Deny and Die

Mark 8:34,35 "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it."

 

This is it. These are tough words. This is laying it on the line. After Peter's great confession that Jesus was the Christ, and then after his dumb rebuke, Jesus decided to lay down the gauntlet and tell these guys what it was really going to cost to follow Him. The cost: death. Jesus wasn't beating around the bush. He just told them that He was going to die and that if they wanted to follow Him they would have to die too.

 

The American church tries to spiritualize this. We say that this means that we have to die to self. That we have to act as if we are dead to all that is in this world and our own desires. That is true, but I think that Jesus was going beyond this. You see, we don't suffer the persecution that Christians do in North Korea, or China or Iran, or many other countries. The Christians in those countries know that when they name the name of Jesus, once they say that they are believers, that it could mean literal death.

 

Jesus was telling His disciples, before He went to the cross that they would have to take up their own cross. Jesus was telling His disciples that they may have to lose their own lives for the sake of the Gospel, before they really understood what the Gospel was. This was total, sold out, uncompromising commitment without knowing the full story. Oh sure, after Jesus died and rose again they got it…they understood it. But before then it was just an intangible concept to them.

 

Over 2000 years later it is still an intangible concept. We know that Jesus died and rose again, but we did not see this with our own eyes. The disciples did and they all died as a result of it. They all took up their crosses and lost their lives because of it. I wonder what we are doing? I mean, many of us are not even willing to spend time in the word every day and we think we would die for this? Many of us are not even willing to take the time to pray with other people and we are going to take up our crosses? Many of us are not even willing to open our mouths and declare that we are Christians and we think that this means dying to self? Really?

 

I know that I have to take a good long hard look at my own life. I think we all do.