If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. (see Mark 8:34)
Jesus instructed
| those who would follow as His disciples to 'take up his cross', a directive to which those at that time would see undertaken in literal fashion as Lord Jesus gave His life for us at Calvary. In the reality of the context for the somber instruction, crystalized by the fate of the twelve apostles who took the gospel out from Jerusalem , is it possible that we should be able to set our sites on the cross Jesus speaks of alongside the immaculate joy we've come to know in the age of Grace ?
Hebrews 12 extraordinarily lengthens our understanding for just this --
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (v. 1-2)
These verses in Hebrews place the cross Jesus endured next to the race now set before us to run ... No one could ever imagine the cross as something Jesus raced up the hill with. And, yet the concept of a race is added to our vision in Hebrews 12, in order to complete our understanding for our role, our taking up for this day.
Lay aside every weight
Jesus came and lived and died for each of us so that we would not have to be separated from Him, therein suffering the ultimate death . When The LORD gave His life, it was payment for the penalty of sin. Because He was without sin, it was our sins He submitted to the cross. Hebrews 12 excellently explains this, "let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely".
If visually setting in your mind, the contrast presented between taking up a weight and laying one down clearly emerges ...
Taking up our cross ...
Laying down every weight ...
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (v. 28-30)
In the grand picture He delivers us through His sacrifice on the cross, we are invited to lay down sin and its penalty and take up what would've been unavailable to us without Him . That is , a relationship with Him for eternity.
The bearing up of this, He exclaims, is a light labor, an easy yoke .
In my experiences with this journey, I've found often it's not the journey that's easy. In fact the journey is quite impossible ... except for Him. Whenever, where ever the journey would become about the journey instead of about Him, the load of it becomes undeniably obvious. In the complete opposite direction, I've found great fear of The LORD awe in the things He would allow us to partner with Him in when He is at the center.
For me, this defines the cross He invites us to journey with Him carrying. Experiencing this timeline according to the inheritance He quickened at Calvary, exchanging death for life, there is a profound understanding that one can only and invaluably ascertain from picking up their cross.
Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith
The difference from the reality of the cross and any other reality is access to God's heart, the very reason He sent His Son and draws any near to Him.
Salvation, the armor for identified in the Word as being the helmet (see Eph 6:17), is the starting point. A new creation mind for right-eous thinking able to perceive God . Picture a dry desert land where the only water you'd ever seen was a finite, cloudy pool formed from sparing rains .. contrasted by a tropical lake view of crystal clear water teaming with life . With the first, water may not be a substance you'd ever even known as 'clear'. At the moment you could perceive this, you also see a whole new association and world therein .
In the latter, you are able to perceive possibilities inaccessible before, and are called to a whole new language for identifying the reality, thereby also becoming a part of it. Merely being able to perceive it is only a starting point . This is the description of Salvation where we perceive God, otherwise unavailable to us to engage in true relationship with.
Just as God gave His Son before the foundation of the world, and then sent Jesus to actually suffer, die and rise again in our perceivable timespace, once we receive Salvation, there is a walking into it.
Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Psa 2:11
Work out your salvation with fear and trembling . (see Phil 2:12)
Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture:
Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone,
a cornerstone chosen and precious,
and whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame. 1 Pet 2:2-6
This is He who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the One who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree. If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that He has borne concerning His Son. 1 John 5:6-9
The testimony that John describes above, in 1 John 5, is assurance, detailed insurance for where we can expect to grow up in our right-thinking. That is, the Teacher is God. In this, He is the perfecter of our faith.
This is foundational for me because the picking up of my cross, a journey and learning of Him, means to look on for things that are impossible, inconceivable in what's available in present 'reality' .. I'm attempting to explain here what's essentially imperceivable to the world I go about living in. There's no starting point of reference. As Hebrews 12 states, Jesus is both the founder and perfecter of our faith ... From experiencing this starting point, receiving my salvation, I've come to a greater understanding of something for which I have no reference point for outside of Him. Namely, the cross.
In default reality, there's no sound basis on which any person of themselves can maintain a scope for walking alongside God as His child and friend. The very concept of this is supernaturally authored in us by God Himself, through the author of our faith - God Himself. This authoring makes us a new creation . And, this is very beautifully deep .
While the journey towards God for each believer in this fallen world is a submitting of our flesh, and herein encounter with all of our imperfections in the face of a perfect God, this journey is only available as authored by God. Our surface representation (yet to see Jesus in His fullness) of this is Jesus on the cross at Calvary. Even in this, we have the clear vision that God condemned sin, not us, as Jesus plead "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (see Luke 23:34).
Now, you may think back and easily be able to account some wrongdoing you perceive as clearly understanding fault for. But, in step with salvation, it's Jesus' word over yours . That's what you take on when you receive Jesus.
