Anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
– Matthew 10:38-39
Several years ago I had an encounter with a man that caused me to ponder deeply what Jesus really meant when He said that we are to take up our cross and follow Him. This man came to me for pastoral counseling about a pattern of sinful behavior in his life. He told me that he had been dealing with this issue for many years and that he had never really been able to get free from it. He said that he had prayed many times for God to help him, but it had done no good. Then he told me that he was convinced that this particular sin & temptation was just his cross to bear.
Do you see the problem in this kind of statement? Let me try to make the problem clear - If Jesus calls us to carry our cross, and if a cross can be defined as a sin, then Jesus is actually calling us to live in sin! This cannot be!
Jesus Himself taught us to pray, “and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matt. 6:13). Over and over again, the Bible tells us that God does not desire for us to live in sin. He desires for us to be free from sin and increasingly free from temptation!
1 Corinthians 10:13 - No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.
Galatians 5:16 - So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
Mark 14:38 - Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.
Psalm 119:11 - I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
JESUS DOES NOT BURDEN US WITH SIN, HE FREES US FROM IT!
When Jesus carried His cross up Golgotha to be crucified, no one was thinking of the cross as symbolic of a burden to carry. To a person in the first century, the cross meant one thing and one thing only: death by the most painful and humiliating means imaginable. Two thousand years later, Christians view the cross as a cherished symbol of atonement, forgiveness, grace, and love. But in Jesus’ day, the cross represented nothing but torturous death. Because the Romans forced convicted criminals to carry their own crosses to the place of crucifixion, bearing a cross meant carrying their own execution device while facing ridicule along the way to death.
Therefore, “Take up your cross and follow Me” means being willing to die in order to follow Jesus. This is called “dying to self.” It’s a call to absolute surrender. The question we should be asking ourselves is – Where am I not surrendered to Christ?
Pastor Jeff Frazier
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1 comment:
That is one powerful devotion with a very good lesson. I have heard that expression "I guess it's just my cross to bear" so often, and this devotion has made it simple and clear. Going forward I will be better equipped to respond to myself and others!
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