“If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” Mark 8:34 ESV1
Read Matthew 10:34-39, Mark 8:34-38 & Luke 14:25-33
Maybe it is because we have become accustomed to adorning ourselves with cross jewelry. Maybe it is because we find it fashionable to decorate our homes with cross accents. Maybe it is all of the gracious blessings we receive because of our association with Christ, but in this day and age, we have lost the horror of the Cross. Even when we speak of bearing a cross, we only mean that we are enduring some unpleasant circumstances. But when the first-century followers of Christ heard Jesus say they must take up their crosses to be His disciples, they would have been both confused and dismayed.
Jesus spoke the above words long before anyone even dreamed that Jesus would be crucified, and crucifixion would have conjured up terrifying thoughts.
“Crucifixion was meant to inflict the maximum amount of shame and torture upon the victim. Roman crucifixions were carried out in public … Crucifixion was so horrible that it was reserved for only the worst offenders.
The victim of crucifixion was first severely scourged or beaten … Then he was forced to carry the large wooden crossbeam to the site of the crucifixion. [This would have been] extremely painful after the beating … [The] shame [of] carrying the instrument of his own torture and death … was like digging one’s own grave …
He would be stripped naked to further shame him … Nails were hammered through the wrists … The placement of the nails … caused excruciating pain … The crossbeam would then be hoisted up and fastened to an upright piece that would normally remain standing between crucifixions.
After fastening the crossbeam, the executioners would nail the victim’s feet to the cross as well—normally, one foot on top of the other … with the knees slightly bent … All his weight was supported by three nails … The victim’s arms were stretched out in such a way as to cause cramping and paralysis in the chest muscles, making it impossible to breathe unless some of the weight was borne by the feet. In order to take a breath, the victim had to push up with his feet … The victim’s raw back would rub against the rough upright beam of the cross … After taking a breath …, the victim would begin to slump down again … Crucifixion usually led to a slow, torturous death .. .Death was ultimately by asphyxiation as the victim lost the strength to continue pushing up on his feet in order to take a breath.”2
As if taking up one’s cross wasn’t enough, Jesus also shared other shocking requirements for being His disciple. “Now great crowds accompanied [Jesus], and He turned and said to them,” (Luke 14:25). “’Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me’” (Matthew 10:34-37). “’If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple’” (Luke 14:26). “’If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me’” (Mark 8:34). “’And whoever does not take his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me’” (Matthew 10:38). “’For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul’” (Mark 8:35-36)? “’So, therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be My disciple’” (Luke 14:33).
Why must following Jesus require so much sacrifice from His disciples? Why would the Prince of Peace (see Isaiah 6:9) and the giver of His peace (see John 14:27) bring dissension? How could Jesus demand such singular devotion? Before I go any further, let me explain. This denial of self has nothing to do with salvation. Salvation is easy for us; God did all the work. To be saved, all we must do is believe.
Notice: “’If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me’” (Mark 8:34, emphasis mine). Choosing to be His disciple is optional, but if that is what we wish, we must make some sacrifices. Jesus desires first place in our lives, and He wants us to set aside anything which prevents Him from having that prominence because that is what is best for us.
What about taking up our crosses could possibly be good for us? We all know what happened to Jesus after He took up His cross. Actually, the carrying of a cross is the easy part. Crosses aren’t just meant as a burden to be carried for a while. Crosses are instruments of death when after they are carried, the burden bearers are nailed to and die upon them.
As humans, self-preservation is ingrained in our make-up. The idea of putting aside one’s life to gain anything greater is counterintuitive, but, whether we realize it or not, that is precisely that to which we commit when we choose to follow Jesus. When we decide to be His disciple, we give up our claims on our lives. We allow Him to be our Leader, and we promise to go wherever He directs. In all reality, we are allowing ourselves to be “crucified with Christ. It is no longer [we] who live, but Christ who lives in [us]. And the life [we] now live in the flesh [we] live by faith in the Son of God, who loved [us] and gave Himself for [us]” (Galatians 2:20).
So, what makes this taking up our crosses and following Jesus worth all the pain and agony? Jesus answered this question a few chapters later when Peter asked, “’See we have left everything and followed You. What then do we have’” (Matthew 19:28)? Jesus’ reply was, “’Truly, I say to you, in the New World, when the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne, you who have followed Me will also sit on … thrones … and everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for My name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life” (Matthew 19:28-29).
But that’s not all. When we take up our crosses and follow Jesus wherever He goes, whatever that might entail, we, like Jesus, don’t stay lifeless in the grave! We too experience a resurrection. Our crosses provide the opportunity for the death of ourselves, and in the process, open the door to the possibility of a renewed new life here on Earth, as well as an entirely different experience in Heaven someday. Those instruments of death are actually the means for our regeneration, transformation, and metamorphosis into what God intended in the first place.
