Take up your cross and follow me

First of all, in the Bible, the word ‘Christian’ is hardly ever used as a label for the people who belong to Jesus. The word is only found two or three times in the New Testament. In the Gospels, the word that is used most is ‘disciple’ which means a follower or apprentice. In the New Testament letters, we find the word ‘saints’ used to describe those who belong to Jesus, or the brief phrase ‘in Christ’, meaning those whose lives are bound up with Jesus.

Having said that, I want to ask you a question: is the Christian life hard or easy? Is it hard or easy to live the life of a Christian, to be a follower of Jesus?

Let’s look at what Jesus said about it. On one occasion he said, “Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”  (Matthew 10:38-39) These words talk about taking up our cross and losing our lives. That suggests that it is hard to follow Jesus.

On another occasion (recorded just one chapter later in Matthew’s Gospel), Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)  These words talk about Jesus’ yoke being easy and his burden light. That suggests that it is easy to follow Jesus.

Which is it? Hard or easy? Or does, as our critics suggest, the Bible contradict itself?  Or can it be that Jesus contradicted himself? What is the answer to this conundrum? In brief the answer is this: it’s easy to be a Christian if we embrace God’s ways, forsake the world’s ways, and submit to God’s will. It’s hard to be a Christian if we try to hang on to our own ambitions, our own way of doing things, and at the same time try to live for God’s kingdom.

I am going to look at these two passages in a little detail, and then try to apply them to our lives and then try to reconcile them.

“Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”  (Matthew 10:38-39)

First let’s be clear that a cross is a method of execution. It was a horrific means of a cruel and lingering death that the Romans reserved for the worst criminals and enemies of the state, in order to make an example of them. If anyone was seen carrying a cross in the first century, it was clear that he was heading for his death. We no longer have the death penalty in the United Kingdom, but it is still used in many countries around the world. The means used are various – hanging, shooting by firing squad, in earlier days in some states in the USA: the electric chair, in some states today a lethal cocktail of drugs. So, putting it into a modern setting, Jesus could have said, “Whoever does not take up their gallows/electric chair/ lethal injection and follow me is not worthy of me . .”

There is a sense in which we take up the cross of Jesus – we embrace his death and make it our own, we receive the benefits that come from his sacrifice – forgiveness, reconciliation with God, justification before God, adoption as sons.

But this is referring not to the cross of Jesus but to our cross: whoever would be a follower of Jesus must take up his own cross and follow him. Following Jesus requires us to die. And in case that’s not clear, Jesus goes on to say that we need to lose our lives for his sake, if we are to follow him.

In what sense must we lose our lives? In what sense must we die? We must be willing to die to, to let go of –

·         our reputation, our good name

·         our rights, especially our right to retaliate

·         being master of our own destiny

·         our ambitions, career plan

·         finding our security in money and things

·         finding our reputation in our social status, or our education

·         looking down on other people.

But we do have a choice: we can hold on to all these things, but if we do the soul within us will shrivel and die, we will become as nothing and lose our life. But if we are prepared to lose our life, to let go of all these things, then we will truly live before God.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”   (Matthew 11:2-30)

The picture here is of two oxen yoked together to pull a plough. The younger ox yoked together with the older, more experienced ox to learn how to plough. Jesus is the more experienced ox. If we submit to his leadership and keep in step with him, if we walk the way that he leads, we will find our burden easy, we will find that the yoke fits well, and that the burden is light. We will find that the way of discipleship is the path of true joy. But if we fight against his leadership, if we hang on to the ways of world, if we are not ready to die to our self and the ways of this world, then we will find that we are pulling against him, that the yoke chafes, that the burden is heavy.

You probably know the story of the apostle Paul. When we first read about him in the Bible, he is known by his Hebrew name Saul, and we read that in his fanatical devotion to his faith, he persecutes and imprisons Christian disciples because he believes that that are perverting the truth about God. Famously, on the road to Damascus, Paul meets the risen Lord Jesus and the whole direction is turned around. When Paul was recounting the story of his conversion many years later, he says this: “We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’”  (Acts 24:16)

‘Goads’ are poles, usually with pointed tips, that are used to ‘encourage’ animals to keep moving in a certain direction. If an animal ‘kicks against the goads’ it makes life even more uncomfortable for itself. That’s what Paul was doing. He was trying to kick against the truth revealed in Jesus, and he was making his own life difficult.

