FOLLOWING WITH OUR CROSS

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on July 15, 2020 under AM Bible Study |

AM Bible Study Group: July 15, 2020 from Luke 9:21-26

Theme: Because our Lord gave His life on the cross for us, we must take up our cross in order to follow Him.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

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In our last time in Luke’s Gospel, we read of an important conclusion that the disciples had come to concerning the Lord Jesus. It came about because of a question that puts us all on the crossroads of a decision.

In that passage—in Luke 9:18-20—we found that the Lord Jesus asked the disciples who people said that He was. The disciples responded that other people were saying that He was this, or that He was that. Everyone, it seemed, had their opinion about Him. And then Jesus asked, “But who do you say that I am?” That’s a question that we must all answer.

Now; the disciples had seen many things about Him firsthand. They had heard His teaching. They had seen Him perform miracles. And most immediately, they had seen Him feed a multitude of people with only five loaves of bread and two small fish—resulting in twelve baskets of leftovers. They knew that He was much more than what people were saying about Him. And so, when asked who they thought He was, Peter answered for all of the disciples and said, “The Christ of God.” This was Peter’s way of affirming that Jesus is the Son of God in human flesh. It was a conclusion that all who look carefully and honestly into Jesus’ life and teaching must inevitably come to.

But what do we do with that? Is it enough simply to make that declaration? No. It also requires action from us. If we confess that He is who He truly is—the Son of God in human flesh—then, as a consequence, we must respond to that confession with appropriate devotion. Luke goes on to tell us how Jesus described that devotion:

And He strictly warned and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.”

Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father’s, and of the holy angels (Luke 9:21-26).

This passage is quite a jolt; isn’t it? Many people decide to follow Jesus because they believe that following Him will make their life better. And in many ways, it does. But really, following Jesus means much more than that. It means that we suffer the loss of our lives for something better. The way that Jesus put it was that we must take up our cross—the instrument of our own death to self—and follow Him.

* * * * * * * * * *

Perhaps you’ve heard of the great theologian from the mid-twentieth century Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In his famous book, The Cost of Discipleship, he spoke of what happens when we come to terms with who Jesus really is. He put the matter this way:

“The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die” (p. 79).

Now; let’s make a few things clear. First, this is not talking about salvation. We are not saved by suffering for Jesus. We are not saved by taking up our cross. Rather, we are saved by placing our faith in the suffering He underwent for us on His cross—when He took the full guilt of our sins upon Himself and paid the death penalty on our behalf. Instead of salvation, this is talking about discipleship. This is talking about what it means to follow Him. We follow Him by—in love—doing as He did for us, and by taking up the very instrument of our own death to self, and following where He leads. That has to happen if we encounter Him as He really is. There is no discipleship with Jesus without knowing Jesus; and there’s no knowing Jesus without taking up the cross. There is no life with Him without death to self.

But another thing to remember is that ‘taking up our cross’ isn’t what people popularly mean by that phrase. That phrase—unfortunately—has come to mean, in the minds of some, the whole idea of suffering one’s lot in life. “Oh well; I guess this is just the cross I must bear.” That’s not what Jesus meant at all. What He meant was that we willingly take up our instrument of self-execution. We take ‘self’—that very thing which everyone in the world says that we need to pursue and exalt and gratify—and nail it to the cross.

That’s not a popular message today. It’s the opposite of what many want to hear. But it is an unavoidable requirement of following Jesus. And in the passage from Luke that is before us, our Lord makes this very clear. He literally took up His cross in order to save us. And now, we must figurative take up our cross if we would follow Him.

Now; notice how our Lord put this to us. First, He plainly set before us …

1. THE PRICE HE WOULD PAY TO SAVE US (vv. 21-22).

The disciples had just announced—rightly—that He is the Christ of God. They recognized the truth of what His works had declared concerning Him; and rightly concluded that He is the Son of God in human flesh. But strangely, we then find these words in verse 21: “And He strictly warned and commanded them to tell this to no one …”

Why would He say this to them? In fact, why would He sternly warn them not to say who He was? Aren’t we supposed to tell the world about Him? Well; it’s important to see this command in the context of where He was at this time in His earthly ministry. At this point, He was doing the works the Father had sent Him to do in order to show forth who He was. But His greatest work was yet to be done. He would soon lay down His life on the cross for us. He went on to explain:

“The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day” (v. 22);

and that must happen. Nothing must be allowed to interfere with that important, saving work.

Do you remember when John—in his Gospel—told us about Jesus’ feeding of the multitude? We’re told that He looked at the crowds and “perceived that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king” (John 6:15). He departed from them; because that was not why He had come. He would indeed eventually be their King; but first, He must be their Savior. He had to suffer many things, and be rejected by the leaders of His people, and be killed, and be raised on the third day. It was absolutely necessary that He minister to us by becoming the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Now; Jesus paid that price for us. And He paid it to the full. We do not now need to die in order to atone for our own sins. He has already accomplished that atonement for us. But if we recognize that He is the Son of God in human flesh, and if we recognize that He—as the sinless Son of God—paid the death penalty for us on the cross; then it leads us to the matter of our discipleship.

He went on to explain …

2. THE COST WE MUST NOW EMBRACE IN ORDER TO FOLLOW HIM (vv. 23-26).

And we can see this in three ways. First, it is required that we die daily to self. In verse 23, we read, “Then He said to them all, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.’” We can see plainly from this that Jesus is not calling upon us to take up a literal cross; because it must be done ‘daily’. Nor do we understand Him to be speaking necessarily of a literal ‘dying’—because He describes it as an expression of denying one’s self. Rather, it is describing a perpetual, regular, repeated laying of one’s own self upon the altar of whole-hearted commitment to Him and following where He leads.

If you were to be living in those days, and if you were to see a man staggering down the road as he carried a heavy cross, you would not have been impressed with his Christian testimony. Instead, you would have understood that this man was a condemned criminal being marched to his own execution. He was on his way to die. All of his own plans and ambitions—all of his own pursuit of his own agenda—were gone. He had nothing for himself and he was nothing unto himself. And that’s what the Lord Jesus says is required if we would follow Him.