(Matthew 16: 24-27) “Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in His Father’s glory with His angels, and then He will reward each person according to what he has done.”
Introduction
Have you ever really stopped to consider what happened to a man that was crucified by the Romans in the time of the Messiah our Lord Jesus?
Crucifixion was a brutal and bloody method of execution used by the Romans, designed to inflict maximum pain and humiliation. It was primarily reserved for slaves, foreigners, and those considered the worst criminals.
Before crucifixion, the condemned person was often whipped with a multi-ended leather whip, causing severe lacerations and blood loss. The Roman whip used for scourging, known as a “flagellum”, often had sharp pieces of bone, metal, or glass attached to its leather thongs, which caused severe lacerations and pain to the victim. This made scourging one of the most feared forms of punishment in ancient Rome.
The victim was then forced to carry the crossbeam to the execution site, which could weigh between 75 to 125 pounds. Upon arrival, the victim was stripped totally naked and nailed or tied to a large wooden cross. The cross was typically a vertical stake with a horizontal beam. The victim’s arms were stretched out and secured to the crossbeam, while their feet were often nailed to the upright post. Victims could hang on the cross for hours or even days before dying.
Over the criminal’s head was placed a notice stating his name and his crime. Death ultimately occurred through a combination of constrained blood circulation, organ failure, and asphyxiation as the body strained under its own weight. It could be hastened by shattering the legs (crurifragium) with an iron club, which prevented them from supporting the body’s weight and made inhalation more difficult, accelerating both asphyxiation and shock.
In Matthew Chapter sixteen the Messiah our Lord Jesus was speaking with His disciples and began to explain to them that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the religious hierarchy of his day, being the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life (Vs.21).
The whole idea of being crucified was repugnant. How could this happen to one such as the Lord Jesus must have been in their thinking. At this time it seems that the whole idea of being crucified was not even on their radar.
When He had been preaching with power and authority, healing the sick, driving out demons and performing deeds of power such as feeding the 5,000, or rebuking a stormy sea so that it became calm, He had many that followed Him around to see Him perform these healings, exorcisms and miracles. Many undoubtedly wanted to follow Him to only have things good in this world and to be free from the heel of Rome.
Now in Matthew Chapter sixteen when He told His disciples what was going to happen to Him it was Peter that took Him aside and actually began to rebuke Him saying; “Never Lord, this shall never happen to you!”(Vs.22)
The Lord Jesus, recognising that Satan was prompting Peter in order to turn Him away from what He must do at Jerusalem, He turned to Peter and spoke to Satan directly who had put this thought into Peter’s mind.
The Lord Jesus turned to look at Peter and saw Satan’s influence and sternly rebuked the devil saying that he was a stumbling block to the course He must walk to Jerusalem. Satan was seeking to get the Lord Jesus to circumnavigate the cross if that were possible, as he had tried on Him in the temptation in the wilderness, and the Lord Jesus knew what Satan was up to. After this the Lord Jesus began to explain to the disciples what it really meant to be His disciple or follower and to follow after Him. The whole idea of crucifixion was just not on their radar at this time. Let’s now look at our text…
Matthew 16:24-27
Exposition
“Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.
It is clear that the Lord Jesus was not speaking about a life of luxury of health and wealth, and of having things good in this world, such as we see being spread by the hyper faith prosperity money preachers within the wiser Body of Messiah today.
It was most certainly not Kingdom Now, Kingdom Dominion doctrine that would see a Triumphant Church taking possession of the pagan nations at every level of society, Christianising them, and at the end of this present age presenting them to the Lord Jesus on His return.
It is interesting to note that when the Lord Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey that the people threw down palm branches before Him crying out Psalm 118:25-26 which reads; “O LORD, save us, we pray. We beseech You, O LORD, cause us to prosper! (give us prosperity now!) Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD. From the house of the LORD we bless you.”
The people of Jerusalem had a Kingdom Dominion, Kingdom Now doctrine mentality which would see the Lord Jesus get rid of the Romans and bring them prosperity. They had the right Lord Jesus but had Him all wrong! He had not come to save them from the Romans or to set up His Messianic rule, but to suffer and die for their sins, and that if they did not repent and believe in Him they would be crushed by the Romans. Their rejection of Him saw the Romans ransack the city of Jerusalem and destroy the temple around 40 years later in 70AD.
