“And Jesus summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me’ “ (Mark 8:34).
The idea that we must deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus as an over and over or ongoing exercise is one of the most popular discipleship teachings. So it behooves us to ask the question, “Is this really the point of Jesus’ words?”
Jesus introduced us to His gospel message in Mark chapter 1, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). “Repent” (change your mind about how one is made right with God) “and believe in the gospel” (the good news that we are made righteous and our sins are forgiven when we believe that Jesus died in our place).
With this introduction, let’s return to the three parts of our red letter saying.
“Deny himself.” How do we deny ourselves? By no longer believing in ourselves to save us. No longer trusting our ability to follow the Law or muster up enough self-righteousness to be saved. By trusting only in Jesus, we deny ourselves. We deny our self-effort as being enough to attain salvation. It is a one-time choice to believe the gospel.
Remember, the requirement if you are going to do it on your own is perfection (Matthew 5:48). We can’t do perfection. But Jesus can and Jesus did for us. We deny ourselves when we say and believe, “I can’t, but Jesus did.”
If you believed the gospel message of Jesus Christ, your self is now fused with Christ. You are called to embrace, not deny, this self; your new self created in the likeness of God, holy and righteous. “And put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth” (Ephesians 4:24). Why would you be called to deny this self? When you have placed your faith in the finished work of Jesus on the cross, you no longer need to deny yourself. Instead, you now have an incredible freedom to be yourself; to live into all the newness of your new self, your new united identity with Jesus.
“Take up his cross.” We often see “taking up our cross” as bearing some kind of burden in this life; a suffering of some sort. An uneasy sacrifice to be made. But to Jesus’ first century hearers, a cross was much more serious. A cross only had one purpose. It was an instrument of death. Jesus is foretelling something we only see clearly in the apostles’ later teaching. “Come join me in My death.” A cross can only mean one thing; death.
How do we join Christ in His death? “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin” (Romans 6:3-7).
The invitation to take up our cross is the invitation to our salvation experience. You took up your cross when you believed the gospel message. You took up your cross when you died and were buried with Christ. You are now described as “he who has died”. Cross = death. And we don’t die over and over. We don’t die daily. It’s done. It happened the minute we were saved.
Finally, “And follow Me.” Following Jesus was a fact of life for Jesus’ first century disciples. Jesus called many of His early followers with the simple command, “Follow Me.” After the day of Pentecost, however, we no longer see the writers of the rest of the New Testament using “Follow Me” language. That’s curious. What happened at Pentecost?
The Spirit came and indwelt the disciples of Jesus. And since His coming, we are no longer Christ followers. “Following” suggests a separation or a distance between you and Jesus. Jesus is up ahead and we follow behind. But there is no separation. Since the coming of the Spirit, your spirit is fused with Jesus. We are now “Christ living His life through us-ers.” I develop this idea in much more detail at this link. Here is a short summary to whet your appetite.
If we keep thinking of Jesus as outside of us, then we will think we have to do something to get to Him, to stay with Him, and to follow Him. But if we think of Him as He is, happily at home inside us, then we will look for Him there. And the sheer beauty is that when we look for Him there, we will find Him. We will find Him in us full of life and love and joy; a life, love, and joy that we have the pleasure of expressing as He lives His life through us. Christ is the one who came to us and who stays with us. There is no following at a distance, no matter how small.