If you can just begin to truly grapple with the wonder of this, you are making the space for the easy burden and light yoke that Jesus speaks to us about in Matt 11. Indeed, this is the purpose of receiving salvation, to overcome sin according to how He authored for us to. It's a new creation perceiving that the walk is all about knowing Him . Period.
In receiving Him as the author, a whole new vocabulary begins to come into view .
My testimony of this involves coming into a divine understanding that while Jesus was nailing our death to the cross, He was doing a lot more than this.
The God of the universe, Who declared, 'It is finished' was doing a work that none of us can perceive the whole supernatural magnitude of . He took sin to the grave, and insodoing restored a timeline wherein we have access to Him as in Eden .
We are not restored as Adam and Eve who communed with God being kept from an understanding of judgement, or knowledge of good an evil via external process. As His new creation , God gave us to be the place He indwells . He gave us to understand His authoring, a communion that is perceived from the inside of our being . And, He was authoring this communion at the cross.
Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us
Jesus' decree, 'It is finished' is the starting point to what I'm drawing picture, praying in Jesus' name each reader sees the vision for .
Vision now is a warfare, as we perceive the enemy's planned ending for different areas of our reality all around. It's an exciting time, pushing God's remnant into a corner as the shepherd David, who saw an enemy that must be defeated, no matter the size. Mostly, it's exciting because the victory is guaranteed through Jesus who saw the end.
The garden of Eden is a realm which Adam and Eve fell from. The fall was into an agreement with the thinking of God's enemy. In the authority that Satan was handed over, he showed Jesus the kingdoms of the world in order to offer them to Him . In simple term, satan was offering Jesus his fallen version of the world, that which existed outside of the will of God.
At the fall, the authoring of God was traded in this world for satan's, where every single part of creation was assigned death , separation. The death that Jesus ultimately suffered for us at Calvary was the separation from God that began at the fall in the garden .
And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani? which means, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Mark 15:34
As this death was nailed to the cross through King Jesus, God's authoring - an ending outside of death - was established for our access . The decree, 'It is finished' was a taking on of the separation , and a new creation pathway set in its place. What this looks like is every experience of life a person encounters in their salvation, and even the breath afforded by grace before we would choose to receive Him. At Calvary, Jesus received the info, the view, the re-write for each and every soul . And, as a perfect man fulfilled it so that this re-write is sitting, with us, next to the right hand of God.
Every breath a person takes in is God's re-write, a testimony against satan under who's authoring one would be dead before getting out of the womb. Due fear of the Lord is required in order to really perceive the depth of what I describe here. It's not for fear of damnation, but in awe of God who not only re-wrote our story, but placed satan under our feet.
Finally, the race is the part of the re-write I want to get into.
I will start by saying that while the cloud of witnesses is up cheering us on, and Jesus says that we will do greater works that He (John 14:12), it all surrounds one center. Jesus .
It's necessary to place this into view in order to appropriately get to the intensity of what the 'race' looks like. Taking up my cross in personal experience related to this whole picture means viewing with Jesus what He and the The Father were authoring at Calvary. Manifested, a race , a quickening is present. The quickening, restoration of one's own person and all of the ripple effects that result coming into view. At this time, just one runner stands to set generations for God in place. A lot is on each shoulder, God would have not one afforded to loss, and all the glory to be seen therein (belonging to God) He has resigned to what we would come into agreement with Him on.
Jesus accomplished, finished it. Now, in time, we are set into place to see it come to pass .
Think of David's mighty men, each one's advances perpetuating more than just the place of one king, but of a whole generation and ultimately, the line of the tribe of Judah from whom the King of kings would come.
As the battle belongs to God, it is excellent. It is the manifested defeat of the enemy , but also the establishing of a Kingdom.
The vision and hope in this has been sown personally by God into my life, becoming a witness of His infinite details in my life which testify to me that He was/is here, tangibly in time. He authored this all ahead of time. The greatest experience in my salvation is getting to see Him all around everywhere, like in the time travel movie The Adventures of Bill and Ted. In the movie, the two time traveling buddies back in their 'present' get to interact with the things they set into place when traveling to their past.
This is what Jesus did at Calvary. Carrying our cross is discovering every nook and cranny He visited for us, for healing, restoring, and empowering us to be a part of this for bringing others into His family. Without process, those receiving Christ would be in Heaven with no depth of praise. 'I escaped death' is well beneath the total praise Jesus deserves for all eternity.
Seeing the depths is happening now, and it's time travel, the re-write with Jesus.
Indeed , it looks like stepping out of the boat. But, Jesus is out there !
Lets go!
If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. (see Mark 8:34)
Hebrews 12
Lay aside every weight .
Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith .
Let us run with endurance .
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (v. 28-30)
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