Multitudes within wider Christendom in the west today are going in for the easy gospel preaching big time, a gospel message if you can call it that, which makes no real demands on what it means to take up one’s cross every day until life’s end. The whole idea runs directly contrary to the dictates of our fallen nature and fleshly carnal appetites all of us are prone to fulfil and to avoid the demands of embracing the cross.
In this verse we are told three things. Firstly; One must deny himself, secondly; take up his cross; and thirdly to follow the Lord Jesus. The whole idea of taking up a personal cross was something so radical that it diametrically opposed the ideology of the unsaved pagan world, let alone the Jewish religious idea of following God.
The disciples knew the horrors of crucifixion. He had told them that they, like Him, would suffer, be rejected and have their own personal cross to bear. The only one who didn’t make it was Judas Iscariot who committed suicide after betraying the Lord Jesus. The apostles were not all crucified but ultimately they were to experience what the Lord Jesus had experienced. In the end they were all martyred except John.
In John’s gospel the Lord Jesus said; “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.
Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me” (John 15:18-21).
He had also told them on another occasion; “But before all these things, they will lay their hands on you and will persecute you, delivering you to the synagogues and prisons, bringing you before kings and governors for My name’s sake. It will lead to an opportunity for your testimony.
So make up your minds not to prepare beforehand to defend yourselves; for I will give you utterance and wisdom which none of your opponents will be able to resist or refute. But you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death, and you will be hated by all because of My name. Yet not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives” (Luke 21:12-19).
In our text here in Matthew Chapter sixteen, everyone knew what He meant when He spoke about taking up ones cross. They knew that crucifixion and the cross was an unrelenting instrument of death. It was the place of no return, a one way journey that ended in physical death. The cross had no other purpose!
It was bad enough for the disciples to hear that Jesus would suffer, be rejected, and die on a cross. Now Jesus told them that they must experience the same thing if they were to be His disciples. To deny themselves and to embrace the cross implied that it must be an action of the will, not the emotions. It wasn’t easy for the Lord Jesus either. We read where it came about, when the days were approaching for His ascension, after firstly being crucified, buried and resurrected that He resolutely set His face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51).
As the author of Hebrews writes ; “During the days of Jesus’ earthly life, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the One who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from what He suffered (Hebrews 5:7-8).
In the Garden of Gethsemane facing crucifixion our Lord Jesus did not want to go through that terrible torturous experience that was about to be forced upon Him. As fully God and fully man He foresaw the wonderful spiritual harvest of souls down through the centuries that would be saved and in this He delighted even as He suffered on their behalf.
As Isaiah the prophet prophesies…
“Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush Him and to cause Him to suffer; and when His soul is made a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand. After the anguish of His soul, He will see the light of life and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant will justify many, and He will bear their iniquities” (Isaiah 53:10-11).
As the author of Hebrews also writes…
“But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honour because He suffered death, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone. In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting for God, for whom and through whom all things exist, to make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. For both the One who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers (Hebrews 2:9-11).
Because of the results He foresaw He stayed on that old rugged cross even though He also knew that myriads of angels were waiting to rescue Him if He called on them, but He refused to do it because He had embraced the cross.
He found deliverance in enduring the cross, not being delivered from the cross. This was to be the pattern for all who would follow Him down through the centuries even to the present day
The Messiah our Lord Jesus’ submission to the cross and all that came with it was an action of His will, not His emotions which were exceedingly overwhelmed to the point where his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground because He was under so much emotional and physical pressure beyond human comprehension as He contemplated taking upon Himself the sins of the whole world and its penalty. As we read; “And being in anguish, He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was like drops of blood on the ground” (Luke 22:44).
The cross wasn’t about religious ceremonies; it wasn’t about traditions and spiritual feelings, manifestations and dreams and visions of one sort or another, even though dreams and visions do have their place within the Body of Messiah. The cross was a way to execute people.
The cross is where God’s will and our will cross!
Wessel, in his commentary on Mark wrote; “In these twenty centuries after Jesus, we have done a pretty good job in sanitizing and ritualizing the cross. Yet Jesus said something much like this: “Walk down death row daily and follow Me.” Taking up your cross wasn’t a journey; it was a one-way trip. There was no return ticketing; it was never a round trip.”
