Declaring the Mission

When Jesus finally gets around to declaring His actual mission it sends His disciples into a tailspin (Matthew 16:21-28; Mark 9:31-32; Luke 9:44-45). What was this talk of suffering? Of death?  Of rising on the third day? Wasn’t Jesus the Messiah? The Anointed One? The One who would deliver them from the heel of Rome? The Bible tells us His disciples were afraid to question Him further or talk to Him about it. All except Peter, that is. He charges in with, “God forbid, Lord! This must never happen to You!” It garnered Jesus’ immediate rebuke of, “Get behind Me, Satan!” Jesus’ road was to be the unfathomable path of God that required sacrifice and suffering and ended in death, not the easy path of man who sought to avoid them all.

There is only one Savior, and His name is Jesus. His sacrifice can never and needs never to be duplicated. However, a few verses down in Matthew 16:24-26 Jesus declares our own mission. It too is one of sacrifice and death. “If anyone desires to be My disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” This is tough. What person likes to deny himself? We are a culture bent on self-gratification. And taking up a cross? The thought is downright repugnant. After all, a cross is an instrument of death.  But both are necessary if we are to fulfill our mission. Like Jesus, our mission is death, but a different kind of death. Ours is to be a death to selfishness, self interests, self aggrandizing. In short, death to all forms of “self.” And replaced with what? Christ, of course. His interests, His glory, His honor, His kingdom.

It’s so easy to say, so easy to write about, but so hard to do, and downright impossible without the Holy Spirit. Even so, a lifetime of cross-carrying is hardly enough. I fear parts of self will always be alive and well until we cross over into glory and then we will be wonderfully changed into the very likeness of Jesus. But I also fear that the desire to deny self and carry our cross is rapidly disappearing in our churches. Instead of preaching this hard word, too many preach the doctrine of self-worth, self-fulfillment, self-awareness. Self, self, self. Didn’t Jesus say, “seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33)? When we truly follow the Lord He fills us with worth, with peace, with joy. And when we delight in Him He will even give us the desires of our heart (Psalm 37:4).

Jesus knew how difficult His words about self-denial and cross-carrying would be to accept. He knew how much they cut against our natural grain. That’s why He added in verse 24 (Amplified) “whoever is bent on saving his temporal life, his comfort and security here shall lose it (eternal life) and whoever loses his life, his comfort and security here for My sake shall find it (everlasting life).”

Is it because the modern day church has shirked its mission of dying to self and being conformed to the image of Christ that so many in the world find it irrelevant? Something to think about.

Until next time,

Sylvia