This is the second part of my teaching on this text. In the previous episode, I stated that you and I must take several ACTIONS to accept the costs associated with discipleship.
The first action was to “give up your identity.” We delved into the profound act of surrendering to Christ, choosing to follow His plans rather than our own, a necessary step in our journey of discipleship.
The following action was “take up your cross.” We looked at the extreme physical suffering experienced by those who died on crosses in Jesus’ day and made the parallel application to how painful it is for us to put our bodily appetites and desires to death.
The Second ACTION is:
Take Up Your Cross
Why did Jesus use this terminology? This was the death He was facing. From his struggle in the garden, we know that his flesh recoiled from it. It seems Jesus wanted to impress upon the disciples that this excruciating method of death would be to the physical body what death to self would be to the spiritual and emotional parts of our being. Our flesh dies hard; it hangs on tenaciously to life. We want to retain control. But Jesus says, “Count the cost; if you are not willing to take up the cross and die the kind of death I will die, you can’t be one of my disciples.”
Jesus urged them to take up this voluntary cross. No one is compelled to be a disciple of Christ. Who in their right mind would voluntarily submit to such suffering and death? To answer that question, we must look at the alternatives.
Notice that in verse 36, Jesus used the terms of commerce, profit, and loss. He said, “Whoever protects his physical life, whoever cares more for his body than for the Lord’s commands, will lose his spiritual life; he will lose his soul.” That doesn’t mean we neglect our bodies; they are the temple of the Holy Spirit. There are other Scriptures dealing with that subject. What is in view here is the focus on sacrificing the spiritual to protect the physical.
I once heard the story of a couple who felt called by God to serve on a foreign mission field. I don’t know the story’s origins, but I will share it as I recall it. They accepted that call and went to share the Gospel with tribal people in the jungle. The Lord began to bless them with a family in their years of service there. They had four sons.
One of the dangers they faced in the jungle environment was dangerous snakes. As the boys grew older, their father became concerned about them entering the jungle. He feared they would fall prey to one of these snakes. His fear became so acute that he finally decided to move his family back home to the United States, even though he knew God had called his family to minister to these tribal people.
Being missionaries, they arrived back in the United States without much in the way of finances. Some friends in the Deep South offered to let them live in a camper on the edge of their property, so they moved in. One day, the three oldest boys played outside and decided to explore under the camper. There, they got into a nest of rattlesnakes and were bitten repeatedly.
The father heard their cries and, by their broken and confused stories, realized what had happened. He grabbed all three of the boys, hustled them into the pickup truck, and, while shouting to his wife, rushed off for the distant hospital. In panic, he failed to see the youngest boy who had come out of the house.
Just as his wife came out of the house to see what all the commotion was about, she saw the pickup truck back over the youngest boy. She sat down on the steps, had a heart attack, and died right there. That father l...
