WHAT THE CROSS MEANS TO DISCIPLES: IDENTIFICATION ---

Luke 9:18-23

“And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him: and he asked them, saying, Whom say the people that I am? They answering said, John the Baptist; but some say, Elias; and others say, that one of the old prophets is risen again. He said unto them, But whom say ye that I am? Peter answering said, The Christ of God. And he straitly charged them, and commanded them to tell no man that thing; Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day. And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.”

There can be no doubt about it, Jesus was speaking pointedly and precisely about His soon-coming death. Within six months He would be in Jerusalem, eventually crucified and dying on a cross. Do you see His words in verse 22? Jesus said He would “suffer”, be “rejected”, be ”slain” and be “raised.”

On the heels of the prediction of His own death, Jesus points not to His own cross, but to another cross—our cross. Did you know there is a cross in your life, as well as the cross that was in Christ’s life? We are glad that Christ bore His cross for our salvation, but Christ called us to “take up our cross,” Mark 8:34.

The New Testament gives us three commands relating to the cross. If we are Jesus’ disciples, His followers, we will not ignore these.

1. Bear Our Own Cross….the Purpose of our Lives.

“And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me,” Luke 9:23.

This is the “first mention” of “the cross” in the gospel of Luke. And what is interesting is that it is not about Jesus’ cross, but our cross. The hymn writer understood this when he wrote,

“Jesus, I my cross have taken, All to leave, and follow Thee;

Destitute, despised, forsaken, Thou, from hence, my all shalt be;

Perish every fond ambition, All I’ve sought, and hope, and known;

Yet how rich is my condition, God and heav’n are still my own! -- Henry F. Lyte (1793-1847)

“He said unto all of them, I any man…” No man is forced to follow Jesus. “Come after Me…” The way of Jesus was the way of suffering. He was the rejected One, the despised One, the afflicted One. What kind of Leader is that to follow?

Our cross is about denying and dying to self. “Deny himself…” Most people fail to understand this statement. Here is how most people see this. Most people see this as teaching nothing more than “self-denial.” During certain times of the year, people give up cigarettes, chocolates, corn-beef….all to comply with this teaching.

Let’s see if we can see this for what it really says.

Do you remember Peter’s behavior toward Jesus just before the crucifixion? What did Peter do when a young girl put he on the spot? On three consecutive occasions he “denied” His Lord. This is the same word (aparnemai) that Jesus used here. Peter disowned Jesus, repudiated Him, turned his back on Him. Denying self is not temporarily giving up some luxury, it is actually denying or disowning ourselves, renouncing our rebellious spirit that demands to have its own way. That doesn’t sound like the modern gospel message of self-dignity, self-respect, self-worth, self-esteem, and self-love.

· Galatians 5:24 “And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.”

· Romans 8:13 “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify (put to death, jdl) the deeds of the body, ye shall live.”

· Colossians 3:5 “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”

· 1 Peter 2:24 “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.”

Christ did not go to the cross to “make you better,” or “patch up the ‘old man,’ “ or straighten out our crooked lives.” Christ died to put us to death. We are to put to death, take the hammer and nails to our fallen, sinful nature and put it to death! Only by death comes life.

“And take up his cross…” Jesus was not referring to a difficult husband, or a cantankerous wife, or an unpleasant job, or poor health.

To use the “c” word to a group of Jews of the first century who lived in their Roman world required no imagination or explanation. They had seen thousands of their countrymen crucified. Erwin W. Lutzer says “it is estimated that the Romans crucified thirty thousand people a year,” Cries from the Cross, p. 20.

It was as brutal, as cruel as anyone can imagine. Those compelled to die by crucifixion were compelled to publically carry their own crosses to the place of their execution.

· To bear one’s cross means “to put one’s self into the position of a condemned man on his way to execution,” H. B. Swete, The Gospel according to Mark, 1989, p. 172.

· Charles Ryrie says that our cross “represents here death and separation from the old life that must mark a disciple,” Ryrie Study Bible, p. 1457.

· “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 1964, p. 79.

“Daily…” True Christianity is not an event we occasionally attend. It is a life-long lifestyle. The way of our Lord is 24-7-365. This is surely what Paul meant when he said in 1 Corinthians 15:31, “I die daily.”

“And follow me…” We devote all of our lives to Christ. The present tense verb means “keep on following.” Our commitment is not to a task, but to a Person. Our commitment is not for a limited time, but for a lifetime.

Can Christ be “life” to us without being “death” to us?

· We die to self, that which drives us, Galatians 2:20.

· We die to the world, that which allures us, Galatians 6:14.

· We die to the law, that which governs us, Romans 7:4.

Our cross is about our sin. We are called to take up our cross because it was by Christ’s cross that our sin was radically confronted, at unmeasured cost, through the death of God’s Son. When we take up our cross we are saying, “I know I am a sinner. I know my only hope is in Jesus Christ.” We are to life every day of our lives with the full understanding that we are sinners who need a Savior and that Savior is Jesus who died on a cross for our sins.

“My hope is built on nothing less Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness; I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.”

Our cross is about God’s purpose for our lives. “The cross for Jesus was that ultimate purpose of God to bring salvation to our world; the cross in your life will be a choice to turn over everything in your life to God, to let God’s ultimate purpose come to pass in your life, whatever this requires from you. For every believer, the cross is the sign and symbol for obediently carrying out the will of God,” Henry Blackaby, Experiencing the Cross, p. 145.

