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.
…
