THEN HE SAID to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. 25What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? 26If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. 27I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”
Original Meaning
CROSS-BEARING IS A powerful ancient image.1 Rejection stood at the center of that image, as well as accountability to the state.2 The cross-bearer had committed a severe crime and needed elimination. Criminals bore their own crosses as they journeyed to their death. Thus for a Christian to bear a cross is to be prepared to face rejection and death, even as one remains accountable to God for the path one walks. It means that one has died to the world, separated from its values and lifestyle (Gal. 6:14).
Luke 9:23 has an interesting sequence of tenses. All three verbs are imperatives, but the call to “deny [one]self” and “take up [one’s] cross”3 are in Greek aorist tenses, while the call to “follow [Jesus]” is in the present. This means that discipleship involves the fundamental commitment of self-denial and bearing one’s cross, while the call to follow Jesus is constant, growing out of the base commitments. Discipleship therefore requires a basic shift of orientation as we align ourselves with God’s will through a humble renunciation of our own agenda. To deny ourselves in the context of cross-bearing means that the world may “kill” us for walking outside its paths, but we are ready to do so, because God has called us to walk a different way.
Verse 24 summarizes the point nicely. If you try to save your life by preserving yourself from the opposition of the world and/or by accommodating yourself to the world, what results is loss of real life. On the other hand, if you are willing to lose your life for the sake of the things of God, then what you save is real life. In the ancient world, choosing for Jesus meant certain opposition from people in the world. That opposition might express itself in the type of scorn Jesus saw, the type of ridicule the early church faced, beatings such as Paul experienced, or even death such as Stephen faced. The Christian faith was new and, in its Jewish context, was a threat to well-established traditions. If someone desired popularity and acceptance, he or she did not accept Christ. But the cost of popular acclaim was great, since the choice meant forfeiting the opportunity of salvation. Only those willing to line up with God and face popular rejection would respond to the gospel and enter into life. Thus, from the beginning, the choice of Jesus had built into it a sense of going a different way.
Jesus’ rhetorical question in verse 25 drives the point home. “To gain the whole world” means that all the provision, power, and property the world can provide is available to us—like our idiom “to have the world by the tail.” To Jesus, it makes no sense to live this way, for it makes one a loser at real life. What is described here as a proverb was earlier a temptation for Jesus. In 4:5–8, he faced a choice between walking on the path God called him to take or accepting the kingdoms of the world by bowing before Satan. Jesus knew, of course, that the choice was not a real one, for Satan could not give him what God could. Thus, Jesus calls on disciples here to follow the example he has already established. To gain the world at the expense of one’s soul is a bad investment and a losing proposition.
What will such sacrifice gain? Jesus uses a negative picture to answer the question. Those ashamed or afraid to confess the Son of Man (i.e., Jesus) will face his rejection when he returns with all of heaven’s glory. They will get what they have chosen: separation from him. Jesus portrays himself as the judge at the end of time, a theme Luke develops elsewhere (Acts 10:40–43; 17:30–31). Our Lord will not accept any who have asked him not to be a part of their life. But the picture is a tragic one, for when he reappears, his position and privilege will be obvious to all. To be excluded will be a public affair; facing eternity without God and knowing it is the most tragic of all positions in life. On the other hand, by implication, those who ally themselves to Jesus will experience the kingdom of God.
Jesus concludes his remarks with a note that some present with him will not taste death until they experience the kingdom of God. This remark appears to have two points of reference. (1) Some of the Twelve will journey with Jesus to the mountain and experience the Transfiguration (9:28–36), where they will receive a glimpse or preview of Jesus’ coming glory. They will “see” the kingdom of God to come. (2) The reference may well anticipate as well the type of blessing that descends on the church at Pentecost, since there the power of the risen Jesus manifests itself in the distribution of the Spirit (Acts 2:14–39). With the Spirit the promise of the messianic blessing commences, and God begins to express his presence and rule from within his people (Luke 3:15–17; 24:49; Acts 1:5–8). Thus, Jesus notes that with the hard road of discipleship comes association with the rich blessing of being a part of God’s kingdom.
