The Word in Focus with Dr Larry Taylor

Matthew 10 … ³⁸and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.³⁹ Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

Your cross is not the hard times you may be going through, nor the chronic pain you may endure. Your cross is not your spouse or your boss. Roman crucifixion was one of the most brutal and torturous ways ever invented to kill a person. When the Romans crucified a person, they first stripped them naked. The cross represents a savage death, horror, pain, and deep public shame. Taking up the cross means to be willing to die for Christ; willing to endure even a savage shameful death out of love for Jesus. 

In the occident, most of us live in world where martyrdom is (hopefully) unlikely. How then do we follow Jesus in taking up the cross and laying down our lives in love? One way to do so in daily life is to pursue sincere seeking, demanding scholarship, and authentic service.

Sincere seeking. Spiritual direction is all about deeply seeking to know God more intimately, love God and God’s creation more deeply, and serve God more faithfully. It’s not so much direction as it is companionship. Together, we explore what it means to be faithful to Jesus. There is often much to be deconstructed as well as newness to be embraced. Doing so involves profound spiritual formation – learning to be with Jesus learning from Jesus how to be like Jesus. It’s a heart journey.

Demanding scholarship. After I came to faith in the Jesus movement, I fell into a crowd that downplayed and shunned academia. The general feeling was all you need is the Holy Spirit. Some prided themselves in their lack of education and resultant ignorance. That made us vulnerable to a host of wildly erroneous theological ideas. We often misread, misinterpreted, and misrepresented scripture. We imposed our worldview on the text while ignoring the context. That lead to a generation of Jesus People supporting ideologies and movements contrary to the teachings of Christ. One doesn’t have to be a scholar to love and follow Jesus, but one should acknowledge godly and humble scholarship in one’s pursuit of truth. I’m not a Karl Barth, a Walter Brueggemann, a Dallas Willard, or an N.T. Wright, but I can be taught by them to understand scripture. I am all the poorer if I do not.

Authentic service. Scripture says we are known by our fruits and the fruit of the Holy Spirit is love. Love in the Bible is practical. It is not a feeling or an emotion. It is something you do. Loving a person is doing what is best for them. Loving creation is caring for it. We only love God as much as we love the poorest, most addicted, most down-and-out person living on the street. We are called to wash feet.

How is doing so bearing the cross? The world hates Jesus. Or rather, the demonic principalities and powers that lie behind the empires of this world hate Jesus and express that hatred through people who are following the broad path of the evil one, rather than the narrow road of Messiah. 

When we are genuinely seeking to plumb the depths of the Spirit, pledge our allegiance solely and unconditionally to King Jesus, and serve society’s misfits in love, we are acting contrary to the accepted norms of a consumerist and militant culture. 

The Kingdom of the heavens is upside down. In it, people love their enemies, eschew violence, renounce coercion, and seek the lower place. That challenges the status quo, confronts the norm, and convicts those living “normal” lives. Hostility results. 

When we push back the chaotic darkness of evil with cruciform love, demonic forces are stirred up like a colony of ants aware of a piliated woodpecker boring into their nest. Whipped into a frenzy, the forces of evil fight back with persecution, exclusion, rejection, and hatred. It’s to be expected. The apprentice is not greater than the master.