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.”
And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.” (Mark 8:34-9:1, ESV)
The first couple of verses are often recited amongst Christians, as a means to say that they are committed to their faith. And that is a wonderful thing, but we often undermine what it really means to deny yourself and pick up your cross (Luke adds daily). When we undermine those things, we also undermine what it means to truly follow Christ, and that's not a good thing.
It was already bad enough that Jesus said He was going to suffer and die. It only gets more serious when Jesus asks the crowd and His disciples to do the same thing. Because everyone at this time knew what the cross was. It wasn't some bling people wore around their necks, it wasn't just a ring people wore on their fingers, but it was an infamous and relentless instrument of death. To take up your cross meant to believe and persevere to the point of death. Taking up your cross, therefore, was a one way trip. It would be the same thing if Jesus said to us today to walk down death row and follow Him daily. Not very pretty.
Denying yourself was also not the prettiest thing for Jesus to ask for. And know this, denying yourself and self-denial are two different things. Self-denial is giving up certain things or activities. Denying yourself, however, is completely giving yourself up to the will and glory of God. Not only was it just stuff you took part of, it was ALL of you that was being given up and surrendered.
Jesus, when saying this bold phrase, equated these two ideas. Denying yourself and taking up your cross go hand in hand, and they do not ever separate. This is what it means to follow Christ. If we want to follow Him, we must willingly give all of ourselves up to Him, and die to ourselves completely.
This leads into the next part of Jesus' teaching, which explains why we must deny ourselves and take up our cross.
Jesus' next statement here is a bit paradoxical. If you save your life, you will lose it. If you lose your life, you will save it. What Jesus says here is that he who tries to save and maintain his life now on earth, will lose it on the day of judgment, while he who tries to rebel against his life now, will find it and live forevermore in glory.
Then He expands by asking questions. How can you profit by gaining the whole world and losing your soul? What can you give in return for your soul?
It's interesting that He deliberately says the WHOLE world. Even if we were to gain EVERYTHING in this earth, all of its riches and resources and opportunities, it would still fail to outweigh the loss of your own soul. Even if you had EVERYTHING in this earth, it would still not be enough to gain your soul back.
Why?
Because everything in this earth is temporal and transient, in comparison to what we could receive. In the end, how do you profit if you try to gain what is transient, and give up what is meant to live for eternity?
So then, how do we find our life? How can we even begin to lose it so that we may find it?
We lose it at the cross, and we find it at the cross. We come to the cross to die, and then we find new life in it. This is why Jesus asks us to take up our cross, because in willingly taking up the burden of dying to ourselves, we will find life.
More importantly, though, this is why Jesus says "follow me." Because He was the first to do this. He was the only one who did this perfectly. In His taking up the cross, He actually died. In His obedience towards God's will, He took on one of the worst ways to die, so that we might live. Even more so, He took on the full wrath of God, so that we wouldn't have to. This is where we find life. We don't just find life in the cross that we carry, we find life in the cross that Christ already died on. We find our death and life in His death and life first.
I said it earlier in this blog, but taking up your cross and denying yourself is all a one way trip. People at the time knew that physically carrying your cross to your place of crucifixion meant shaming yourself and taking on the insults of the entire town. As bad as this already is, Jesus goes on to say that whoever is ashamed of following Him or the things that He says will be put to shame when they face the glory of God. This is where we have to ask ourselves the honest question that probably determines where we truly stand in our faith.
What impacts us more, being ashamed in front of people, or being put to shame in front of God Himself?
I'll be the first to admit that sometimes, the former does scare me more than the latter, and that's because, as mentioned in the post before this one, I'm setting my mind on the things of man, and not God. If I were to set my mind on the things of God, I would know for sure which of those two options is worse.
By the way, I absolutely hate it when people use the verse about God being ashamed of you as a reason to post up some tacky picture about Jesus on facebook. Not posting doesn't put you to shame. It's just social media. Relax, people.
Anyway, what truly matters here is the fact that if we are to call ourselves Christians, then this is what it takes. It takes commitment to the point of complete surrender and even death. It means giving up everything about ourselves to the kingdom of God, and finding our true lives in that. It means that everything is about Christ, none of it is about us.
There is a certain blessing in this commitment. Many people who have followed Christ to such a degree have shown that they have lived genuinely joyful and extremely happy lives. Paul says that the suffering we receive in this life is not worth comparing to the glory that we are to receive in Heaven. He considers his own suffering as light and momentary affliction that prepares us for the eternal weight of glory. This is Paul who has probably suffered the most out of all the post-death Christ followers. I could go into detail as to what happened to him, but I won't bother. The list is really long.
There are so many more people who suffered for the cause of Christ, and died joyfully because of it. This is real commitment and passion that I hope we all can strive for.
And this commitment and passion doesn't come without reward. The only thing is that our reward is not physical. It's much better than that. It's the kingdom of God itself. The Bible says that God desires to give us the kingdom, that we are co-heirs with Christ to the kingdom, that our inheritance is the kingdom.
And the good news is that we get to see some of it in our lives now. When Christ said that there were some standing there that would not taste death until they saw the kingdom of God, He may have been referring to the people He would take with Him to His transfiguration. But either way, when we seek earnestly His will, and when we come to die to ourselves every day, we will see God's glory manifest in different places of our lives. We will see glimpses of His kingdom, and when we do, we can be wonderfully reminded of the coming eternity that we get to have with Christ. It's going to be awesome.
So yes, the cost of following Jesus is great, but the reward we will receive from it will far outweigh that cost. I hope and pray that we all can remember and hold fast to that, so that
we might live in radical abandonment for the cause of Christ. Let's go get em.
-simon
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