Cross bearing does not refer to some irritation in life such as a difficult mother in law or a troublesome spouse; rather, it involves the way of the cross. The cross the Lord Jesus is speaking about in our text is of a man, already condemned, required to carry his cross on the way to the place of execution, as Jesus was required to do.”
Denying oneself and taking up ones cross are linked in that the cross wasn’t about self-promotion or self-affirmation or a seeker friendly, seeker sensitive feel good type of Christianity. The person carrying a cross knew they couldn’t save themselves and faced the reality that they would die.
For the New Covenant believer physical death is not the end but the gateway into everlasting bliss and happiness beyond human comprehension which will happen at the rapture and resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:51-56).
Wessel, in his commentary on Mark also wrote; “Denying self is not the same as self-denial. We practice self-denial when, for a good purpose, we occasionally give up things or activities. But we deny self when we surrender ourselves to the Lord Jesus and determine to obey His will.”
Salvation includes an unconditional surrender to the will of God and a willingness to obey the Lord Jesus (John 3:36 NASB). As He also said; “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you forever” (John 14:15). When we surrender our will the blessed Holy Spirit will empower us to do what the Lord Jesus says. The Lord Jesus is the Living and eternal Word of God made flesh and who tabernacled among us (John 1:1-3; 14).
When we seek to obey His Word we show that we love Him. Our emotions may be involved, however it is the action of the will that God is looking for that will cause the Holy Spirit to do that deep spiritual work deep down on the inside of us called the new birth, a work which we cannot produce by the power of our own human will acting independently from God.
Denying self means to live in such a way that avoids self-centredness for the sake of others. The Lord Jesus was the only person to do this perfectly, but we are to follow in His steps and follow after Him. This is following Jesus at its simplest: He carried a cross, He walked down death row; so must all of us who follow Him. For us it is to be a daily experience as we walk in step with the Holy Spirit (Luke 9:23) (Galatians 5:25).
Already around the world unnumbered of our fellow brothers and sisters in the Messiah our Lord Jesus have already embraced the cross knowing that in this life to be a follower of the Lord Jesus means a crucifixion and a death sentence to our self-centred ambitions and pursuits and even being faced with martydom.
Our Human nature wants to indulge self, not deny self. Death to self is always terrible, and if we expect it to be a pleasant or mild experience, we will often be disillusioned. Death to self is the radical command of the Christian life. To take up our cross every day and to embrace it means one thing: we will be going to a certain death, and our only hope is in the power of the resurrection!
“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me will find it.”
Taking up our cross is to be a daily experience then as we read in Luke’s gospel; “Then Jesus said to all of them, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). He also said in Mark’s gospel “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35).
It has been said that we are saved to serve and this is in line with scripture. Whatever we do in God’s service has its goal in spreading the Gospel of the Kingdom. If we really love the Lord Jesus then we will want to do what He says.
At times we will find a fierce and often prolonged conflict between the desires of the Spirit with the desires of our fleshly self-centred, self-gratifying fallen nature, an intense inner spiritual battle that can only be won through faith, the power of the blessed Holy Spirit, by confessing the promises of the Word of God, and by the blood of the Lord Jesus, this when we testify to what the Word of God says the blood of Jesus does for us Satan will flee (Romans 8: 5-14) (Galatians 5:16-25) (Revelation 12:14).
As the apostle John writes; “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome, because everyone born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world: our faith. Who then overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God” (1 John 5:3-5).
We must follow Jesus this way, because it is the only way that we will ever find life. It sounds strange to say, “You will never live until you first walk to your death with Jesus,” but that is the idea. We can’t gain resurrection life without first dying.
As the apostle Paul writes…
“But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of the Messiah. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing the Messiah Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain the Messiah, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in the Messiah, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by the Messiah Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in the Messiah Jesus” (Philippians 3:7-14).
Consider a seed in the ground. You don’t lose a seed when you plant it, though it seems dead and buried. Instead, you set the seed free to be what it was always intended to be. Without crucifixion and burial there can be no resurrection! The way up is down. Water Baptism signifies a death and burial followed by a resurrection (Romans 6:1-7).
