Last time we wrapped up our post stating: “Life in Christ is not about me. I give up my life, my things, my desires, my passions, my sin.” We do that by taking up a cross.

Luke 9:23, records Jesus saying, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” We take up our cross DAILY! Every day we live, we take up our cross. This cross is not a burden we bear. A cross is not unruly children, overbearing parents, or a nosy neighbor. A cross is an instrument, an agent, of death. Those who heard Jesus say this, heard Jesus say, “If you want to follow me, you are going to deny yourself by dying (on the cross) every day for me.

Your cross is a death to self. Your cross is a DAILY death to self. Jesus explains it with a paradox (a seemingly contradictory statement). “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:24). Do you want to your life to be for you right now in time you have on earth? Go ahead, you will only lose it in the long run. Do you want you life to continue not only eternally, but in a secure life in the here and now? The lose it for God and you are saved.

The apostle understood what Jesus meant and puts it to his readers in words hard to misunderstand, “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2Co 5:14-15). With that concept firmly established, Paul was able to say, “I die daily” (1Co 15:31).

Jesus died for us because He understood our worth. Next time we will look at our worth in more detail.

– Scott