Austin's Blog

A part of being a follower of Jesus is the command to pick up your cross and follow Him to the end, come what may. Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 16:24, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” It is a command but also a basic requirement of being a disciple. He says in Matthew 10:38, “And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” Luke makes it even clearer stating in Luke 14:27, “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” No servant is greater than his master. If Jesus had His cross, His followers have their own. Jesus died taking our place as a substitute. In fact, Jesus must be your substitute before He can be your example. Yet, in another sense, Jesus’ death on the cross does not mean we will not have crosses on our own to pick up. His death on the cross shows us how to pick up our own crosses. His death does not mean you don’t have to die. His death shows you how to die. The Christian life then is a cruciform life.

The difficult things we go through are part and parcel of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Our crosses are not a denial of God’s love. In fact, our crosses serve our ultimate good in the end, though they feel terribly heavy right now. J.R.R. Tolkien notes, “A divine ‘punishment’ is also a divine ‘gift,’ if accepted, since its object is ultimate blessing, and the supreme inventiveness of the Creator will make ‘punishments’ (that is, changes of design) produce a good not otherwise to be attained.” To attempt to circumvent them or avoid them might be an evasion of the Lord Himself.

They are but His messages to us. J.C. Ryle writes, “There is nothing which shows our ignorance so much as our impatience under trouble. We forget that every cross is a message from God, intended to do us good in the end. Trials are intended to make us think — to wean us from the world — to send us to the Bible — to drive us to our knees. Health is a good thing; but sickness is far better, if it leads us to God. Prosperity is a great mercy; but adversity is a greater one if it brings us to Christ. Anything, anything is better than living in indifference and dying in sin.” Avoiding them means avoiding Him. No crown without a cross (Rom. 8:17). Good Friday and Holy Saturday precede Easter Sunday. The same pattern is true for us.

How do crosses come to us? Crosses are both chosen willfully and placed upon you against your will. Jesus’ cross was very much like this. The Lord says in John 10:18, “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.” Jesus deliberately chose the cross and the cross was also something that happened to Him at the hands of wicked men. The crosses will be glorious in hindsight, but they likely won’t feel that way while you lift them. They are often mundane and inglorious difficulties that don’t catch the eyes of others.

Elisabeth Elliot writes, “The taking up of the cross is not going to be something heroic or dramatic or enviable. It’s going to be a daily practice of acceptance of small duties which you don’t really like.” The crosses are endless for us: loneliness, a difficult marriage, child loss, disability, sickness of various kinds, natural disasters, persecution, parenting, jobs we don’t like, family problems, poverty and debt, character assassination, legal woes, relational strife, and the list goes on and on. Again though, to be a Christian is to acquiesce and agree to cross-bearing. We signed up for it and it is a supreme honor. Joni Eareckson Tada writes, “When it comes to the cross you daily bear, it is not one inch too large nor one ounce too heavy, for the Lord especially hand-tailored it so that Christ’s kingdom might be advanced through you. That alone is the highest of honors.”