You’re dead, now live like it
What does the phrase take up your cross mean. Lets look at the meaning of this passage.
Matthew 16 24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. 25 For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
Following Jesus with our cross is following the destiny of Jesus. Jesus went to the cross because that was the fathers plan and therefore His destiny. And a lot more happened at the cross of Jesus than just His death for sin. Our death also occurred there. The death of our sin nature happened on the cross with Christ. Paul words it this way.
Romans 6:6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7 for he who has died is freed from sin.
Denying ourselves and taking up our cross is living like we are dead to sin. Our sin nature died at the cross so that we dont have to be a slave to sin. We received a new nature and life when we received Jesus. Denying ourselves and taking up our cross referred to in Matthew 16, actually means leaving our sin nature dead. Sin for a follower of Jesus is choosing to live out of the memory of an old dead nature. We dont have to do it.
As a lost person, we only had one nature and that was a sinful, self-willed nature. We did not have a choice but to live out of this dead nature. Living out of a new nature, able to please God, was not even a possibility. Paul says we were a slave to sin.
But the heavenly reality is that we have died to sin and therefore are free to live a righteous life. This is not a law striving life where we are trying to keep the law to become righteous before God. This is living from an understanding that God has declared us righteous and has given us the power, through the Holy Spirit, to live out of that heavenly reality while still here on earth. This is not claiming that we will ever become perfect here on earth. But it is the potential to live more and more a righteous life, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
We focus on the death of Jesus on the cross at salvation and rightly we should but we dont say enough about our death that occurred with Him. We gave up the right to live by our old sin nature whether we realized it or not. A death occurred.
Colossians 3: 3 For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
There is no life in our old sin nature. It can only produce death. Taking up our cross is not us killing off a part of us, it is recognizing that the self-willed sinful part of us is already dead. It died on the cross with Jesus.
We dont progressively strain under the law to kill off ourselves. God is asking us to come to the spiritual realization that the sinful part of us is already dead, now live like it by abiding in Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. That is what the before mentioned verse means when is says you have died and your life is hidden with Jesus. It doesnt mean to die to yourself in denying yourself sin which would be done in your own power. It means to consider that God killed your sin nature on the cross now live the new life He implanted in your soul at salvation.
Romans 6:11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
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Ray Sturdivant
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