Following Jesus - Pt 2

Then Jesus told his disciples, “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 will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? (Matthew 16:24-26 ESV). What does it mean to “put aside selfish ambition”? Jesus said if we desire to come after Him, we must deny our selves. What does that mean? I can first tell you what it does NOT mean. It doesn’t mean an end to fun. It doesn’t mean we will live our lives like little robots. The Christian life is one of fun and adventure, joy and peace. Jesus came to “give us life” and to give it to us “more abundantly”. The Christian life was never intended to be boring. What it does mean to deny self is to deny yourself the privilege of making up your own mind. As a Christian, we are bound to God through Jesus Christ. Paul goes to great lengths in his writing, however, to explain that this is not bondage as in slavery, but rather it is the freedom of grace. That is not a license to sin, but a freedom from the power of sin in our life. The Christian is free to live his life in a way that honors God. One thing I think most people tend to overlook is the fact that God’s way really does work best. God is not some arbitrary rule maker; He really does plan only the best for His children. We can walk in obedience, because we know that God’s love for us will never take us somewhere that His grace cannot protect us. This is what J. I. Packer says about this concept: Jesus Christ demands self-denial, that is, self-negation (Matt. 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23), as a necessary condition of discipleship. Self-denial is a summons to submit to the authority of God as Father and of Jesus as Lord and to declare lifelong war on one’s instinctive egoism. What is to be negated is not personal self or one’s existence as a rational and responsible human being. Jesus does not plan to turn us into zombies, nor does he ask us to volunteer for a robot role. The required denial is of carnal self, the egocentric, self-deifying urge with which we were born and which dominates us so ruinously in our natural state. Jesus links self-denial with cross bearing. Cross bearing is far more than enduring this or that hardship. Carrying one’s cross in Jesus’ day, as we learn from the story of Jesus’ own crucifixion, was required of those whom society had condemned, whose rights were forfeit, and who were now being led out to their execution. The cross they carried was the instrument of death. Jesus represents discipleship as a matter of following him, and following him as based on taking up one’s cross in self-negation. Carnal self would never consent to cast us in such a role. “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die,” wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was right: Accepting death to everything that carnal self wants to possess is what Christ’s summons to self-denial was all about. We can deny ourselves the right to make decisions about our life, because we can know that God is in the driver’s seat, and He is working all things for good! Will you?