THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP

Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Me and for the gospel will save it.”  (Mark 8:34b-35 NIV)

As evidence that cross-bearing must become the true disciple’s way, Jesus offers His listeners the paradox of Mark 8:35. The “life” saved or lost is the Greek “psyche,” which includes a threefold dimension: “life,” “soul,” and “oneself.” Clearly, all three meanings are intended by Jesus’ declaration. The blatant expression of physical cost had already been highlighted by references to suffering and the focus on the cross, a device of physical torture. But here there is an additional sense of “life” as well.  A sense of individual identity, of “oneself” and the unique “soul” that animates every living person, is part of the natural desire of self-preservation that Jesus turns topsy-turvy with His words. Jesus’ rhetorical question, “What can they give in return for their life?” (Mark 8:37) leads His listeners to the conclusion that only “life itself” can be offered as an adequate response to the gift of life. For both the disciples and the crowds who had up to this point been enjoying a journey of triumph and miracles, Jesus’ new message was both sobering and hard to swallow.

Today the cost of discipleship is still sobering and hard to swallow... The final comment offered by Jesus, “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulteress and sinful generation, of Him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father and the holy angels,” (Mark 8:38) reminds His listeners, and us, that whatever choice we make, for Jesus or against Him, there will be eternal consequences. 

-- Leonard Sweet in “A Cup of Coffee at the SoulCafe”

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FREE BUT COSTLY – Part 2 of 2

Then Jesus said to them all: ‘Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Me will save it.”  (Luke 9:23-24 NIV)

In offering ourselves as fully as we can, we discover the cost of discipleship. For to bind our lives to Jesus Christ requires that we try to walk with Him into the sorrows and sufferings of the world. Being bound to Jesus Christ, we see barriers broken down and we are led to places we have never been before. Having offered ourselves to Jesus Christ, we may expect to become the eyes, ears, voice, and hands of Jesus Christ in the world and in the church.

The cost of salvation? It is completely free and without cost. The cost of discipleship? Only our lives -- nothing more and nothing less. 

-- Rueben P. Job in “A Guide to Prayer for All Who Seek God” 

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FREE BUT COSTLY – Part 1 of 2

“Yet to all who did receive Him to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God -- children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”  (John 1:12-13 NIV)

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  (John 3:16 NIV)

Salvation is free, but the cost of discipleship is enormous. I try to hide from the truth, but when I read the Gospels and seek to live in communion with God, I discover both parts of the statement are dead-center truth.

I can do nothing to earn my salvation. My redemption is a pure gift of grace, a gift offered to me without qualification or reservation. I am God’s child and no one or no thing can change that fact. Jesus Christ lived, died, and lives again to bring this gift of salvation to me in all its fullness. My faith can appropriate this gift, but even my greatest doubt cannot change its reality. I am God’s beloved, embraced in God’s love for now and eternity. All words are inadequate to describe the extravagance and grandeur of the gift of salvation. Our hymns of praise and gratitude fall lifeless before the immensity of this gift. We simply and humbly offer all that we are to the One who offers us the option of becoming more than we are. 

-- Rueben P. Job in “A Guide to Prayer for All Who Seek God” 

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THE WAY OF THE CROSS

“And Jesus said to all, ‘If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.’”  (Luke 9:23-24 ESV)

The denying ourselves, and taking up our cross, in the full extent of the expression, is not a thing of small concern. It is not expedient only, as are some of the circumstantials of religion, but it is absolutely, indispensably necessary, either to our becoming or continuing Christ’s disciples… If we do not continually deny ourselves, we do not learn of Him, but of other masters. If we do not take our cross daily, we do not come after Him, but after the world, or the prince of the world, or our own fleshly mind. If we are not walking in the way of the cross, we are not following Him. We are not treading in His steps, but going back from, or at least wide of, Christ. 

-- From “The Works of John Wesley, Sermon XLVIII, On Self Denial” by Albert C. Outler

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JESUS IS ASKING YOU TO CHOOSE

“Peter took [Jesus] aside and began to rebuke Him. ‘Never, Lord!’ he said. ‘This shall never happen to you!’ Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.’ Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’”  (Matthew 16:22–24 NIV)

The disciples had to make a choice. They could not follow Jesus and follow themselves at the same time. That would be like having two different maps to two different locations and trying to follow both at the same time. If any wish to come after Him, they must let go of the wish to control their own plans and be willing to follow Jesus wherever that may lead. How many of us try to pursue earthly gains and spiritual gains simultaneously? The truth is, we cannot hold two desires at the same time. This doesn’t mean that we won’t enjoy success in our lives and businesses, but only one pursuit can control our minds and our hearts.

But this surrender doesn’t just ask us to lay down our lives and our desires. No, we also have something to pick up. It asks us to willingly pick up our cross. Just as the cross became the instrument of Jesus’s earthly death, it becomes the place of our own death. Death to controlling our lives. Death to our own plans. The cross is an intentional and daily commitment to give up control of our lives for the sake of Christ.

Jesus asked His disciples to make a choice. Every person will come to a point when they, too, must make the same choice. Paul declares in his letter to the Philippians, “For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain” (1:21). You cannot live in two different directions. Jesus is asking you to choose. Are you willing to make that choice today and carry your cross? 

-- Susan O. Kent in “Altar’d: The Transforming Power of Surrender”

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THE MEANING OF DISCIPLESIP

“Wherever I go the people say,
‘What’s the news? What’s the news?
What is the order of the day?
What’s the news? What’s the news?’
Oh, I have got the Good News to tell.
My Savior has done all things well.
He triumphed over death and hell.
That’s the news. That’s the news.”
(from the old Welsh hymn “Beyond Live and Beckoning Stars”)

That’s the good news of the gospel wanting to be born in you…

Are you ready to say with Mary: “Let it be, to me, according to Thy word”? Are you ready to say with Jesus: “Not My will, but Thy will be done”? Nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing else.