That’s the choice that faces us. We can accept the yoke of Jesus, lay down our lives, submit to his ways, discover true life, and experience the joy of walking with Jesus. Then, we will know, through our own experience, the truth that his burden is light.

Or we can ‘kick against the goads’, refuse to surrender our lives to him, and in so doing we will ‘lose our lives’. We will find life hard because we are constantly resisting his ways and trying to follow our own way, and the way of the world, while at the same time trying to be a follower of Jesus. This is a hard way, and ultimately a way that brings no joy or satisfaction.

You are not your own; you were bought at a price

I’ve been a Christian now for more than forty years. The danger of getting old is that you can become nostalgic; you can think that things were better in “the old days” - when you were young.

There are so many things that have changed in the Christian world since I was a young Christian in the 1970’s. And I am pleased about most of them. However, there is one thing which we have lost which I think is a mistake.

When I was a young Christian, there was a big stress on being totally committed to God, on self-sacrifice, on putting aside one’s own interests and ambitions for the sake of the gospel, of “dying to self.” Along with it there was a whole load of ‘legalism’. For the first seven years of my Christian life, I spent most of the time feeling guilty. Feeling guilty that I wasn’t praying enough. Feeling guilty that I wasn’t reading my Bible enough. Feeling guilty that I wasn’t getting up early enough. Feeling guilty that I wasn’t telling people about Jesus.

I was hugely relieved when I discovered the truth of God’s grace. When I realised that all my sin – past, present and future – is forgiven by God and covered by the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. When I realised that I am adopted by God as his son, that I am accepted totally by him, and that it doesn’t depend on my behaviour. It was truly liberating to realise that my standing with God comes from what he has done for me, and not what I can do for him. It’s great to live as a Christian without guilt. It’s good to know that my walk with God depends on relationship with him and not on keeping rules and regulations. It’s good to know that God’s Holy Spirit is working within me to change me from the inside out, and that being a Christian is not trying in my own strength to conform to an outward standard of behaviour. I’m not trying to conform to someone’s idea of what a Christian life looks like – whether my own ideas or someone else’s. Instead I am drawing strength from God’s own Spirit and changing day by day into his likeness.

Nevertheless, I have a nagging feeling that I am missing something. I have abandoned all the guilt, and all the need to obey a set of rules and regulations.  But with it, I have also ditched a strand of truth which runs through the teaching of Jesus and the New Testament: the call to lay down our lives for the sake of Jesus and the gospel  –

‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.’     Mark 8:34-35

‘Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’     John 12:24

‘For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.’      Philippians 1:21

‘For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.’       Colossians 3:3

I have been thinking recently about how to bring together two apparently contradictory strands that run through the Bible. The Bible makes it clear that God deals with me according to his amazing grace –  the death and resurrection of Jesus has dealt decisively with my sin and my standing with God depends on what he has done and not what I do. And the Bible also makes it clear that I am called to a life of self-sacrifice, to lay down my own life for the sake of Jesus and the gospel.

How do I bring these two strands together? It seems to me that the meeting point is found in the death of Jesus. On the one hand, the sacrifice of Jesus deals with our sin: Jesus in his death bore the pain and the penalty of my sin so that I can go free. Jesus became sin for me, so that I am forgiven and pronounced ‘not guilty’ in God’s sight. On the other hand, the sacrifice of Jesus was a price paid for me, or ransom, so that I no longer belong to myself: I belong to God.

‘In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace. .’     Ephesians 1:7

‘Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!’     Romans 5:9-10

‘For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.’     1 Peter 1:18-19

‘Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies.’     1 Corinthians 6:19-20

‘For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.’     Romans 12:4-5

In fact, not only do I belong to God, but I also belong to my fellow-members of Christ’s body, the church. I can’t make any decision about my life in isolation – whether it’s about my career, my happiness, my finances – I have to consider the impact of my decisions on the gospel, my fellow church members, and on Jesus himself.