My friend Steve Kammer posted a great comment on my last blog post. In reference to Luke 9:23, “take up your cross and follow me,” I mentioned that taking up our cross was representative of being on a one way journey. Steve wrote this comment, “Death would have been a more weighty note to the people watching the event than just the fact that the journey was one way.” I am confident that this was part of the crowds thinking. When they saw a criminal carrying a cross, they knew it was a one-way journey to death. It had never ended any other way.
For us as believers it is still a one-way journey, but the outcome is radically different…it ends in a totally different way. For us it is a one-way journey to life! “I have come that you may have life…” “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” “He who has the son has life.”
When Jesus asks us to follow him, it is an invitation to life. This is what makes Luke 9:23 not just a fantastic verse, but an invitation into a fantastic experience.
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The imagery of that verse is just amazing in light of the Gospel. So not only is the end different, but I would say our processional is too. It looks different now because of Christ’s processional. He took all of the effects of jeering and criticism upon himself for us. Not to say that those aspects along our path are gone, but how they affect us are. While the crowd may shout “dead man walking”, “sinner”, “unworthy”, “unloved”, we now know otherwise; the condemnation doesn’t stick. And we don’t walk it alone both because of Christ and because of those who walk with us. It’s beautiful. Thanks, Bill.
“Well may the accuser roar of sins that I have done. I know them all and thousands more; Jehovah knoweth none.”
Steve – I love the thoughts you added. Profound brother.