Are you ready to pray the greatest prayer ever uttered, the simple but great Amen… “So Be It”?

The symbol embodying the most fundamental meaning of discipleship is the cross, not the ladder. We glory in the cross of Christ, not the ladder of success, a ladder kicked away forever when Jesus slipped on the Via Dolorosa.

Remember this: There are no rungs, only nails, on the cross. 

-- Leonard Sweet in “A Cup of Coffee at the Soul Café”

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OPPORTUNITY, DECISION AND LEGACY

“Then Jesus said to the crowd, ‘If any of you wants to be My follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow Me.’”  (Luke 9:23 NLT)

In his classic book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” author Steven Covey begins by asking us, the readers, to imagine a series of our friends standing to speak at our own memorial service. The stories we would like them to tell, Covey suggests, and the achievements we would want to see referenced, amount to a good starting place when we consider our long-term goals.

It doesn’t matter if we are twelve, thirty-five, sixty-eight, or pushing ninety, each one of us has the privilege and the opportunity to engage the time we have available with the conscious application of meaning and purpose…

For me, three distinct certainties emerge: 1) Each moment holds the possibility of fullness; that is our opportunity. 2) Each day can be a gift we share with a needy world; that is our decision. 3) Each lifetime bears the fruit of those daily decisions; that will be our legacy. 

-- Adapted from “Get Real: A Spiritual Journey for Men” by Derek Maul

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WHITEWASHING THE CROSS

Read Mark 8:27-38

We are told in this passage that Jesus began to teach the disciples that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elder and chief priests and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again. After hearing this, Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke Him. In other words, Peter was trying to get Jesus to avoid the cross of sacrificial service and become some messiah other than the Messiah God was calling Him to become.

That temptation is still real for the Body of Christ today. John Donders tells about a church in Holland in which the members had a habit of bowing and kneeling before a whitewashed wall in front of the sanctuary before they sat down for worship. None of them knew why they continued the ritual throughout the years. One day the trustees decided to have the whitewashed wall repainted, but before painting the wall, they decided to scrape off the old paint. They were surprised to discover beneath the old paint a centuries-old painting of Jesus on the cross. Somebody had covered up the cross, and it was subsequently lost from memory. The people had forgotten their purpose for bowing and kneeling before they worshipped. Thus they were tempted to become some congregation other than the congregation God was calling them to be. They had kept the ritual, even though it had long since lost its meaning. For the congregation that covers up the cross cannot be a vital and faithful congregation. 

-- Zan W. Holmes, Jr. in “Encountering Jesus”

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TWO ROADS

“Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”  (Matthew 7:13b-14 NIV)

Our culture… is all about celebrating ourselves, finding more life for ourselves, [making more happiness for ourselves]. But no matter how hard we look, none of the maps lead there.

We spend years heading down the road of living for self instead of dying to it, and it’s difficult to admit we’ve made a wrong choice. We’ve gone too many miles. We’ve invested too much in the journey. So we double down and step on the gas, [rather than repent of our ways and turn around]... When we’ve chosen the wrong road, we don’t like to acknowledge it to ourselves or to anyone else…

There are two different paths. One path is narrow, difficult, and marked “death,” but leads to life. The other path is broad, crowded, and marked “life,” but it leads to death. In Matthew 16, Jesus tells us what we can expect when we follow Him down the narrower road:

“Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Me will find it.” 

-- Kyle Idelman in “The End of Me: Where Real Life in the Upside-Down Ways of Jesus Begins”

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THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP

“For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.”  (1 Corinthians 6:20 NKJV)

We need not wonder about the cost of discipleship. We need only look upon Jesus on the cross. There we see the awful cost of the ministry that is offered in the life, nature, and spirit of Jesus.

The cost is awful indeed. But if our work introduces men and women to Jesus and to God’s love, this cost must be accepted. In our own self-emptying, those who gaze upon us may see Jesus. In our conviction, people may be convinced to look upon the cross of Jesus and say, “Truly this is the Son of God.”

We have heard it said, “We can never wear the crown until we bear the cross,” but for those who willingly enter into the sufferings of Jesus, the cross is their crown, and they wear it with dignity and submission. 

-- Norman Shawchuck in “A Guide to Prayer for All Who Seek God”

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TAKING UP THE CROSS DAILY

Then Jesus said to them all: “Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow Me.”  (Luke 9:23 NIV)

Whoever determines to live no longer to the desires of people, but to the will of God, will soon find that he or she cannot stick to that purpose without self-denial, without taking up the cross daily. That person will, every day, desire something of the world instead of the cross. But one must deny self or deny the faith. He or she will daily meet with some means of drawing nearer to God that are unpleasing to flesh and blood. In this, therefore, one must either take up the cross or renounce the Master. 

-- John Wesley in "A Collection of Forms of Prayer for Every Day of the Week," 1733

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COUNTERCULTURAL FAITH-FILLED LIVING

Jesus said, “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple.” (Luke 14:27)

To be a Christian man in the twenty-first century is -- essentially -- to be countercultural. Faith-filled living always involves standing out as somewhat different from the run-of-the-mill. That is a large part of what Christ means by “carrying the cross”; that’s what it means to really live. It is -- usually -- surprisingly easy to follow the crowd, and once we fall into that pattern, it becomes astonishingly hard to buck the system. To be honest, I have to admit that following Jesus in this way turns out to be one of my biggest personal challenges, because for me the greatest temptation has always been that of the easy, carefree life. 

-- Derek Maul in “Get Real: A Spiritual Journey for Men” 

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