Live video and notes for my message at Central Church of Christ in Stockton, CA for October 10, 2021.

We’re continuing to work through Paul’s letter to the Galatians. The preaching text was Galatians 2:19-21.

Mark 8:31-38 and Philippians 3:4b-14 were also read during worship.

Sermon video is embedded below. Sermon notes are below that.

Soli Deo Gloria!

“Take up your cross and follow me”: Common (mis)interpretations

Today we heard these words of Christ from Mark 8: If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

Jesus says the same thing In Matt. 16:24 and Luke 14:27; and there’s a couple of really popular ways to explain what He meant.

First, some folks think it means: Whatever it is I’m suffering through, whatever hardship I’m enduring—that’s my cross to bear.

So everything from a cancer diagnosis to this job you hate is your cross.

And the application people want to make from that is, A true follower of Christ will bear suffering and hardship with dignity. 

If deny yourself and take up your cross means that your salvation is somehow tied to your ability to suck it up and perform well under pressure; you might as well throw the entire Gospel away.

But if bearing suffering with dignity is a test of how sincere your faith in Jesus is—what happens when you shatter and break and fall to pieces under suffering? 

Does that mean you’re not really a Christian? That you’re not really saved? 

Or at least that you’re not as good a Christian as so-and-so over there, who seems to handle all their struggles with calm and grace?

If deny yourself and take up your cross means that your salvation is somehow tied to your ability to suck it up and perform well under pressure; you might as well throw the entire Gospel away.

Because as soon as you factor in your own performance, you erase by grace, through faith; it is the gift of God, and not by works. 

The other way of explaining what Jesus means when He says you must pick up your cross to follow Him is what I call the radical, sold-out for Jesus remix. 

It’s the I surrender all Gospel, that says: Taking up your cross means utter dedication to God. If you’re not at least willing to suffer anything, put up with anything, do anything, and give up everything for Jesus—you’re not actually saved.

This sounds super-spiritual—it sounds like you’re taking your faith seriously, so a lot of Christians just assume this is what it has to mean.

So again—you’re looking at the same problem. If your salvation depends on how well you surrender, or even just on your willingness to surrender—you’ve just put the Gospel on mute. Because now you’re putting your confidence in your own works—and even worse, how you’re feeling at a particular moment. 

Have I truly surrendered all? Was I really willing when I made that commitment? How willing do I feel today?

The consequences of misapplying “take up your cross and follow”

When you tell Christians with a tender conscience that taking up your cross and following Jesus means you’ve got to be completely sold-out and surrendered, or it’s not real: they will keep going back looking for the cross they dropped somewhere, until eventually they get too tired and discouraged and give up.

So there’s a couple of very real consequences from applying it this way, and they’re both destructive to souls.

  • First, it can lead to self-righteousness in certain people; because they are going to believe they are really doing this—that they really have surrendered all to Jesus, and they’re willing to give even more.
    • This is especially a temptation for people who are Type A, high-energy, high-performing, competitive. If you’re one of those people, you know you’re not really into navel-gazing or introspection. You have to be moving and doing. 
      • The idea that taking up your cross means you surrender all; and are willing to give even more tickles your theological sweet tooth, because it’s what comes natural for you.
    • The danger for you is that you imagine that taking up your cross has to do with the amount of time or effort or energy you expend. Another danger is you might think that taking up your cross means you don’t maintain healthy boundaries. And you equate all that with at least being willing to surrender all.
  • Second, while some folks take that and they think they’re crushing it—believers who have tender consciences, this interpretation is really going to crush them.
    • I’m one of those, by the way … and we’re introspective and self-aware enough to know we have not surrendered all.
      • Even if, in a moment of emotional excitement, because the music was right and the speaker was fire, we thought we did—in the light of reality, we find hundreds of things we didn’t really surrender to Jesus.

Let me explain to you what happens to folks like me when you tell us that taking up your cross and following Jesus means you’ve got to be completely sold-out and surrendered, or it’s not real: we will keep going back looking for our cross we dropped somewhere, until eventually we get too tired and discouraged and we give up.

“Take up your cross” is a description of a life of repentance

Here’s the context you need to know to understand what taking up your cross and following Jesus means. What was Jesus talking about?

Mark 8:31ff. Jesus had just began to teach [his disciples] that it was necessary for the Son of Man to suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, and rise after three days.

In other words, He began to tell His disciples about how He was going to take up His cross, and be crucified. 