You may be thinking, “Preacher, let me think about it.” While you do, let me remind you of what our Savior said. “And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple,” Luke 14:27. And, “And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me,” Matthew 10:38.

“For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: And that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again,” 2 Corinthians 5:14-15.

We not only live through Jesus’ death, we are to live for Jesus by our death, because one day we will live with Jesus without death.

“Must Jesus bear the cross alone, And all the world go free?

No, there’s a cross for everyone, And there’s a cross for me.”

2. Boast Only in the Cross...the Praise of our Lives.

Listen to Galatians 6:14. “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”

The cross of our Savior is the heart of the gospel. We have nothing to boast about apart from the cross of Christ. The Greek word for “glory” is a word of “praise.”

We have so much to be thankful to God for: our life, our health, our spouse, our children, our country, our freedom, our prosperity. But nothing compares to what Jesus did for us when He died on the cross.

· Romans 3:24-25 “Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.”

· Romans 5:6-9 “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more the, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. “

Jesus took our place. He saved us! Do you get it? Let it me stated again: He saved us! That being true, who should get all the glory—the one being saved or the One doing the saving?

The truth is we want the glory, we want some praise. If not all of it, at least some of it.

Why were you saved? There are many results of salvation, but the principle reason for salvation is so God will be gloried. Ephesians 1 tells us we were (1) Selected by the Father, (2) Saved by the Son, and (3) Sealed by the Spirit and each of those three times we are told it was “to the praise of His glory,” vs. 6, 12, 14. While we are the objects and beneficiaries of salvation, all praise and honor goes to Christ who died on the cross to secure our salvation.

During the Civil War there was a band of organized outlaws in the Southwest called “Quantrill’s Raiders.” They were a bad as men could get. They would sweep down upon an unsuspecting communities on the frontier and rob, pillage, burn, and then ride away before help could come. The situation became so desperate that some people in Kansas formed a militia to search out the desperados. They had orders to execute on the spot any of the raiders they found.

A group of Quantrill’s men were captured. A long trench was dug. The outlaws were lined up, their hands and legs tied and their eyes blindfolded. A firming squad was forming and suddenly a young man rushed out of the under bush, crying out, “Wait! Wait!” He pointed to a man who was one of them awaiting execution and said, “Let that man go free. He has a wife and four children, and is needed at home. Let me take his place. I am guilty.”

The men of the militia consulted and they decided to grant his request. They cut the ropes of the condemned man and he went free. The volunteer was put in his place, and fell dead before the firing squad.

Late, the freed man came back to the awful scene of death, uncovered the grave, and found the body of his friend. He put it on the back of a mule and took it to a little cemetery near Kansas City, where he was given a proper burial. There he erected a memorial stone upon which was inscribed the word: HE TOOK MY PLACE. HE DIED FOR ME.

(Evangelist Billy Sunday originally told this story and appears in Robert Coleman’s book, Written in Red.)

There is only one thing lacking in that illustration. The young man who offered to die in the place of his friend was himself guilty of the same crimes. That story is about one guilt man dying in the place of another guilty man.

Something far different happened at the cross. There a truly innocent Man, the God-Man Jesus Christ, died, “the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God,” 1 Peter 3:18.

Do you get what it means to glory in the cross? It means that against all human pride and human wisdom you unashamedly confess that the betrayed, beaten, battered, bloody, blasphemed Jesus of Nazareth is in fact (1) the eternal Creator come from heaven, (2) the world’s only Savior and (3) the universe’s only true God.

Have you bragged on Jesus this week?

3. Bring Others to the Cross….the People of our Lives.

“For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness,” 1 Corinthians 1:18, 21-23.

It is the message of the cross that makes the Christian message truly unique.

The answer for man’s sins is the cross. What is your sin? Is it anger? Is it lust? Is it drunkenness? Is it cheating? Is it fornication? Is it abortion? Is it greed? Is it pride?

No matter what your sin is the cross is God’s answer. It doesn’t matter how many sins your committed. It doesn’t matter how badly you feel about them? It doesn’t matter how many skeletons rattle around in the private closet of your heart. God has no other answer for your sins than the cross of His Son. What did Jesus say from the cross? “It is finished,” John 19:30. That’s not some kind of slogan. It is a statement of deepest theological significance. The debt of our sin has been paid in full. What Jesus accomplished on the cross was so awesome, so complete that it needs never to be repeated. Not even by Himself. Hebrews 10:12 “But this man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God.” There is nothing more God could do to save you. There is no Plan B. God’s Plan A, the vicarious, voluntary, victorious death of Christ was more than enough!

Thomas said to his apostle friends, “Except I see in His hand the print of the nails...I will not believe.”

That’s what the world is saying to us today. People want to see the authentic marks. Paul said he bore in his body the “marks” of his Savior, Galatians 6:17. The word “marks” is the Greek word “stigmata” that means “to be branded.” Paul literally had wounds and scars received while serving his Lord.

Only a “crucified man” can preach a “crucified Savior!”

“We need men of the cross, with the message of the cross, bearing the marks of the cross,” Vance Havner.

“When I survey the wondrous cross.

On which the Prince of glory died,

My riches gain I count myt loss,

And pour contempt on all my pride.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.” -- Isaac Watts

Are you willing to do for Jesus what Jesus was willing to do for you? He died for you. Will you die to yourself and gave yourself to Him as a “living sacrifice”? (Romans 12:2) Are you sharing “the fellowship of His suffering”? And are you being made “conformable to His death”? (Philippians 3:10)