Take Up Your Cross

Teaching by Billie Johnson, Oct. 30, 2009 at DLTC 

When you hear the words of Jesus: "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” Matt 16:24, what do you think of when we read that?  Do you think of the cross that Jesus died upon; or the things that we are to not do because he is our savior? 

Let’s examine this further.First let’s look at what it doesn’t mean.  It is not that burden that you feel you are carrying for God.  It is not that sickness that you struggle with.  It is not that person who you always have fights with.  It is not the things in your life that you can’t explain but don’t like.  Those are not the cross that you carry in your life.

To take up means to pick up, to make a part of yourself.  His refers to your cross in this instance.  He is saying forget yourself; lose sight of your own interests. Wuest translation goes on to say “whoever is desiring to save his soul-life shall ruin it, but whoever will pass a sentence of death upon his soul-life for my sake shall find it.”  We are the ones that pass that sentence of death to our soul-life by choosing not to do those things that are contrary to the good news we’ve heard in the Bible.

This command is repeated in Mar 8:34 “When He had called the people to [Himself], with His disciples also, He said to them, "Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”   One might say that here he is saying this is a daily occurrence.  We daily make the choice to believe in God’s word.  Here Jesus used the word ‘desires to come after him’ so it is our desire, our decision, our want to come after him.  To follow someone is to go in their footsteps, to walk as they walked. When a child tries to walk in his dad's footsteps he has to stretch his little legs.  So we may have to stretch.  We are denying our wants, denying our desires and our goals to walk as Jesus walked.  That is a big order but we don’t do it all on our own.  We allow the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth.  We choose to do the things that are Christ-like.  We say no to those things that are not worthy of him. 

How did he walk?  Check out Acts 10:38 “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.”  We are to walk around do good to whoever we see; heal those who need healing.  Cast out the devil who oppresses people.  We are anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power by our baptism into Him.  That is what we are to do!  I remember one time we were asked by our pastor to go and pray for a person in the church.  It has been a very busy day for me and I was really tired.  At first I said no but as I lay on the bed resting the Holy Spirit impressed on me that I should go.  It was not what I wanted but what God wanted me to do.  So I got up and went. I told the pastor that my spirit was willing but my body was weak.  I was glad I went as I was rejuvenated by the time spent praying for someone.  The person was not healed immediately but was over a period of time.  That was a time when I really got rid of my selfishness and followed the practice of Jesus.  I put someone else before my wants and desires.  I became a servant to others because I am a son/daughter of God.  I know it was a victory for God in my life and a defeat for Satan who wanted to keep me from going for selfish reasons.  Maybe it had more value to God because I did not want to go but I went anyway.

Jesus put this question in a negative light by saying in Mat 10:38; “And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.”  If you don’t take up your cross and follow after him then you are not worthy of Him.  Worthy = worth something to some one, valuable.  We are worthy when we do the same things that made him worthy. We are valuable to God.  We are of value to Jesus. Those things are in line with the nature and character of God.  God is good.  God is love.  God wishes always to have you good things and not bad things.

We also see this in Luke 14:27 “And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”  Here we have the idea of a disciple being put in the context of the command to take up or bear his cross.  We have to be able to take up that cross.  We have to bear it – take it up on our shoulder, keep it as a part of us.  A disciple is one who is a learner who continues to strive to be better to continue to find out more of Christ in our life; to learn more of the word which points to Christ. We have to train our minds through renewing them to the word to believe what the Bible says about us.  We have to renew that belief daily by saying yes to God.  By being available to stop what we are doing when someone calls for prayer.  We have to answer that call.  We choose to pray for that person.  We choose to take the time to go to Wal-mart as we see Kiki and Jerimy doing and look for people who have a need of prayer and pray healing for them.  We are also bold enough to go to someone we don’t know and ask if we can pray for them.  We sense God’s compassion for them when we see them.  We need that compassion as it pushes us to be the son or daughter of God that we are in his sight.  That compassion sets the stage for healing, deliverance and miracles.  It is God’s love in action flowing through us. 

 I remember a person that we ministered to years ago.  She was in need of deliverance and we ministered to her.  We heard later that her husband had become a believer. I think that was one of the things we had prayed for her as she was leaving our house.  We rejoiced at that news.  We heard some months later that they both had become missionaries!  What a testament to God’s goodness to cleanse one person and the dominoes fall so that her husband is changed and they both consecrated their lives to Jesus! 

 In Gal 6:14 Paul tells us what the cross means to him; “But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” The world was crucified to him because of Christ.  We crucify the world, the things that keep us from walking Christ-like. We destroy their power because we choose to take those things out of our life.  The worst sin is not believing in Jesus as the son of God.  We do not sin because that sin was nailed to the cross. 

 Paul says it goes both ways, the world has been crucified, and I have been crucified to the world.  We have been changed and made different than the world.  Sin no longer impresses us.  Our battle is in our minds to keep Christ supreme and to really, truly believe what the Bible tells us.  To choose the path of love, to advance with strides toward Christ and to walk as those that love the Lord, not the world. We have the choice every day to destroy the power of the world to us in what we choose to do.  Do we choose the easy way of the world or do we seize the power of the Holy Spirit to continue to walk in a godly way in the things we do?

