My Burden Is Light

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.  Luke 14: 27

We (I) often think of this daily picking up of the cross as a great burden.  Crosses are heavy and painful and that is what life is supposed to look like if we (I) really love Jesus.  

But really that is not what this verse is saying.  What is actually heavy and painful and a burden is having two masters, being double-minded, tossing back and forth like a wave.  I am the chief of this sort of sinner, trying to make everyone happy.  Being all things to all people- that is what is painful.  The burden of people-pleasing, trying to climb ahead in the world, getting more and more stuff, worrying about tomorrow, all of that has been taken away.  We are dead to the old, and this is important enough to Jesus that he repeats himself as He nears Jerusalem.  This cross stuff is on his mind.  The big picture of why he had come to earth.  To set us free.  Every day we are dead to self. And the sin nature.  It has been dealt with, done.  

And we are alive to the new.  C. S. Lewis reminds us: “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

The tense of the verbs is interesting: If anyone would come (present tense, continuous action) after me, he must deny (Aorist, single action in the past) himself and take up (Aorist, single action in the past) his cross daily and follow (present tense, continuous action) me.  Jesus understood this: For the joy set before him (present tense, continuous action) he endured the cross (Aorist, single action in the past).

Therefore, every day, let us embrace our death to self and sin, and celebrate our new life in Christ and grace.  And follow Him.