Yes, but…

John 12:25

If you have read the previous post on John 12:24, especially if you did so with your Bible open, there is just the faintest chance that you have been shouting “hey! you! What about the next verse?” Because here is how it reads in the NIV:

Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

And actually, it is a lot stronger than the NIV suggests: it isn’t “will lose it”, but rather “DESTROY IT, UTTERLY”.

So shouldn’t we conclude that Jesus is in fact setting the bar at the level of “be ready to die, because that is what you are called to…”?

Let’s dig a little deeper though. Here is the sentence in Greek:

ὁ φιλῶν τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἀπολλύει αὐτήν, καὶ ὁ μισῶν τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ τούτῳ εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον φυλάξει αὐτήν.

The word which the NIV translates as “life”, ψυχὴν, does indeed mean life… except that what I just said is highly misleading. Words in one language don’t mean anything in another language. Plenty of times there is enough obvious equivalence in what two words in different languages reference, for us to get away with saying “x means y”. Just be careful not to say that in front of a philologist or semiotician.

But ψυχή is one of the many exceptions. We really don’t have a single word in English that encompasses what ψυχή means. Depending on context, you might see it translated as “soul” or “life” or “self” or “mind” or “departed spirit” (i.e. ghost) or “personality” or “emotional self” – and it is actually sitting in the midst of those disparate concepts but without a single English equivalent.

And as we can see also in this verse, Jesus does know the word that just “means” life, as in “the state of being a living being”, because He says εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον -” to (or for) life eternal”. So why doesn’t He use ζωή throughout, if He means to say “the one who loves his life…”?

There is a big clue at the start of verse 27: Νῦν ἡ ψυχή μου τετάρακται – “now my ψυχή (same word) has been churned up.” Are we going to read that as “Now my life has been churned up”?

I doubt it. “Soul” might be the easy way out, except I think it is a cop out – I am not convinced most of us understand “soul” in the way the ancients used it, we just think we sound more spiritual if we refer to it from time to time. “Self”- the bit of me that is really me – is usually the best compromise for ψυχή, and it works here… and in verse 25.

So in verse 27 you might drop the word and keep the meaning by saying simply “Now I am churned up inside”.

In verse 25 you would probably say this:

The one loving his “self” (or possibly “self identity”) will destroy it; and the one hating his “self” in this world, will guard it to eternal life

(v 25, my rendering)

What is this saying? Very much as we read John 12:24, I think: if you put all your energy into maintaining yourself, your opinions, your ways of doing things, because you have allowed your sense of self to become paramount and untouchable, you (YOU) will end up destroying your “self”; there won’t be a “you” left to talk about. But if you hate (which in the Greek has some flavour of refusing to countenance something) your “self”, you will actually end up guarding “you” so that there is a “you” left to engage with eternal life.

And that to me sounds exactly like “unless a seed falling into the ground should die, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” If you are a seed, preserving your identity means you will rot and end up with no existence; only the seed who “dies” actually has a life!