Taking Up Your Cross to Follow Christ

Jesus said: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23). Bearing one's cross is the very path of the disciple: to die to selfishness in order to live for God. It is not only enduring suffering, but consenting to a daily surrender of self that follows in the footsteps of the Master. The cross does not crush the disciple; it conforms him to Christ. The word Jesus uses is at once demanding and tender. "To deny oneself" does not mean to destroy oneself, but to stop placing oneself at the center, in order to give God first place. The word "daily" shows that this is not an exceptional heroism, but an ordinary faithfulness, renewed morning after morning, in the concrete choices of obedience. This path is neither a solitary nor a gloomy march. The believer advances "looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame" (Hebrews 12:2). By contemplating the One who carried his cross first, the disciple finds the strength and the joy to endure his own. Suffering accepted out of love becomes fruitful. These verses describe both the cost and the joy of following Jesus in a surrendered life. To bear one's cross is to die each day to selfishness in order to enter the new life that Christ gives. The weight embraced out of love does not crush; it transforms and draws us nearer to the Savior.