Dear Foothills Family and Friends,

What does it mean to deny yourself and take up your cross?

Jesus’ call to discipleship in Mark 8:34 gets right to the point: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

This is another radical saying of Jesus and, because it contains elements of difficulty, I’m kind of pleased with myself I assigned the teaching of this text to my capable associate pastor, Don Bishop!

I’ll share a few thoughts in relation to these words of our Lord.

We vaguely understand self-denial and cross-bearing to mean discipleship is probably difficult and the self is somehow a problem. If we push these ideas too far, however, we will likely misunderstand Jesus’ meaning.

SELF-DENIAL: In the pursuit of self-denial, we might find that we associate denying ourselves with denying our desires. We know our self is inherently sinful, so we may create a false dichotomy in which we have to choose between focus on Christ and self-examination and knowing ourselves.

CROSS-BEARING: Believers can tend to allegorize any unpleasantness as a “cross” and then spiritualize it as a part of discipleship. In the extreme, cross-bearing becomes a reference to how discipleship is tantamount to pain—not as including suffering, but as its essential nature.

Looking at the Greek verb translated here as “deny” it seems to me Jesus is not making a statement about whether the self is bad, but about who we are most closely associated with—where is our primary allegiance—to ourselves, or to God?

A call to bear one’s cross as part of following Jesus, is a call to be as submitted to Christ as the condemned criminal was to his death.

When Jesus calls for self-denial and cross-bearing, he’s claiming authority. Following Christ means giving him allegiance down to the very depths of our being.

What does Jesus’ call mean for our lives? All of our life is to be surrendered to him.

Christ calls us to exclusive allegiance and complete submission to him. Although extreme and all-encompassing, self-denial and cross-bearing do not eradicate or repress the self. Rather, the Holy Spirit works through them, restoring the image of God in us as we grow in Christlikeness and become more fully who we were created to be.

If you are ready to take up the cross in your own life, please join us at 11 a.m. on Sabbath Saturday for our inspiring service. We provide free childcare during the service. We welcome visitors, family and friends.

See you on Sabbath!

Duff