p. 262): "Consecration to good does not lessen man's dependence on God, but heightens it. Neither does consecration diminish man's obligations to God, but shows the paramount necessity of meeting them."

The Master gave us a sense of what it means to be totally dependent upon God when he declared (John 5:19), "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise." And when he said (John 6:38), "I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me," he made plain what it means to meet our obligations to God.

While everyone is interested in good, some think of good only as a quality, such as good health, good grades in school, good tastes and habits, good business, good relationship with others, and so on. But, actually, good is the entity from which every Christly quality emanates. When referring to good as entity, Christian Science uses the term as a name for God, not merely a good God, but infinite, incorruptible, indestructible good itself. In an absolute sense all that really exists is good.

Jesus prayed (John 17:1), "Father ... glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee." We glorify God, and in turn God glorifies us when we consecrate ourselves to good. In so consecrating our lives, we seem to find ourselves confronted not only with good but with evil, opposites which seem to exist side by side. But in Science we learn that good is infinite and so can have no opposite. Evil, then, is neither an entity nor a quality, and it loses all its seeming reality when we truly understand the nature of good. Our consecration to good will be measured by our recognition of the allness of good.

Good is divine. There is really no personal good. The good that appears humanly, when traced to its true source, is seen to be divine. Nor is there really any personal evil. When traced to its suppositional source, the evil that appears humanly is seen to be impersonal, a dream.

When we are called upon to deal with some phase of evil in our own experience or in that of another, our consecration to good will enable us to depend upon spiritual sense that we may see only good right where evil appears to be. This empowers us to dispose of the evidence of evil, sin, sickness, or death as merely a phase of deception.

The greatest commitment anyone can make is to dedicate himself to divine Science, which exalts God, good, as All-in-all and relegates evil to the status of mere deception. To fulfill this commitment, we must constantly and wholeheartedly depend upon God, Truth, Love. This dependence makes us aware of our obligations to Him, because dependence and obligations are inseparable.

In Science we are obligated to look for and find the steps which lead us out of material reasoning into spiritual understanding. Then we know what is meant by having one God.

In beginning her answer to the question, "What are the demands of the Science of Soul?" Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 467): "The first demand of this Science is, 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me.' This me is Spirit. Therefore the command means this: Thou shalt have no intelligence, no life, no substance, no truth, no love, but that which is spiritual."

As our lives are consecrated to good, we show forth the qualities of Christ, Truth, in everything we do. A Christly life is a life that glorifies God, because it is a life in which good is constantly giving evidence of its supremacy over all the beliefs of evil.

Ralph E. Wagers