"What does it profit a man...?"

Reading Mark 8:36
"What good is it (does it profit a man) for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit (lose) his soul?"

Its all here: profit, gain, and loss. Yes, thats pretty much everything in a material world.

The North American church is well on its way to "gaining the whole world." Congratulations on a very successful enterprise! The person in the pew, however, seems well on the way to "losing her own soul." The Christians that I know have never been hungrier for spiritual things, have never been more discontent, have never questioned the usefulness of the church, as much as they do now. Very little of what is being done is being done for "the soul." The church has never been busier, while the souls of its members atrophy and waste away.

The church hears this warning of Jesus as a word against the worldly person but it is not. It is a warning to the religious, who build efficient organizations and put up beautiful structures, and raise large sums of money, and get headlines in the newspapers, and get listed as the "fifty most influential...", and can even find their faces on the cover of Time magazine. These things are irrelevant to me, they are incidentals. The purpose of Jesus' condemnation was not to set himself against material things or organizational progress. The purpose of Jesus was to warn that the incidentals can easily become the whole heart and soul of our lives. What is happening to the Christian soul in the midst of all of this?

You have a nice church, but "what does it profit a man...?"

You have programs for every age group and interest, but "what does it profit a man...?"

You have more money than ever, but "what does it profit a man...?"

You have a prime location for your facilities, but "what does it profit a man...?"

You can draw more people than the church down the street, but "what does it profit a man...?"

You can influence the outcome of an election, but "what does it profit a man...?"

Have you pinched the sheep lately? Do you know if under all that wool they are tired, weak, discouraged, empty, malnourished? Have the disciplines of the spiritual life all but dried up amongst the members of the church? Do you know that the leadership of the church must someday "give an account" (Hebrews 13:17) for the "souls" of its people?