We die to the Old way of life controlled by Satan and rise to a new way of life controlled by the Lord Jesus. As it is written; “Therefore if anyone is in the Messiah, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). We are not talking about sinless perfection or that we no longer have the capacity to sin. The Spirit frees our will to enable us to choose what we will do (Romans 8:5-14). And then we read…
“What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”
It is written in scripture; “As a man came from his mother’s womb, so he will depart again, naked as he arrived. He takes nothing for his labour to carry in his hands” (Ecclesiastes 5:15). It is also written; “Do not be afraid when a man becomes rich, When the glory (wealth) of his house is increased; For when he dies he will carry nothing away; His glory will not descend after him” (Psalm 49:16-17).
Rabbi the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy concerning those in the fellowship who were members of the Assembly but whose direction in life was controlled by slavery to riches and money and who were labouring to have things good in this world, and using a professed godliness as a means to financial gain.
Paul writes; “But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either. If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content. But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” (1 Timothy 6:6-10).
How value is the soul, being the intellect, the affections and the will which are eternal. When one dies they do not cease to exist. They leave their body but are jettisoned into eternity where they are conscious either in heaven or in hell. The Bible does not teach annihilation (Luke 16:19-31) (Hebrews 9:27) (Isaiah 14:9-11). Avoiding the walk down death row with Jesus means that we may well gain the whole world, and end up losing everything!
Our Jesus Himself had the opportunity to gain the whole world with its accolades, its riches and its fame by worshipping Satan, but instead He found life and victory in obedience (Luke 4:5-8).
It is an amazing thing to ponder that the people who live by the faith accompanied by obedience in the Lord Jesus are the ones who are really, genuinely happy in this life. Giving our lives to Jesus all the way, and living a crucified life by the grace and power of God does not take away from our lives, it adds to it, not only in this world but in the age to come and then after the Messianic age for all of eternity (John 5:24) (John 11:25-26) (1 John 5:11-13).
For the Son of Man is going to come in His Father’s glory with His angels, and then He will reward each person according to what he has done.”
Physical death is not the end of life. For the born again New Covenant believer in the Messiah our Lord Jesus when they die are absent from their physical body but present withe LORD. Their sins have already been judged at the cross.
After they have been physically resurrected they will stand before the judgement seat of the Messiah, not to be judged for sin, but to receive rewards according to how they served and obeyed God in their former life on earth (2 Corinthians 5:9-10).
For the one who has never been born again when they die they are absent from their physical body and are incarcerated in hell which is the holding cell for them until they are physically resurrected at the end of the Millennial Age to come. Then they will stand before the Great White Throne of God, not to be judged, as they have already been judged by rejecting the salvation only found by repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus (John 3:16-18) (Acts 20:21). They will appear for sentencing to the Lake of fire forever and ever with no reprieve (Revelation 20:11-15).
In closing, embracing the cross for our life is not possible for any of us in the natural unless we have surrendered our will to the Triune God and desire to follow His Son the Messiah our Lord Jesus to the end of life as we walk by faith and not by sight.
God has made the blessed Holy Spirit available to us to empower us to walk in the will of God (Zechariah 4:6) (Isaiah 59:19). To embrace the cross is a voluntary action of our will, not our emotions, even though they may be a part of that surrender. We can experience a moment of intense emotion at a meeting through powerful preaching and experience some emotional release. However the question is not how we feel but is our will laid down?
When I was enlisted into the army back in 1973 the Vietnam War was in full swing. When I was drafted the army did not give me any guarantee that I would not be injured or killed if sent into battle.
In the kingdom of God, when we enlist in the army of the LORD, it is a voluntary decision and there is no guarantee that we will not have to face hostility, marginalization, rejection and persecution and even martyrdom for confessing and bearing the name of Jesus.
When the Apostle wrote to the Assembly of New Covenant believers at Rome Nero was burning Christians alive in pig skins on poles to light up his garden parties. Peter understanding what it means to embrace the cross wrote these words to encourage his fellow brothers and sisters in Messiah. It was a fiery ordeal indeed!
Peter wrote; “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you; but to the degree that you share the sufferings of the Messiah, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation. If you are reviled for the name of the Messiah, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you” (1 Peter 4:12-14).
May Rabbi the Apostle Paul’s experience be ours by the grace of God when he wrote; “But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus the Messiah, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14). Selah.
