E-votional

"Take Up Your Cross"

Luke 9:23 "Then Jesus said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."

I have pondered on this phrase for a while now. What does it mean to "take up your cross?" It has become a buzz phrase in conversation and a call of urgency in sermons but what is it? I am still not completely sure so pardon me while I ponder some more.

The most common answer that I think I have heard is "To take up your cross means that we need to die to ourselves daily." I would propose that this is as vague as "take up your cross." How do you die to yourself? What scriptures show me the way? I think there are none because you cannot die to yourself daily. The truth is that you have already died once, for all time, never to die again and it is no longer you who live but Christ who lives in and through you. To place a "die to yourself" requirement on the daily walk of a believer is to place a Christ sized sacrificial works based acceptance on that walk. It cannot be done and should not be tried.

So we are back to the beginning. If you read the whole section it makes a little more sense. It seems that the call to "take up your cross" maybe a call to salvation because it is followed by "whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake, he is the one who will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but to lose his own soul." Still, how does "daily" fit into that?

I then received an email from an acquaintance that I think pulls the phrase back into right meaning:

• "the phrase concerning “taking up your cross” was idiomatic to identify with His rejection. It is not a verse dealing with salvation but it is dealing with discipleship and therefore to be a true disciple of Jesus one needs to identify with His rejection and be willing to be rejected himself and that is what it means to take up the cross and to do so daily and be willing to suffer rejection as He was rejected. Jesus was officially rejected by Israel’s leaders in Matthew 12 and therefore to be a true disciple you must identify yourself with that rejection and follow Him in spite of that rejection by the larger Jewish community."

Maybe we can blame it on our Western "what works for you is fine" culture, but I had never even considered rejection by family and or community as an issue. The more I thought about it though the more I realized how this is a huge factor. It was a huge issue with the international students we worked with in Hawaii, it is a huge issue with Jewish believers, it is an issue with my own extended family, and it is an issue with many people in our body concerning our community. Who wants to be rejected? That sucks. However the alternative, being ashamed of Jesus, sucks even more.

Dear Saint, we have nothing to be ashamed of. We only have a life to be amazed of. A story that is incredible. And a personal relationship with the God of the universe that is nothing short of incredibly, amazingly, outstandingly, beautifully wonderful. Enjoy Him.