Bridging Contexts
THESE TEXTS ARE hard for us to reflect on today, because cross-bearing in the ancient sense of walking to one’s death rarely happens for most Christians today. Discipleship does not come with the almost automatic sense of cost it carried then. A decision for Jesus does not bring automatic rejection today. If anything, we suffer from an opposite issue. It is possible to operate in such a closed Christian circle that one lacks all contact with the outside world and thus misses the rejection of the world that this passage assumes will be present. One can experience a type of institutionalized Christianity that assumes one is born a believer or that stays so cloistered to protect one’s moral identity that one never really engages those in the world. Such a Christianity will never face the discipleship tensions Jesus describes here. But such a protected kind of discipleship is not what Jesus asks his followers to undertake when he calls them to bear their cross daily. Jesus assumes those who are his will indeed represent him in the world. He also knows the world will react. Yet even those who do undertake his mission faithfully today often do not face persecution that early Christians endured.
But to note that faith today often does not involve persecution does not mean that discipleship is without cost or ceases to exist. The world is just as potent and powerfully present today as it was then. The call for us to walk differently from the walk of the world is just as essential an attribute of discipleship today as it was then. A walk of integrity, purity, faithfulness, and humble service should be just as evident today as it was in Jesus’ day. If we are too comfortable in the world and if no one can tell our lives are different, it may be because we have not taken the full journey of discipleship Christ calls us to take. That does not mean that we should blow a trumpet to draw attention to our different way of living. It should emerge naturally, like lights shining in darkness.
The road of service is not a road to self-fulfillment as proclaimed by the world. It involves a type of self-denial where the spiritual and basic needs of others are rigorously pursued. In a world where individual rights have almost inviolate status, such selflessness cuts against the grain. Bearing one’s cross means denying one’s own agenda, seeking to serve God and follow him, so that one also serves others as a believer gives testimony to God’s compassion for all of us. That is never popular in a world that exalts one’s right to self-actualization.
Contemporary Significance
OUR WALK WITH God is not something that takes place on “automatic pilot.” For many, Christianity is merely a guaranteed ticket to heaven. But Jesus never envisioned the faith as a “one-stop” experience. This section on following Jesus makes clear just how demanding discipleship is. It requires a whole new way of thinking and of orienting oneself to life. The path of following Jesus requires spiritual labor, the bearing of a cross daily. Jesus underscores the fact that to carry a cross one must deny the self. Agendas change when one comes after Jesus, since he has already marked out the path.
Denying oneself means different things in different contexts. To a parent, it means not just seeking one’s own desires, but serving the child in their best interests in terms of the investment of time and energy. To a spouse, it means not just asking what can be done for you, but considering how one can be of help to his or her partner. To a neighbor, it means considering how one can be of service and show concern in the affairs of life. To a colleague at work, it may mean not seeing how you can advance the responsibilities you have to undertake, but how you can be of service to them. Most importantly to God, it means seeking his will and spending time before him so he can lead and guide you in the way you should go. Discipleship means being a learner, a follower. It means that our attention is turned to how we can follow Jesus, not how we can make him follow us.
This means that we are seeking his kingdom, not our own. Materialism and the pursuit of power, independence, and security are probably the biggest obstacles to spiritual advancement. Everything in our culture from commercials to our education pushes us in the direction of advancing our standing of living for more comfort. To pick up a cross means walking against the grain of cultural values, so that our own expectations and needs take a back seat to God’s call. Some things we may have seen as ours by natural right may need to be renounced because they represent a subtle form of idolatry. The Spirit guides us into seeing things differently than we did before. Bearing a cross may mean leaving behind dreams created for us long ago by a citizenship we have now left behind.
So discipleship requires a renewal of the mind (Rom. 12:1–2) and a commitment of the heart to that renewal. It will mean intense involvement with God’s Word and with other believers who are dedicated to growing in their faith. A disciple is never stagnant and never has the spiritual life in a mode where God cannot challenge him or her to a deeper walk. As Jesus has noted, it is an offering of the self in service to the Son of Man.
Finally, Jesus saved us for discipleship. His goal was to make a people eager to be his people (Titus 2:11–14). The idea of a ticket to heaven was never his goal; that is at best a byproduct. Having eternal life is a great blessing because it means we know God and will enjoy his presence forever (John 17:3). Living forever would be useless if he were not there to be a part of it. But there is more to salvation than heaven. He saved us to change us, to make us different in the world than we were before we came to know him. That is why the spiritual person is called to follow him where he leads. In his leading, he transforms us to be more like him. So discipleship is a full-time job, not a weekend hobby. As a lifestyle and commitment, it never takes a holiday. That is why Jesus says we should bear our cross daily.