It has been quite a long time since my last post. I am now retired and have more time. Here is a reflection from Matthew 16 that I hope you will find encouraging…

Take Up Your Cross — “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” — Matt 16:24 (NIV)

Deny Yourself: Renounce yourself. What do we renounce? We renounce our own life agenda. We hand our lives over to Christ. On one hand this means a complete reevaluation of the attitudes and desires that guide our living.  It means becoming aware of the passions which draw us along, distorting our lives (selfishness, discontentment, pride, lust, anger, etc.). The things that drive and draw the self as it is independent from God’s Law, God’s rule,  God’s worship. Such a thing is difficult and it does not happen at all unless one comes to know God as God — one’s Lord, Master, one’s True Life. 

So it’s no accident that Jesus makes this statement this right after Peter’s confession. Peter says, you are the Son of God. And if he truly understands that, then he should understand that his life belongs to Jesus, not to himself. But then Peter rebukes Jesus when Jesus speaks about his sufferings and the cross, and what Jesus says in response is “Peter, this is Satan speaking through you. But if you really understand and believe that I am the Son of God, then you need to deny your political agenda by taking up a cross, which will be the death of your political agenda.”

Take up the cross: Pick up the cross. We would all rather leave our sufferings and sorrows and difficulties and losses and failings lying on the ground. To pick them up is to embrace them — but we would rather deny them and push them away. 

To take up one’s cross is both an act of confession and of willingly taking on a burden which proclaims us guilty, defeated, shamed — that’s what the Roman cross was all about. The cross was a way of making an example of enemies of the state — of exposing them as they died horribly. Jesus says, I am going to be publicly shamed and executed in this way —  you take up your cross as well. What does this mean practically? Two obvious things: 

1. Confessing that we are not great spiritual teachers and leaders and impressive spiritual people, or even “good people,” but only helpless, guilty sinners who only stand by the grace of God. This is both our shame and our glory — just as the cross is Jesus’s shame and glory.
        When I was younger I thought that this verse meant that I had to do the really hard work of suffering by trying harder to do the right things and not do the wrong things — in my own strength. In this belief I made the cross nothing more than an example: “Jesus did it so now you have to do it.  Stop sinning and be holy.”  But I could not do it. I went to seminary to learn to do it — but I could not do it. I tried to do the good spiritual things that I thought would heal me and fulfill my obligation to God — but I could not do them well enough.
        But then I understood the Gospel and I took up my mortal helplessness and confessed to God that I could not do — could not be, then I found grace. I confessed my helplessness and stopped trusting in my own efforts and programs to heal myself and I found new life. Now I am trying to apply this helplessness and trust to other parts of my life.

1. Identifying with Jesus. When we take up the cross, we do not identify with all of those nameless multitudes of people who were executed in this way — only with One, Jesus Christ — his message, his claims. It is enough. There is no shortage of suffering if one holds to the message of the Gospel in Jesus: 

1. that all people have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory
2. that God’s judgment falls on those who reject his ways and his Son.
3. that it is in Jesus alone that anyone can be saved — he is the way, the truth and the life.
4. that those who confess their sins and turn to follow him (to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him) will be saved.

Only those who have turned to Christ love this message. But it is an outrage to those who do not believe.

And Follow: let him be following — continuous action. Following is a huge subject — it is all that is involved in the spiritual life. However, it has two or three basic components…

1. Through Imitation: It is very popular, or used to be, in Christian circles, to talk about obedience — to talk about it as a believer’s decision and fortitude and strength. But imitation is a better way of talking about following. We are called to live as Jesus did, with the absolute Law of God in our hearts. But who can keep the Law? As Paul says, the Law only leads us to a greater knowledge of our sin and need. This is why Jesus says, after restating several commandments from the Law, “Therefore be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48). This is another verse people cannot accept because it throws all of us on the grace of God when we want to be good people on our own. People have wrestled to reinterpret this verse, but Jesus said what he said.
        By Imitation I do not mean that Jesus is merely our good example — Part of imitation is the imitation of Jesus’ communion with God and His dependence of the Father for everything. We have no chance of following Jesus without this dependence. We might as well jump off a cliff and try to fly by flapping our arms. And if we cannot even imitate a bird in this way, why would we try to imitate the Lord of glory this way?

1. In Worship: To follow is to worship. Here again, we do not ever truly worship until we have understood the Gospel of grace and that it is all grace by which we have communion with God. When a person comes to understand this, he or she will respond in worship and thankfulness. That is why this understanding is the main target of Satan’s accusations and lies. Satan is constantly seeking to accuse us and lie to us so that we will turn back to our own efforts to be good people and be trapped again in moralism. And he is often successful because we often do fall back into moralism (self-trust through good works).

1. With Trust: To follow Jesus is to trust that he is for us. Paul confronts our tendency to distrust in Romans chapter eight, beginning in verse 31, by asking three questions — which he also answers for us

1. Vs.31-32 — “If God is for us…” — if God did not spare his own Beloved Son but gave him up for us…
   * Then what is it that you and I believe God is withholding from us?

1. Vs. 33-34 — If God has both chosen you and justified you…  

• If Jesus died and was raised for us to atone for our sins…
• If Jesus is in heaven, at the right hand of the Father, applying grace to every part, every moment of our lives and pleading for our healing and redemption…
• Then who is bringing charges against you or me?
• Who is it that will be able to condemn us if God is the one who has justified us?

1. Vs.35-37 — If God has gone to such lengths to secure you as His Own…
   * Will God, in spite of all this, abandon us and reject us?

In verse 38, Paul says, “I am convinced…” — and this is the goal of trusting, that we should become convinced, finally, that nothing can separate us from the grace of God. To follow Jesus we must become convinced that the redemptive purposes of God for our lives, and the lengths that God has gone to in order to secure our salvation — mean that God’s love, even in spite of our failings, will never abandon us.