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Hen Jesus Told His Disciples
Hen Jesus Told His Disciples
Hen Jesus Told His Disciples
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up
his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life
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for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits
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his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come
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with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what
he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until
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Near the end of the nineteenth century, McNeill was scheduled to preach at a large
evangelistic service in the English Midlands. His father died a few days before this
scheduled event and the funeral was planned for the very day of the revival services.
Those planning the services naturally assumed that McNeill would be unable to come speak
to them since his father’s funeral would be that day. McNeill himself actually considered not
going to the services. He contemplated sending a message informing the organizers of the
revival that he would not be present. But he did not send that message. Listen to what Job
McNeill said: “But I dared not send it, for this same Jesus stood by me, and seemed to say,
‘Now, look, I have you. You go and preach the gospel to those people. Whether would you
rather bury the dead or raise the dead?’ And I went to preach.”[1]
Now I ask you: what makes a man behave like this? What makes a man skip his own
father’s funeral to go preach instead? Did Job McNeill misunderstand what it means to be a
son? I think not. Instead I think that Job McNeill understood what it means to be a disciple.
Matthew 16 concludes with Jesus defining the nature of the discipleship. We would do well
to listen closely.
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself
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and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but
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whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the
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whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
We begin with verse 24 and its three-fold definition of discipleship.
Frank Stagg offers another very helpful way of thinking about denying the self.
Denying self is not to be confused with denying something to oneself, whether material
things, pleasure, or whatever. Wicked people often deny themselves many things in order to
achieve their selfish goals or conquer their enemies…What Jesus meant by self-denial is far
more radical than denying something to oneself. He meant that one must say no to oneself.
He meant the opposite of Adam’s yes to self and no to God. He meant a yes to God and a
no to oneself. All man’s sin and self-destruction centers in self-love, self-trust, and self-
assertion. The cross means the opposite. It means trust in God, the love of God,
commitment to God, and no to self. Paradoxically this no to self is yes to the true self. One
for the first time becomes what he was made to be when he denies himself.[3]
Second, we are to take up our cross. The cross was a cruel instrument of torture and death
in the ancient world. For Christians it is first and foremost the great symbol of ultimate
obedience, love, and selflessness. It is where Christ lays down His life for us! To take up the
cross, then, is to be willing to follow Jesus even to the point of death on a cross! It is a
sobering image, but ultimately a victorious one for the cross leads finally to resurrection!
Michael Wilkinson writes of the early-16 century Anabaptist Leonhard Schiemer that
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Schiemer condemned the Bible teachers of his day because they fled the cross. Schiemer,
writes Wilkinson:
asserts that avoiding the cross begins with the teachers, or “Scripture experts.” These
teachers love their lives too much, so they judge according to the world and teach what
people want to hear; thus, “they teach and live how they please in order only to flee from the
cross.” As a result, they have attempted to learn about faith apart from the cross. Instead of
learning from the cross, “They gladly wish to learn the truth from the advanced schools and
learn with words.” As a result, the “Scripture experts” know nothing of grace because they
have avoided the cross.[4]
Schiemer brilliantly lays out the numerous devastating effects of avoiding the cross:
No, this is the way: (1) deny yourself, (2) take up your cross, (3) follow Jesus. We must hold
to all of these.
This is why John Stott pined for the return of the word “disciple” to our Christian vocabulary.
One wishes in some ways that the word disciple had continued into the following centuries,
so that Christians were self-consciously disciples of Jesus, and took seriously their
responsibility to be “under discipline.”[5]
That is an interesting idea, no? What if we reclaimed the language of discipleship? What if,
in our evangelism, we asked, “Would you like to become a disciple of Jesus? Would you
like to follow Him?” What if we called people to a life and not merely to a moment?
And you shall flee to the valley of my mountains, for the valley of the mountains shall reach
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to Azal. And you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of
Judah. Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him.
It is the Lord God who comes “and all the holy ones with him.” Likewise, when Jesus says
that He “will repay each person according to what he has done” He drew on Psalm 62.
Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God, and that to
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you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love. For you will render to a man according to his work.
The implications are clear enough: this Jesus is none other than the Lord God of heaven
and earth spoken of in the scriptures!
Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the
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We may call this the telos of discipleship: the union of the disciple with the Jesus he or she
has pledged to follow. Or we might say that the goal or end of discipleship is the marriage
feast of the Lamb spoken of in Revelation 19.
Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters
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and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the
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Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself
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with fine linen, bright and pure”—for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.
Discipleship may begin with cross-carrying, but it ends with the joyful bliss of the
presentation of the church to her Savior, Lamb, Lord, and King: Jesus.
We are carrying our cross then with and toward the one whose cross is making all things
new.