Taking Up Our Cross

 

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK

TAKING UP OUR CROSS

Mark 8:31-38

 

31 He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. "Get behind me, Satan!" he said. "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."  34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? 37 Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels." 

NIV

Page two, the rest of the story. Having considered just what we have in mind, either the things of men or the things of God, we now need to consider what is meant when Jesus said that if we are going to come after him that we must deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow him. What this appears to be is a condition of coming after Jesus. The condition has to be one of choice, not of compulsion, much like the traditions of even the doctrines of Judaism in that if someone from another religion desired to become Jewish, he must do it of his own free will. So this is with following after Jesus, we must decide to do it from our own free choice, or free will. Although the Spirit will convict us of our sin, we still must make the choice to come after Jesus, to follow him. To deny ourselves is not that simple as we have lived with ourselves all our lives up to the moment we have to make the choice to put the old self aside and pick up our cross and follow Jesus. But the point is that we must put that old self on the cross as Jesus was put on the cross. That old self needs to die. That former life now is dead and we, like Christ, have been resurrected into a new glorified condition. Although Jesus was actually glorified, able to appear in a locked room as well, and we are not glorified in that sense, but we are now holy and blameless in the sight of God. That is glorious or glorified in another sense. Now because our old self seems, at times, to want to come back to life, wanting to have its way, that is the reason we need to pick up our cross and carry it with us. This way we can also put that old self back where it belongs, on the cross. There have been other meanings about taking up our cross that would imply we need to be ready to suffer as Jesus did upon his cross, even suffer unto death. It is true that as Paul wrote in his letter to those in Rome that if we are co-heirs with Jesus, being called God’s children, then we are his heirs, and if we indeed share in his sufferings in order that we may share in his glory. In that sense, we may well have to suffer the loss of that old self, who was so used to self-indulgence and self-gratification. This may also go back to this idea about following the traditions of men instead of the truth of God. Still, it is all about that old self dying on the cross, and following after Jesus. We cannot follow him as our old self, we have to deny that self, put it on the cross, and become a new person, born again, or we will never see the kingdom of God. How can two people occupy the same body? How can that be harmony between the old and the new self? How can evil and holiness dwell together? As Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthians, what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever, for what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? What agreement can we have, being the temple of God, with idols, which our old self held so dear? It seems the cross we carry, with that old self on it, is the only way we can follow Jesus.