Then Jesus told his disciples, “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 will find it.” Matthew 16:24-25, ESV
I wonder if Jesus lost a few followers when he said that. My guess is that he did.
His words had to be so much more striking in his context than in ours. In our context a cross is something to hang on the wall or around one’s neck but in Jesus’ day it was something on which you hung to die. It symbolized and brought about all that a person would want to avoid. Not only that, but it was surely a symbol of the powers of this world that were unjust and opposed to God’s dream of freedom for the captives, healing for the outcast, and grace given to sinners.
So this was not a quaint saying at all. It was pointed.
Jesus is calling any who want revolution and renovation – any who long for justice and mercy in their world and love and grace in their hearts – to come and die. That, quite frankly, is the image that Jesus is bringing to mind. It is uncomfortable, terrifying even. If we are to follow him, we follow him into our own death.
Those who didn’t get what Jesus was saying here would walk, no sprint, in the other direction – any direction but the direction toward the cross. But those who discerned his meaning, those like Paul, would find great hope and consolation in Jesus’ call to come and die. Why? Because the foundation of revolution is the renovation of our hearts and the renovation of one’s heart can only happen when our hearts are stopped and then restarted anew by Jesus himself.
Paul says it this way in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ.“
That is, his heart ceased to beat upon the cross he picked up in following Christ. He, just like anyone who has become a disciple of Jesus, has died. As such, Paul could say “I am dead.” Not in a physical sense, but in the sense of living for himself and entrusting his future, his thoughts, and his actions to himself. That part of him is dead. He did not live to, or for, himself anymore. As Dallas Willard suggests “Being dead to self is the condition where the mere fact that I do not get what I want does not surprise or offend me and has no control over me…” This was Paul, for sure. He faded into the background and Jesus and his cross came to the fore.
Quite the call on his life. Quite the call on your life and mine.
So why did he make such a call? The short answer is that this is the pathway both to renovation and to revolution; it is the prerequisite to both.
We will consider the former in tomorrow’s devotion. As for the latter, doesn’t it make just a little sense that those who have died already would be more willing to put themselves on the line in order to pursue God’s dream? Sure it does, they have nothing to lose! The one with nothing to lose can go all in.
And that’s where we can be in Christ! We can go all in.
The question remains, though: Will we?
Response
Journal and pray on these questions:
- What would it mean in your life to “go all in” with Jesus?
- What, if anything might be holding you back?
- How do you think your life might change or be required to change if you did?
- How would your family and community, even your world, change?
Traveling with you,
Pastor Reed
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