This morning I was reading the passage, “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” This seems like such a hard passage and a discouraging passage for a new Christian. It seems like a life of hardship. Our life and walk in the Lord has had times of hardship and of suffering and of peace and of joy and of a daily contentment. When I think on this word I remember that at this point in his life Jesus had not been to the cross. What did Jesus mean by taking up our cross?
I began to think about the passages where Jesus expresses the hardships He experienced in His life. The first one I thought of was the passage where He says the Son of Man hath nowhere to lay His head. The foxes and the birds have a home as do men, but Jesus had nowhere to rest. Then I think of His outburst, how long shall I bear with you. And when Lazarus is in the tomb and Jesus wept, it wasn’t for His friend Lazarus. He knew Lazarus would be walking and leaping soon. He wept for the people who didn’t comprehend the work of God or the will of God or the deep compassion He had for His people. I began to ponder, was the cross that Jesus carried the cross of being in this world yet not of it? Was it the terrible isolation of being from above and living here amongst men. Think of the anguish Jesus expresses in the Gospels including, Father why have You forsaken Me? The cross of Jesus seems to be Him living amongst people of little faith, amongst people who did not understand the Father, nor the promises of the Word. The comforts that were available to the people of God they did not take up, nor did they walk in them. They didn’t expect the good, even the good that came out of bad circumstances like Lazarus’s death.
I have experienced in the Christian life that there is the loneliness and isolation, the same cross that Jesus bore on this earth. We surely are in this world although we are not of it. There is the understanding that eventually we do stand completely alone before God. This is a comfort. The Lord shall reward every man according to his works. So it’s true we are alone. And in that personal individual experience we possess our own soul, if we are able. If we have sold our soul to the world we live in, what can we possibly give in exchange for it?
Jesus, bent over and bleeding carried His cross. Weary, rejected and abandoned by all men he went to Golgotha. When He spoke this Word in Matthew 16:24, He knew the cross lay ahead of Him. Yet the cross He bore on this earth were His observations of how little the people knew the Father and how little faith they had in their God. So Jesus had compassion on the people, which is expressed everywhere in the Gospels. But He did not have compassion on those who had sold their own soul for power, position in the church and money. Indeed, they denied not themselves but Christ. Selah.
I was also thinking on this portion, let him deny himself. I can see how in big ways we have denied our own plans and potentially personal dreams for our own lives. Yet in this passage I see the Lord speaking about small, daily things. The other part I see is denying ourselves in critical situations in our lives where we have to make a decision. Look, for example, to the man who has done good and follows God, the man whose goodness can be seen and perhaps has gained some newsworthy recognition. In the moment of popularity that man may be tempted, for example, with money to make a small shift in his position. The gain would be money, so he denies himself that bonus or bribe to continue on the good way. Or consider the man who helped the poor including a young woman who later offers herself to him. She thinks it’s a gift, but he sees the truth and he denies himself, to continue on the good way. And to bless her, so that she would know she doesn’t have to pay for goodness; it is the free gift of God.
So in this matter of denying oneself there are the daily denials, like too much food, a casual and mean word, staying out too late, slighting someone, or not attending to a commitment. These daily denials strengthen the individual for the crossroad denials that lay ahead. Learn the lessons in small matters and apply the lessons of denial when pride or weakness would trip you up pushing you toward the benefits of your “goodness”.
It’s not that we live a whole life of ascetic denial like a monk or a vow of poverty like a nun. Taking up the cross and denying ourselves is a life where we deny ourselves in small ways and prefer other people. Then we have been instructed and strengthened so that we can deny temptation on the big forks in the road of life.