The Cross for His Followers

Theme: Hidden in Plain Sight

 

 

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

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LESSON

If we say, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” our commitment to Him at that moment causes us to be drawn with the same cords of love for humanity and obedience to God. We’re put in the same harness. “Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me,” invites Jesus, and yoked with Him, we must be drawn to the cross. “In this world you shall have tribulation” and if you are seeking a light and easy Christianity, you must face the fact that as we are united to Him, the world unites in its hatred of Christ and His followers. He said it in John: “If you were of the world, the world would love its own, but because you are not of the world and I have elected you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” Jesus said, “I must die. I must rise again,” and this we must say with Him.

 

Jesus expands on this thought in Mark 8:34-38, one of the best–known passages in the Bible, though in many respects it is ill understood. Jesus is showing His followers what happens in a world where the Son of God is seen to be nothing more than a good man, a prophet. Here are set up poles of antagonism that will cause crisis and catastrophe. You cannot have Jesus Christ—God—in the midst of a world that denies Him without setting up a conflict of life and death. And what is more, if we want to follow Christ, it must be the same for us. We must give up all rights to ourselves.

 

This was a new thought in the world. Here was the idea of renunciation, the idea of taking things in God’s way. The pagan world had a totally different idea. The Stoic Greeks believed that the strongest person is the one who can feel no pain. But God says that the strongest person is the one who feels the most pain for others, the one who is moved with compassion. The strongest person, he who has the greatest capacity to suffer, takes up his cross and follows Christ.

 

Do you want to follow Christ? Then, in the name of the Lord Jesus, listen to Him. “Whosoever will follow Me, let him deny himself. Samuel Rutherford, the great Scotsman of 200 years ago, wrote one letter that said:

 

Oh, that I were free of that idol which they call myself, and that Christ were for myself, and myself a decorated cypher, a denied and forsworn thing! But that proud thing, myself, will not play, except it ride up side for side with Christ, or rather have place before Him ... Oh, but we have much need to be ransomed and redeemed by Christ from that master–tyrant, that cruel and lawless lord, ourself...Oh, blessed are they that can deny themselves and put Christ in the place of themselves. Oh, would to the Lord I had not myself, but Christ, nor my lust, but Christ, nor my ease, but Christ, nor mine honor, but Christ” (Andrew A. Bonar, Letters of Samuel Rutherford, with a Sketch of His Life and Biographical Notices of His Correspondents, Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, p. 370).

 

There is only one cross. We must never use the word to refer to the ordinary difficulties of life. When we take the cross, we take the way that Christ walked, not, of course, as an atonement, but as a method of life that puts the Father’s will first. We read in Romans that “even Christ pleased not Himself “ (15:3, KJV). Alexander Maclaren puts it this way:

 

It is not Christ’s Cross that we have to take up. His sufferings stand alone, incapable of repetition, and needing none; but each has his own. To slay the life of self is always pain, and there is no discipleship without crucifying “the old man.” Taking up my cross does not merely mean accepting meekly God–sent or men inflicted sorrows, but persistently carrying on the special form of self–denial which my special type of character requires. It will include these other meanings, but it goes deeper than they. Such self–immolation is the same thing as following Christ; for, with all the infinite difference between His Cross and ours, they are both crosses, and on the one hand there is no real discipleship without self–denial, and on the other there is no full self–denial without discipleship (The Gospel of St. Mark, p. 130).

 

Etymologically, the words disciple and discipline come from the same word. The two words must be understood together; you cannot be a disciple if you are not disciplining yourself. The kind of discipline I am talking about is the opposite of legalism, which is a life filled with a list of do’s and don’ts. Such legalism is hateful to God. We are talking about a life that gives itself over for death, for crucifixion, for the death of the lower self.

 

The one who lives absorbed in his miserable cares of existence, looking for his own well–being, is dead to all that makes life noble, sweet, and real. It is not necessary to be living in flagrant vice in order to have your spiritual life killed. Clean, respect- able selfishness does the work very effectually, for selfishness is like a poisonous gas that is invisible, odorless—and lethal. All selfishness is fatal. It is self–surrender and sacrifice for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s that give our lives their true meaning.

 

J.B. Phillips has translated Philippians 3:10-14 this way:

 

Now I long to know Christ and the power shown by His resurrection; now I long to share His suffering, even to die as He died, so that I may somehow attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I claim to have achieved all this, nor to have reached perfection already. But I keep going on, trying to grasp that purpose for which Christ Jesus grasped me. My brothers, I do not consider myself to have grasped it fully even now. But I do concentrate on this: I forget all that lies behind me and with hands outstretched to whatever lies ahead I go straight for the goal—my reward the honour of my high calling by God in Christ Jesus.

 

The path of unbelief leads to eternal death. The life of faith leads to a cross and then a resurrection. May we as Christians leave behind our desire for a soft, flabby Christian life and be willing to be disciplined disciples, following where true faith in Christ must lead us, taking up our crosses to follow Him in resurrection life.

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