Paul said, in 1 Cor 1:17, “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect.”  He was to bring the good news and to baptize but not with the words of the world, not simply philosophy but with the power of the Holy Spirit so that the cross was shown in power. That power was shown in the signs and wonders that were performed by his hands in the Name of Jesus! This also shows that the cross can be made not to have an effect.  It is possible to have it be what it is not supposed to be. 

We have known people who have turned away from their Christian belief.  They chose to leave Him and we can’t understand that reasoning but it happens. God will never leave us or forsake us.  He is in us, for us and with us.  But we can choose to leave him.  This is told us by Paul in Phil 3:18 “For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, [that they are] the enemies of the cross of Christ.”  They have left their belief in Christ.  They have become not friends of the cross but enemies.  For whatever reason their love of God has grown cold and they become enemies not sons.  Paul even weeps, perhaps because he knew them and they were once brothers in Christ to him.

Paul continues in the next verse with this explanation: “for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” 1Cor 1:18.  The cross is not foolishness to us who are being saved but it is the power of God.  It is his power to save to heal, to set us on the right road.  But to those who are perishing, because they do not choose Jesus, it seems like so much ridiculous foolishness. The wisdom of this world sees the cross as something foolish because they do not understand its power.  They cannot spiritually discern the reason why Christ had to go to the cross.  It seems unreal to them and useless.  

The wisdom of the world can’t come to an experiential knowledge of God so they call it foolishness or folly.  We can know God by experience through the power of the Holy Spirit.  We have friends who think we are the ones who are foolish because we believe in healing.  These same friends say they are believers in Christ but stop short of believing in healing.  It is because their minds are not renewed.  They are held in traditions that the church has taught them over many years.  It would take a DHT to help them to see the need to really renew their minds.  But sadly some of those friends do not see the need and continue to consider us foolish and maybe a little unwise or have gone off the deep end and have ‘gotten religion’.  Of course it is not religion but it is a true knowledge of the Word and of Christ.

 In Gal 5:11 Paul even says that he suffers persecution because of the cross. ´”And I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Then the offense of the cross has ceased.” People are offended because of the cross.  

 Even today, some cannot abide the thought of the blood and gore that happened on the cross; they take the blood out of the message because it seems too horrible to contemplate.  But without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.  We reverence the cross and what it represents to us.  His blood was shed to redeem us and to give us new life, to send the Holy Spirit and to make us a new creation. God made us alive to him where we once were walking as sons of disobedience – those that don’t believe.  Eph 2:11-19 “Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh…” A Gentile was someone who was not in covenant with God, not a Jewish person.^“12 that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” We certainly don’t want to be aliens or strangers from the promises of God!^“13But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. ¹⁴For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, ¹⁵having abolished in His flesh the enmity, [that is], the law of commandments [contained] in ordinances.” In Col 2:14 this is made clearer by saying “having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that were against us, which was contrary to us.”  The Ten Commandments that we cannot attain in our life, those sins that made us separate from God.  Or this could mean the main sin which is not  believing in Christ, not believing in the Word, not practicing it in our life. “And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.”Jesus has taken that out of the way and he did it by being sin for us, it was nailed literally through his hands and feet.

Then we go back in Ephesians 15 “so as to create in Himself one new man [from] the two, [thus] making peace, ¹⁶and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. ¹⁷And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near.”   We are those who are afar off – we weren’t there when Jesus was on earth but he made provision for us down through the ages.  Blessed assurance to us that were far off.  His peace he gives.^“18For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. ¹⁹Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.”  It is only through Him that we gain entry into the Father’s presence.  He is the door and we are the sheep who come into the spirit ream through him.   He makes us members of God’s family – what wonderful knowledge.

This is told a little differently in Col 1:20 “and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.”  His blood is the purchase price for us to enter into that reconciliation with God.  His blood is the payment for our sin of unbelief.  It saves us from being alienated from God.  We are reconciled to the Almighty God who made the universe and all that is in it.  What a thought!

We see that the word “cross” can mean what we do to continue to die to self and live to Jesus.  It can also mean the literal cross that Jesus was crucified upon.  We are to continue to take up our cross in our daily life. So, what do we do to keep taking up our cross? Hebrews 12:2 tells us; “We look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”  He is the creator, the perfecter, the beginner, the author, the writer of our faith.  He is also the finisher, the one who completes that faith.  He knew the joy that was after the cross – he sat down at the right hand of God.  He took the cross, even though he didn’t like the shame but he knew that there was a better ending after he went through that.  He knew he would be with the Father again. He knew that his act of obedience would release the Holy Spirit to be available to those who would believe and become sons of God, servants of man and masters of the devil.  Alleluia!

“Yes, my cross is the instrument that I used to release the coming of the Holy Spirit into your lives.  Yes, your cross is to leave behind those things that hinder you.  You choose to subject your mind and body to the Holy Spirit in all things.  You make the choice each time you listen to the whisper that I give in love.  As you are made perfect in love you will be more complete in Jesus. Take up your cross with joy because you know the outcome.  You know the end of the book.  You know the One who begin it and the One who will end it.  Your lives are precious to me as they are filled with the fragrance of love.”