Follow me

Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, "Who do the crowds say I am?" They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life." "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" Peter answered, "The Christ of God." Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone. And he said, "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life."

Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it" (Luke 9:18-24).

Of all the people living in the world today, only one third claim to be Christians, and many of them never go to church. In Europe and America, church attendance is in steady decline. What is the problem? Salvation is free—Jesus has done everything necessary to rescue us from sin, death and the devil. So why do so many people stay away from Jesus?

Salvation is free, but being a Christian does come with a cost—Jesus demands first place in our lives. He said, If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. These are tough-sounding words—so tough that many people don’t want to hear more. They don’t want limits placed on their freedom. They want to do what they want, when they want, without restriction or criticism.

So what does being a Christian entail? When Jesus forgives your sins and makes you a child of God, then what? How does the Christian life differ from the life of an unbeliever? In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus makes specific mention of three things.

If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself. The first step along Jesus’ path involves self-denial. This sounds quite unappealing; after all, our society revolves around pleasure. It used to be that when you earned money, you spent some of it on caring for your family, supporting the church and donating to charity, while you saved the rest for retirement and to leave an inheritance for your children. But these days, money that used to be reserved for church, charity and savings is spent on designer clothes, frequent eating out, and expensive toys like ‘all terrain vehicles’ or high end electronics. It used to be that sex was an intimate pleasure that made the marriage relationship special. But these days, sexual pleasure is treated like just another form of entertainment, and is used by advertising agencies like bait to get our attention. There used to be a time when people knew how to wait patiently for good things; these days, pleasure is something everyone has to have right now.

Jesus says that His followers must deny themselves—but what specifically is He referring to? In 1st Peter chapter two, we are given a clue: Dear friends, I urge you…to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. When Jesus says “deny yourself”, He means stay away from anything that can harm your soul. Abstain from everything that angers God and invites His everlasting punishment in hell. In Matthew chapter 15 Jesus gives some examples: evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. St. Paul adds to the list in Galatians chapter 5: When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, false religion, witchcraft, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, rebellion, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God. And let’s not forget 1st Timothy chapter six: the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

But some people overreact to lists like these. They claim that Christians are boring because they don’t know how to have fun. That, my friends, is a satanic lie. Christianity is not opposed to having fun—Christianity is only opposed to rolling around in sin like a pig rolls around in mud. You don’t have to commit sin to have a good time. Jesus does not demand that you give every last dollar of your paycheck to the offering plate; the Bible contains many examples of wealthy believers. Sex is a wonderful gift from God and can be enjoyed appropriately within the bounds of marriage. We can run and laugh and roll around in the grass; we can splash each other in the pool and get up early to go hiking in the woods. We can travel to see God’s magnificent world in all its variety. We can invite friends over for dinner and play ball at family reunions and dance at weddings. We can enjoy God’s gift of life in many ways.

But the Christian life is not just about fun. Jesus attended weddings and dinner parties, but He was also tempted by Satan, insulted by unbelievers, and eventually put to death for our sins. Jesus says that each Christian must take up his cross daily. Being a follower of Jesus does involve suffering. Resisting temptation is hard; the devil knows our every weakness and constantly attacks us where we are most vulnerable. Even with Jesus standing at our side, Satan often succeeds in capturing our attention and luring us into sin. Denying yourself evil pleasures is often a difficult thing to do.

But taking up your cross involves more than just resisting temptation. It also includes doing what God wants you to do, even when you don’t feel like doing it or are afraid of what might happen as a result. For example: Jesus says, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you (Matthew 28:19-20). Each of us has an important job—tell the unbelievers in our lives about Jesus. But witnessing scares some people. What if I make a fool of myself? What if I offend the other person and he gets mad? Another example: Peter says, grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18). We grow in faith when we attend worship, join in Bible study, and read devotions based on God’s Word. But these activities take time, time we often find in short supply. We tend to drag our feet doing God’s will when it is inconvenient or time-consuming.

Taking up our crosses daily is hard work. Thankfully, Jesus does not leave us to handle this task alone; in Matthew chapter 11 He says, Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. John writes, Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith. And who can win this battle against the world? Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God (1 John 5:3-5). Carrying our crosses, doing the work the Lord has given us, can often seem like hard labor. But we have Christ’s promise that He is with us every step of the way, helping us so that we are not overwhelmed. We may sometimes sweat from being Christians, but Jesus is sweating right by our side.

Jesus also says, follow me. There are many paths through life, but only one of them leads to heaven. Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6). He also said, I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved (John 10:9). You cannot enter paradise through any religion or philosophy of life that does not honor Jesus as the Son of God and Savior of humanity. This is because there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men (1 Timothy 2:5-6). When we disobey God, we sever our relationship with Him. When God is not in charge of our lives, Satan has free reign to manipulate us however he wants. The trouble is his great subtlety; sinners often do the devil’s will without even realizing it. And so we become prisoners of evil, helpless to free ourselves and avoid the hell that waits beyond the grave.

Jesus is our only hope. He carried the heaviest cross of all—the cross of suffering incurred by our guilt. On that cross, Christ experienced the hell we deserved, and He did it willingly out of love for us. No one helped Him carry that awful load; He bore it completely alone, dying under the terrible burden. But He rose from the grave alive, proving that our sin has been paid for, that death and Satan have been overcome. He lives to forgive us, to reopen paradise to us, to guide us along the path that leads to heaven’s gates, to help us bear the crosses that are come with following Him.

There was a farmer whose dog followed him into town one day. As the farmer was hitching his horse and buggy to a post in front of the general store, the clerk saw how hard the dog was panting, and he criticized the farmer for making the dog run all the way into town while he rode in the wagon. The farmer responded, “That dog’s not tired from following me to town. What tired him out was all his foolish zigzagging. There wasn’t an open gate, a hole in a fence, or a tree stump that he did not explore. He is tired from zigzagging all over the place.”

That’s the way we tend to live. We zigzag from one diversion to another, from one pleasure to another, from one thrill to another. We wear ourselves out, but have no real idea of where all our running around is taking us. Late in life, the famous poet Robert Burns concluded that the biggest misfortune of his life was that he lived with no clear direction.

Jesus said, Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it (Matthew 7:13-14). The Master leads us along a narrow road to heaven. Satan knows that he cannot forcibly drag us away from our Lord’s protection, so he sets up distractions off to the side of the road to catch our attention and draw us away from the Savior. Some temptations lure us into dangerous places where we get stuck and cannot free ourselves. Some temptations are spread out by Satan so that they draw us from one to the next, gradually leading us further and further away from the path to heaven until we finally lose sight of it altogether. And sometimes the devil scatters so many temptations along our way that, like the farmer’s dog, we get exhausted checking each one out, leaving us with no energy left to follow Jesus.

Such behavior is foolish. The pleasures that Satan offers never live up to their hype; they just tease enough to keep us looking for more. Pursuing temptations only results in exhaustion, confusion and despair. Jesus wants us to follow Him, because He knows the safest, most direct way to real happiness. You wander from His side at your peril.