TWO friends were commiserating about difficulties in their lives. One said, “Oh, well! We all have our cross to bear.”
This is a fairly common expression, which originates from the words of Jesus: ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’ (Matthew 16:24).
What did Jesus mean by this? Was he, as the friend implied, referring to the common problems in life that we all face—or was it something more than this?
Crucifixion
Crucifixion was common in the Roman world, chiefly inflicted on slaves and the worst kind of criminals. It was a horrific and shameful way to die. Part of the process was that a convicted man, condemned to death, was compelled to carry his cross publicly to the place of execution. This is what Jesus did (John 19:17–18). But owing to the sufferings he had had to endure since his arrest the previous evening, he was so weak that the soldiers recruited a passer-by to help him (Luke 23:26).
Jesus knew in advance that he would die this cruel death. He told his disciples,
The Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day (Matthew 20:18–19).
And he was innocent of all accusations. His execution was illegal and unjustified. It was dreadful and humiliating. But he did it willingly for us, and in total obedience to God (Isaiah 53:4–9, 1 Peter 3:18).
Self Denial
Jesus did not mean that we have to be literally crucified as he was. But his words say that believers are to ‘follow him’, that something has to be ‘crucified’, and that this involves ‘denying self’.
It is an unpalatable fact that the Bible view of our natural ‘self’ is not pleasant. We are not intrinsically good (Jeremiah 17:9, Matthew 15:19). The Apostle Paul said, ‘I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out’ (Romans 7:18).
In fact he said we are, by nature, ‘slaves to sin’. He describes baptism like this: ‘We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin’ (Romans 6:6).
Slaves did always and exactly what their master wanted: they had little or no choice in the matter. They were owned by their master. So, in other words, we follow sinful ways slavishly, willingly and almost without question. And our master ‘sin’ only leads us to death: permanent death (Romans 6:23).
So it is our ‘old self’ that has to be crucified. Then our new master, Jesus, can lead us to everlasting life.
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him (Romans 6:8–9).
Jesus spent his whole life obeying God and never, ever sinned (Hebrews 4:15).
He said, ‘I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me’ (John 5:30). As he faced his death he prayed in agony that God’s will be done, not his own (Luke 22:42). He instructed his disciples to pray likewise for their Father’s will to be done, when he taught them to pray: ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’ (Matthew 6:10).
Paul puts it beautifully: ‘Being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross’ (Philippians 2:8).
Suffering For Jesus
There is no intrinsic merit in crucifixion. There was no glory in public execution. Similarly, there is no human accolade for following the example of Jesus. His principles about loving enemies, doing good to those who hate us, and praying for those who ill-treat us
(Matthew 5:44); putting God first and loving Jesus more than anyone else (Matthew 10:37); and suffering for doing right (1 Peter 2:20), make no sense to many people. But this is what Jesus asks of us. God’s way is better; is right; is holy; but is counter-intuitive to us. It is ‘bearing our cross’, denying self and following Jesus.
There is a danger that we might water down the words of Jesus into a kind of self-righteous abstention from one or two of the good or not so good things of life. Then we might be proud of our piety. Actually that would not be self-denial, that would be self-exaltation! In so doing, we would also under-value the magnitude of what Jesus achieved for us.
Self-denial is more than this. If we have committed our lives to God, we should face hardships and trials with courage. And Jesus is asking for more even than this. He is asking that we gladly accept extra suffering, should it come because of our discipleship, just as the disciples did when they were persecuted for their faith:
Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the name (Acts 5:41).
Anna Hart