The holidays can be really depressing. At family Christmas gatherings, you might get subtle (or not-so-subtle) hints about the ways you’ve let your family down lately. On New Year’s Eve, you might look back over the last year and wonder why you’re not further ahead in your career, relationships, or holiness from where you were a year ago.
We generally find our identity in two ways: how we fit in with others and please others, or how we express ourselves individually and make personal advances. No matter which way we go, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment and confusion.
Jesus offers us a third option. In Matthew 16:24, he said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
He’s talking to all of us. Anyone who wants to come after him. Anyone who wants to follow him. Not just the twelve disciples. Not just spiritual leaders. Anyone. If you want to be a Christian, there are three conditions Jesus is giving you here:
1) Deny yourself
Some people hear this, and they think it means they need to try to deny every impulse and every desire they have. They need to discipline themselves to say no every time they want something. But that word deny could have another translation: disown. “If anyone would come after me, let him disown himself.”
What does it mean to disown someone, or disown something? To distance yourself from it. To disconnect yourself from it. Another way to say it would be, “Let him fall out of love with himself.” Because the more you love yourself, the less you’ll feel the need for a savior. The more impressed you are with yourself, the less you’ll need Jesus to do for you.
So what denying yourself really means is denying that you can keep living your life the way you’ve always lived it. It means denying that you’re doing OK. It means denying that you’ll be just fine in life without God’s grace.
2) Take up your cross
This means something different to most of us than it did to them. We live in a culture where people wear crosses around their necks. And taking up your cross could mean something different to every person.
When Jesus said it to the disciples, it would have meant only one thing to them: death. It would be like saying, “Take up your electric chair.” “Take up your lethal injection.” “Take up your hangman’s noose.” The disciples didn’t yet understand what Christ was going to do for them on the cross so they didn’t have any sentimental connections to the cross, like we do. All they knew is that you DIE on a cross. They probably also knew that 800 people had just been crucified a few years before in Caesarea Philippi, where they were standing now.
Taking up your cross means dying for Jesus. And Luke adds some clarification in his gospel. When he’s telling this same story in Luke 9, he says there was one more word Jesus added to this command. “Let him take up his cross … daily.”
Which means every day we’re going to die for Jesus. Every day we’re going to die to ourselves. You’re going to go through some kind of trial every day that will give you the opportunity to make a decision. You’ll have two options: “Am I going to live for myself? Or am I going to die to myself and live for Jesus?”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “When Jesus calls us, he bids us come and die.” For him, that was literally true. He was executed in a concentration camp, just a few weeks before the end of World War 2. For us, it’s something that has to happen every single day.
Paul said in Galatians 2 … “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
When I follow Jesus, that means the old Matt gets crucified! It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
This isn’t a loss of my personality – it’s a transformation of my personality to become what it was originally intended to be. It’s not that Matt disappears, it’s that Matt comes under the influence of the Holy Spirit so I’m not the distorted, selfish Matt I used to be. I’m the humble, faithful, generous Matt I was supposed to be.
Paul says this is the life I now live in the flesh. Which means this isn’t some psycho-mystical experience. This isn’t just for monks living in monasteries, spending 18 hours a day in prayer and meditation. Living in the flesh means we’re talking about living the same, earthly, everyday life I led before I knew Jesus.
It’s just that I live it by faith “in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Which is why Jesus gives the third condition…
3) Follow me
“Depend on me. Learn from me. Watch me. Imitate me.” That’s what being a disciple means: imitator. If your master was a martyr, that probably means you’ll experience something close to that too.
Jesus explains why in the next verse: “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matt 16:25).
The word “life” here is the Greek word “psuche” (or psyche). It’s the same word used in the next verse and translated as “soul”: “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?”
Psuche is a tough word to translate, because it has so many different facets and shades of meaning to it. There’s no one English word that captures it all. One scholar has translated it, “Your true self.” What makes you who you are.
Isn’t that the question everybody wants to know? “Who AM I?”
You could read hundreds of self-help books, go to lots of motivational seminars, and make it through endless hours of therapy to answer that question. But Jesus says it’s simple.
“Disown yourself, let me crucify you and live in your place, and imitate me. You’ll find the you that you always wanted to be.”