And it’s right after Jesus said that—Mark 8:34—he turns to His disciples, and would-be disciples, and tells them: If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

So what Jesus is saying there is: I am going to be rejected, and suffer, and die. And if you’re going to put your trust in Me—in this life, you should not expect a life of victory or triumph or glory, either.

We must erase from our minds any notion that Christ only accepts heroic, self-disciplined followers, who perform well under pressure. 

In other words—Jesus wasn’t issuing a command that we can follow to gain victory in this life, and glory in the next, through our heroic service.  

We must erase from our minds any notion that Christ only accepts heroic, self-disciplined followers, who perform well under pressure. 

If that’s true, I’m not sure Jesus has ever saved anyone.

Instead, we should read His words as instructive or illustrative of what our lives will look like as followers of Jesus. 

“I have been crucified with Christ”: Paul’s summary of a life of repentance

And that’s what our reading from Galatians today is all about. In Gal. 2:19-21, where Paul says: I have been crucified with Christ.

Paul was summing up his own experience of taking up his cross to follow Jesus. 

There’s three lessons I want us to take from this passage. 

My prayer is they’re going to help you not only to think through what it means to carry your own cross; but also to understand the shape of your life under the Gospel.

Taking up your cross simply means turning to God in repentance and throwing yourself on Christ’s mercy.

1. Taking up your cross is not heroic.

It’s very easy to miss Jesus’ real point when He tells us we must take up our cross to follow Him; because we’ve come to see the Cross as a place of heroic sacrifice, triumph, and glory. 

Christians have been clinging to the old, rugged cross now for two thousand years, because Christ gave up His life on a cross to save us.

But nobody back then would have had a sentimental attachment to the cross. There was nothing heroic or virtuous about dying on a cross. 

After all, who usually died on a cross? Rebels. Slaves. Defeated people. Lawbreakers.

So when Jesus tells us we must deny ourselves and take up our crosses to follow Him, what is He really saying? You are rebels against God, and slaves to sin. The only way to salvation is by being completely conquered by God. You can’t deal with your sin on your own. And God’s way of conquering your sin and rebellion is a cross.

Taking up your cross means turning to God in repentance and throwing yourself on Christ’s mercy.

And that’s what Paul tells us in vv19, going into 20:

For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

So here’s what he means when he says: through the law, I died to the law. He means that the only thing God’s Law can do for anyone outside of Christ is condemn them.

But what if we could find refuge in the One who perfectly satisfied the Law of God on our behalf?

God’s Law sends us running to Christ, who is that One who has perfectly satisfied it for us. We are done trying to do what we could never do, which is be right with God through our own efforts.

That was Paul’s point in Philippians 3, which we also heard today. In his previous life, Paul said: If anybody could’ve worked their way to heaven, it was me. I was born into a godly family. I was enrolled in the cradle roll before I could even sit up straight. When it came to following God’s Law—I was scrupulous and meticulous in my obedience.

But Christ revealed to Paul that he was still a miserable sinner! When Paul looked back over all of his advantages, his reputation, all of the good deeds of his past, he said: I consider them as dung (Phil. 3:8).

He learned to see it all—even his greatest moral efforts, his best behavior on his best day—as something he scraped off his shoe and left on the side of the Damascus road.

He said—vv8-9: I renounced it all—even my thoughts of my own virtues and righteousness—for the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord … and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ.

That’s what it means to take up your cross and be crucified with Christ.

When you come to Christ by grace through faith, faith actually links you together with Christ. As far as God is concerned, you died with Him when He died for you. Col. 3:3 says: you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

In that sense—you have died to the Law. The Law can no longer condemn you because have been crucified with Christ. He took your sin and punishment. And now you are covered in His righteousness.

Not only are you linked to Christ by faith, Christ lives in you—by His Holy Spirit. This is good news—the best news.

By faith you take up your own cross, and God crucifies you with Christ.

Not only have you died to the Law’s condemnation … But God has taken a defeated, rebellious lawbreaker, and transformed you into a temple where Christ lives in you by the Spirit.

You want the TL;DR version? Once you have have known yourself a rebel and a lawbreaker before God; you’ve turned from your sin and trusted in Christ alone to save you—you’ve already taken up your cross and followed. You’ve already been crucified with Christ. Nothing more radical or sold-out is demanded of you.

2. Though we’ve been crucified, we live by faith 

Crucifixion isn’t an instant death. It’s a long, slow, painful death. Your is going to desperately cling to life, clawing and fighting for every last gasp of breath it can get.

