Take Up Your Cross

"If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." (Matthew 16:24). Think of the men to whom He spoke this. Think of how all but John would indeed die as martyrs for Him, and a number of them die literally by crucifixion. And how many martyrs have enriched the church in all the centuries since, and yet for the majority of Christians, Jesus' words here are not fulfilled in literally being put to death for confessing Jesus Christ. True, we always try to prepare for that, and the rite of confirmation in the Lutheran Church, we even dare to ask  - will you suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from this confession of Jesus? But across the centuries, most Christians have found the application of these words of Jesus to involve not so much the heroic and big death as the smaller little daily deaths.

The parallel in Saint Luke's Gospel, the word "daily," is even in there: If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. What does it mean to deny oneself and to take up the cross daily to follow Jesus? There's a distinction between His cross and my cross. When Christians hear His cross, that's when they're suffering for His sake, for the sake of Him being their Lord, and confessing Him like the martyrs who were put to death. But my cross, my daily cross, that's whenever my will crosses God's will - that's my cross! And Jesus invites me and you to pick that cross up and carry it along behind Him.  To pray after Him, not my will, but your will be done. That will be Jesus' prayer in the garden, but truly it was the prayer of His entire life., and it must become yours and mine too.

Yes, this is the taste of death each day because of the old Adam, the desire of our sinful flesh that fights against God's will, and the Spirit that He gives us to fight against the desires of that with the sinful flesh. Jesus summons any who would be His to put to death those fleshly desires to execute them. The path of discipleship is not the path of self-indulgence but of self-mortification. As odd as it seems, that proves to be the path of life itself, and life is what He wants to give.

-Pr. Will Weedon