Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Next     Previous     Today

Following After Jesus

"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it" (Matthew 16:24-25).

This verse is found almost word for word in the first three gospels.  Luke intensifies taking up our cross to be a "daily" necessity (see Luke 9:23-24).  Mark says whoever loses his life for Jesus "and for the gospel" will get it back (see Mark 8:34-35).  And both Mark and Luke change the final "find it" to "save it."  This saying of Jesus was obviously memorable and very important in the early church.  I certainly have heard many sermons on this passage down through the years.  You too?  And why not, this is a message that is at the very heart of the gospel and what it means to be a person of faith!

Interesting that in all three as well, this verse follows Jesus' teaching on the reality that the Son of Man must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law and be killed.  In two of them, it is here that Peter takes Jesus aside and tries to teach him that he must have be mistaken.  "Never Lord," Peter says, "this shall never happen to you!"  To which Jesus replied, "Get behind me, Satan!" (Matthew 16:22-23; see also Mark 8:32-33).  I have written about this statement of Peter in a previous article (see the August 1/08 Challenge).  Jesus knew that his way was the way of the cross, and he taught his disciples that if they would follow him, they will follow him to the cross.  A contemporary martyr has summarized it this way:

"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
 

Does Bonhoeffer's statement sound too strong to our ears?  Maybe we as modern-day Peters believe that Jesus must be mistaken at least as far as our own going to the cross is concerned.  Have you heard those sermons?  You know the ones, where the "cross" that we are to take up more like inconvenience or mild discomfort than actual suffering and death.  Maybe we should preach that to the places in the world where people really are suffering and even dying for their faith right now!  We dare not water down the actual cost of true discipleship to make the gospel more palatable to western audiences!

At the same time, I want to encourage you with a part of the message that I know I have never heard preached.  It grows out of our preoccupation in the church with the cross of Christ.  Don't get me wrong.  The cross is a wonderful thing.  Without it we would all be lost forever.  But, the cross without the resurrection would have been a waste of Jesus' life!  Paul went so far as to say that "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith" (1 Corinthians 15:14), "if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins" (1 Corinthians 15:17) and, if he did not rise again, "we are to be pitied more than all men" (1 Corinthians 15:19).  We have missed this part of the message because we have skipped over the context where Jesus says not only that he must suffer and be killed but most importantly, "on the third day be raised to life" (Matthew 16:21).

What Jesus was actually saying in this well-worn verse is that, yes, if we would come after him, there is need of us denying ourselves and our selfish desires, and yes, there is a cross to take up that includes suffering and possibly even death, but to follow Jesus never stops at the cross anymore than Jesus stopped at the cross!  To really "come after" him, means to follow him through every cross we are given to the place where we receive the resurrection and the power that is a part of that!  Would it be too much to say,

"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die,
in order that he may be raised with him to a better life!"
 

Following Jesus always has to mean following him all the way.  We have died with him (Romans 6:8).  We have been raised with him and even seated in heavenly places with him! (Colossians 3:1).  He is our life (Colossians 3:4) and his life in us is nothing other than a resurrected life!  And in that life is power beyond anything that we could imagine!

The way of the cross is miserable and difficult if that is only as far as we go.  Jesus invites you and me to come all the way after him and live in the reality of the resurrection just as he does.  I don't know about you, but I want to go beyond the cross.  It is time that the church walks in all that Jesus has won for it!  I am with Paul the apostle:

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain the resurrection of the dead" (Philippians 3:10-11).