Does this sound like a contradiction—a crucified person living by faith? But it isn’t when you think about it.

By faith, you have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires (Gal. 5:24). But you say: I don’t feel dead yet. I still just feel like me.

But you see, crucifixion isn’t an instant death. It’s a long, slow, painful death. Your flesh, your old self, your old sinful nature—is going to keep trying to assert himself or herself. She’s going to desperately cling to life, he’s going to claw and fight for every last gasp of breath he can get.

That’s why God wanted Paul to tell you this. This is the middle of Gal. 2:20:

The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God,

Literally it says, The life I now live in the flesh. Flesh is this fallen body of ours that wants to do its own thing, to be its own Savior, that will not accept defeat—even when it’s been crucified.

That means you’re still going to struggle with sin and failure and discouragement and doubt and boredom, and everything else that’s not victorious and triumphant and glorious.

Where will your only hope and comfort and assurance come from then? It will not come from you having confidence to perform well under pressure. Your hope and assurance comes only from your faith in the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

Heb. 11:1 reminds us that faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. If we could see it already, it wouldn’t be faith.

What we hope for, but do not yet see, is our resurrection to glory. In immortal, imperishable bodies that cannot sin, with hearts and wills that never even want to sin.

So even though right now, we dwell in these miserable bodies of death; we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus the author and finisher of our faith (Heb. 12:2). 

When it says Jesus is the author and the finisher of faith, here’s what that means: Even though your flesh still rebels and asserts itself daily, you have confident assurance that, He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion, Phil. 1:6.

Jesus is the author of your faith—He began the good work of salvation in you. And He’s the finisher of your faith—He will bring what He’s begun to completion.

The struggle of your crucified flesh against its death is not going to derail that process. By faith, you have taken up your cross and been crucified with Christ—the good work of salvation has begun in you, and Christ will finish it.

3. Your confidence is in Christ’s cross, not in your own.

There is only One who ever took up a cross and surrendered all to God to save you … and it wasn’t you.

This is the point really what I want you to take home with you.

No one has ever been saved because they surrendered all, withholding nothing. Human repentance is always imperfect. It’s always incomplete. 

That’s why we have to do it every day. Here’s another version of take up your cross and follow … Luke 9:23. Jesus said: If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

Jesus tells us to take up our crosses daily, because human repentance is always imperfect and incomplete.

The entire Christian life is repentance. It’s a daily turning away from ourselves, and turning to Christ. It’s daily not only renouncing my sin and selfishness; but also my own goodness and righteousness.

That’s what Paul’s getting at in v21:

I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.

A lot of Christians have this mindset that to be a real believer, they need to surrender this much time to the Lord, they need to be doing this much of this, and stop doing so much of that.

But let me tell you what that is. That’s all superficial changes. You’re basically pulling spiderwebs off yourself. And I mean, that can be sticky and frustrating and require a great deal of effort. But you don’t need Jesus for that. Paul says if that’s what you think life in Christ is all about, then Jesus died for nothing.

If you have even the slightest inkling that your own works, or doings, or willings, or surrendering factors into your salvation—Paul says you’ve set aside the grace of God. 

Functionally, you are denying the cross, insulting the blood of Christ, and rejecting the Gospel.

There is only One who ever took up a cross and surrendered all to God to save you … and it wasn’t you.

It was the Son of God, who loved me—and you!—and gave Himself up for [us.]

Christian, if you lack assurance, if you lack confidence; or if the Word is convicting you that you’ve put your confidence in yourself—you must engrave this upon your heart.

1 John 4:10: This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

This is surrender: Not that we surrendered all, but that God—in love—surrendered His only Son for us.

Not that we have taken up our crosses for Him, but that He took up the cross we deserved, and surrendered His life for our sin.

And notice carefully—the love of God in Christ in these verses is in the past tense. The Son of God loved me … God loved us and sent His Son …

As your flesh continues to fight and claw for air … whenever you grow weary from the daily work of repentance … and the hope of sinless glory feels so far away … remember—He loved you.

Before you were born, He loved you. On the cross, He loved you. In the manger in Bethlehem, He loved you. Before the foundation of the world, He loved you.

There has never been a time when Jesus Christ did not love His people!

And once you ever get that engraved on your heart, that will melt you into fuller surrender, deeper repentance, and richer joy. That will transform you and renew your mind. That will lead you to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. 

Just trying harder will not.