You see, when we give up 100% or ourselves, we receive 100% of Christ. We do not lose; we gain. It is as if all we have can be compared to a tablespoon of water. We can hoard it, guarding it, so it doesn’t spill, and, when it inevitably does, run around asking others to take from their tiny amounts of water to refill ours, or we can throw our water in the ocean of Christ’s abundance. With each wave that crashes into us, we will have more than we ever dreamed.
Besides, Jesus is not asking of us anything He has not already done Himself. Did He not give up of Himself for us? He did not count His life or His position too precious to sacrifice for us. “Christ Jesus … though He was … God, did not count equality with God a thing to be [held on to] but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8).
Among the words He spoke to the crowd that day, Jesus further alluded to the sacrifice He would make. He said, “’For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, “This man began to build and was not able to finish.” Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace’” (Luke 14:28-32).
Oswald Chambers, in his devotional, My Utmost for His Highest, has this to say about this passage of Scripture.
“Our Lord was not referring here to a cost which we have to count, but to a cost which He has already counted. The cost was those thirty years in Nazareth, those three years of popularity, scandal, and hatred, the unfathomable agony He experienced in Gethsemane, and the assault upon Him at Calvary— the central point upon which all of time and eternity turn. Jesus Christ has counted the cost. In the final analysis, people are not going to laugh at Him and say, “This man began to build and was not able to finish.”3
Remaining in that train of thought, I am not sure if Jesus was referring to Himself as the king with the ten thousand or the king with the twenty thousand, but what I do know is that Jesus came to Earth and fought the battle over sin and death on our behalf, and He won that war. Because of that, I know He has the right to ask anything of us that He wishes. And I do know He is looking for workers to help build His Church and warriors to fight for His Bride. Only those who have allowed Him to direct and utterly control them are cut out for the task.
Oswald Chambers continues:
“The conditions of discipleship given to us by our Lord in verses 26, 27, and 33 mean that the men and women He is going to use in His mighty building enterprises are those in whom He has done everything … those who have a love for Him that goes far beyond any of the closest relationships on earth. The conditions are strict, but they are glorious…
We are living in a time of tremendous enterprises, a time when we are trying to work for God, and that is where the trap is. Profoundly speaking, we can never work for God. Jesus, as the Master Builder, takes us over so that He may direct and control us completely for His enterprises and His building plans; and no one has any right to demand where he will be put to work.”3
And that brings me to something else we can gain if we are willing to give up all. Jesus didn’t just rise to a whole new life on Earth. He ascended and is “seated…at [the Father’s] right hand in the Heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And [God has] put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:20-22).
When we follow Jesus all the way to the death of self, we obtain not only a resurrection into a new life on Earth, but we too can have a kind of ascension, an ascension that comes with authority. And I don’t just mean we have a place in Heaven when we die. Eternity starts here the moment we choose to follow Jesus. Jesus told His disciples, “’I am going to Him who sent Me … I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you’” (John 16:5-7). When we become followers of Jesus, we get the Holy Spirit, literally God in us, as a Helper to be with us forever (see John 14:16).
The Holy Spirit is a polite house guest. He will not demand access to areas of our lives where we don’t let Him. But where we do permit Him, He will start cleaning, rearranging, getting rid of anything that doesn’t please God, and replacing it with all that does. With every change the Holy Spirit makes, we will begin to look and act more and more like Jesus. We will not become God, but we will be infused with the power of God to overcome sin and to become all God intends for us.
“The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, … [gives us] the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of [our] hearts enlightened, that [we] may know what is the hope to which He has called [us], what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His great might that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead” (Ephesians 1:17-20a)
This is where death to self gets really exciting. Through the ever-increasing power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, where we previously struggled with discouragement and defeat, we will find victory. Where we have been ineffective and have felt useless, we will become efficient and enthusiastic. Where we have riddled with pride and self-centeredness, we will become other-focused. Where we have been drawn down with temptation and have been dissatisfied with our own efforts to stay pure, we will have the power to choose rightly. Where we have wanted to give up, we will find strength and excitement to continue the good fight. The Holy Spirit will become our Power, Counselor, Confidence, and Helper. Our lives will revolve around God, and we will “know that [our] bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in [us], whom [we] have received from God. [We will know] are not [our] own; [we] were bought at a price. [And we will have the power to] honor God with [our] bodies” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
You, like me, likely have at least one cross displayed somewhere on your person or in your possession. May these never become meaningless decorations, but may they cause us to remember all Jesus gave up for us and all that we gain when we “’deny [ourselves] and take up [our] cross[es] and follow [Jesus]’” (Mark 8:34b).
1 Scripture quotations marked with ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All Scriptures are taken from the ESV unless otherwise noted.