“Sing to one another in songs and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” Ephesians 5:19

One of the signs of the filling of the Holy Spirit is the ability to relationally and whole-heartedly express oneself in conversation with God and one another. This hymn is a rare juxtaposition of these two conversations, each being done in the presence of the other in one Trinitarian-plus-us community. The basis for this juxtaposition is the thing in common we share: Jesus carried His own cross and told His disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.” Luke 9:23. Each time He said this, He did so in the context of Him being the anointed Son of God, and in His foretelling His future suffering.

For us, this cross-bearing is different and similar in important ways. It is different because His was a capital-T “Thy cross” because the cross He carried and died upon is where He fully accomplished salvation once for all. Christ alone has borne that cross fully, nor are we able to pay for our own sins by our own suffering to any degree. It is also similar in an important way because we can only grow into the full stature of Him in whose footsteps we are following by carrying our own cross to the end as He did. The whole Christian life can be seen as preparation to one day give your life in a shameful and humiliating fashion for His sake.

However, this exhortation doesn’t make sense to many who bear the name “Christian.” After all, “Jesus died a shameful death so I wouldn’t have to, right?” If Jesus truly intended that, would He have called His disciples to follow him and carry their instrument of ignoble and excruciating execution? What else would they need it for? The beauty of what I’ve discovered is that the church of Christians alive today is Jesus’ body still on earth, and therefore, she has much of the same physical work which He did: healing the sick, casting out demons, preaching the good news, and bleeding for the world. The whole Bible story from Genesis to Revelation bears out the ugly, inescapable reality: the world is only redeemable through the blood of the guiltless, trusting surrender to God. Before Christ, it was sacrificial lambs; after Christ in full, those echo the sacrifice of the Lamb of God in laying down their lives even for their enemies. These are indeed His disciples.

If we want to be His disciples, we must answer the question: What does it mean to carry your cross? It means to live a life on earth that is constantly being laid down for God and others, in preparation for the day and the way He chooses for it to end. This entails resistance to searching it out, as some martyr-wannabes might mistake my meaning, being eager to be done with the heavy load they carry for a consequently cheaper glory. Instead, it means living faithfully in full surrender until that last day so that we can share in the glory to be revealed at His coming. This is the joy we are offered if we do, the same “joy that was set before Him.” (Hebrews 12:1-2), “That I may know Him in the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings being conformed to His death.” Philippians 3:10

Reflection Questions:

• Is there anything you are still holding onto that you haven’t fully surrendered to be put to death in your life? What fundamentally motivates you in what you do that is really about you and not about God?
• What does carrying your cross look like in your current life stage? What will it look like in the next? How can you prepare for it?
• How does a person embrace the cross in such a way that avoids the traps of “cheap grace” theology, while also avoiding the trap of legalism?