[Great Verses] Love the Lord FullySample

“… And forfeits his soul?”

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

What if you had Bill Gates’s or Warren Buffet’s money? What if you had Beyoncé’s or Angelina Jolie’s fame? What if you had Barack Obama’s or Vladimir Putin’s power? What if you had the whole world, but you did not have God? Thirty seconds after your death, you would be filled with remorse and regret for all eternity.

Charlemagne was king of the Franks (768-814) and emperor of the Romans (800-814). He built the Frankish Kingdom into an empire that covered much of Western and Central Europe. Pope Leo III crowned him Imperator Augustus on Christmas Day 800. Before his death in 814, Charlemagne gave careful instructions about how he wanted to be buried.

He would be seated on his throne in the royal crypt with his cape on his shoulder, holding the royal scepter. A book would be sitting on his lap, with his finger pointed to a certain verse. Two hundred years later, another emperor, Otto, wanted to see if the instructions had been followed. He sent a team into the crypt. They found a skeletal body, his crown tilted, his cape moth-eaten, the scepter fallen to the ground, but with the book still on his lap, bony finger pointing. The book was the Bible, and the finger pointed to Matthew 16:26: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?”

Here was a great emperor, who gained much of the world, making his statement about what really matters: not all the money, fame, and power in the world, but your own soul.