Where are we on the Cross?

As we head toward Good Friday and the crucifixion of Jesus, the biblical command to “take up your cross and follow Christ” comes to mind. Sadly, we might think this means carrying heavy weights or generally being miserable throughout our lives when, actually, it’s the opposite!

Taking up our cross and following Christ is meant to be freeing, not burdensome. It’s meant to exchange our self-will for the will of God.

God gave us free will, so the decision to follow the Lord is ours to make. However, this doesn’t mean, literally, to take up our own crucifixion or other human sacrifice. As you’ll recall, the Bible consistently reminds us that God the Father prohibited human sacrifice as the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22 clearly demonstrates.

The only time God the Father required a human sacrifice was of Himself in His fullness as Jesus the Son of God and the son of Mary.

So how do we go about obeying the Lord’s command to take up our cross and follow Him as a living sacrifice? Doesn't it mean to exchange our free will for the will of God and our old selves for new life – new spiritual birth in Christ?

Searching key words and phrases on the Bible Gateway website helps to clarify. For example:

“We know that our old self [our human nature without the Holy Spirit] was nailed to the cross with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin,” Romans 6:6, Amplified Bible (AMP.)

or to put it another way:

“This is what we know: the person that we used to be was crucified with him in order to get rid of the corpse that had been controlled by sin. That way we wouldn’t be slaves to sin anymore,” Romans 6:6, Common English Bible (CEB.)

Crucifixion means death, but when we take up His cross as our cross, we can follow Christ Jesus into His resurrection life – His life in the Spirit – beginning now!

“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me,” Galatians 2:20, King James Version (KJV.)

In other words:

“My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me,” Galatians 2:20, New Living Translation (NLT.)

Therefore:

“So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus,” Romans 6:11, English Standard Version (ESV.)

Praise the Lord for His life, death, and resurrection in us!

May we wear our Lord’s Easter clothing as we follow Christ, now and forever, into the resurrected life.

 

Mary Harwell Sayler

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Why I murdered Jesus

[Spoiler Alert! We know we've all sinned, but this prose poem makes it personal.]

Even in the Garden of Eden, God wanted everything perfect. How could I fit in? I thought of fruit as food, not fare for knowing good and evil or other things over my head! Why entice me with beautiful berries wrapped in seamless silken skin – fragrance summoning me – and no seeds to navigate around, no hard core in the middle?

I admit I disobeyed. I ignored Your clear instructions, Lord. And then You murdered me!

You sent my now-limited life from the Garden in shame – spiritually dead, nothing the same, everything changed forever.

How hard I toil for fruit that spoils in a life filled with imperfection! I feel worthless. I question myself at every turn, fearing Your rejection.

Where do I go? How do I live with myself? How do I live without You?

Trying to be good and obey every dot and iota of the law didn’t do it! Neither did self-hatred nor mutilating remorse. I wanted to make things right, Lord, but I couldn’t, and You wouldn’t let me!

You sent Yourself –

Your Son –

The Perfect One –

Who perfectly suited

Your plan of redemption,

the Fruit of Yourself –

Your Pure Love – given

to exempt me from my own sin.

I’m sorry, Lord! I’m sorry, but

I could not stand

to look on such Whole and Holy Love

and live

as I’d been living.

What could I do but kill Him?

by Mary Harwell Sayler, ©2017

[EPILOGUE/PRAYER: Lord, help us to confess anything that keeps us from You. Help us to truly accept Your forgiveness. Praise You, Lord, for overcoming death, forgiving all who turn to You, and bringing us new life and a fresh start each day in Jesus' Name.]

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The Goodness in Good Friday

Resurrection
by Mary Harwell Sayler

It was finished.

There was nothing left to do
but take down Jesus' body
and hide it quickly
from mind, from view.

The terror of the tomb
closed the matter,
once for all,
wrapping sin
for its descent
into down-falling darkness
where never light had been.

Even from the Upper Room
no one had known our own
souls would be exhumed.

But Christ arose.

And with Him angels rolled
away the tombstone,
shroud,
and doubt –
releasing all
who wanted out.



© 1983, 2014, Mary Harwell Sayler, all rights reserved. ...

God’s promise from the prophet Isaiah

Promising Good Friday

Who believes what we have heard?
To whom has the strength of the LORD been revealed?
For the One we awaited grew up
like a shoot from a dry root in the ground.

He had no majestic form to look upon –
nothing in His appearance to cause desire.
Instead, He was despised and rejected –
suffering such grief, we wanted to hide our faces
from facing so much sorrow.

We saw no explanation for Him,
and so we despised Him,
even though He took on our infirmities,
even though He took on our dis-ease,
even though we thought Him struck down
by God.

But He was wounded for our transgressions
and crushed for our iniquities.
Upon Him came the full punishment
to make us whole, and by the stripes
borne on His back, we all are healed.

Like sheep, we all have gone astray.
We have all turned to our own way,
and, as the LORD laid on Him
the iniquity of us all, He had to pay
for us,
for our ancestors,
and for our children’s crimes.

When accused of our wrongdoings,
He did not even open His mouth
but went silently like a sheep before its shearers,
like a Lamb led to its slaughter,
like a perversion of justice taken wordlessly away.

Who could imagine He had any future?
For He was cut from the land of the living
and stricken for our transgressions.

Someone carved His grave among the tombs
owned by the wicked and the rich,
even though He had done no violence,
nor even had a deceitful word
to say. But, by the will of the LORD,
pain crushed His life into an offering –

the final sacrifice we had to bring
to God for sin – for us,
for our ancestors, for our children – all,
His spiritual offspring.

© 2013, Mary Harwell Sayler, prayer-a-phrase poem of today’s Bible reading in Isaiah 53:1-10

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