DISCIPLESHIP

Luke 9: 18-26

I have in mind to say a word as to discipleship, and as to the importance of being renewed in it daily. That is what the Lord says in this passage we have read, that “If any one will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily, and follow me”. From time to time we have to mourn over those who become deflected, who, it may be, have had right beginnings with the Lord, and the question arises as to how it is that deflection comes in. Every heart, of course, knows the answer, but I would suggest that this word of the Lord’s as to being renewed in the path, and attitude of mind, of discipleship every day provides the safeguard. The Lord asked the disciples who men said that He was, and there were various ideas as to the Person of Christ, and then He says: “Whom say ye that I am?” and Peter answers, “The Christ of God”. What made the difference between Peter and the others, who had various ideas as to Christ, was that God had given Peter light, God had wrought in His soul. We stand in this privileged position that God has wrought in our souls, and He has in mind that every one of us should appreciate Jesus, not only as the Christ, but as the Christ of God. If any one feels that he has no definite appreciation of Jesus in this light, I would suggest that it would be well to get to God about it, for He loves to give us enhanced views as to Christ. He will not fail to answer any desire on the part of His own in that direction. One thing involved in the thought of the Christ of God, among much else, is that He is God’s chosen One, and I think if we weigh that over for a moment we shall realise that if God makes known what His choice is, every rival must go. God will not fail to make good the choice that He has made. In the book of Esther, when once the king had intimated who it was that he delighted to honour, Haman and every rival had to go, and once we get in our souls that Jesus is the Christ of God it involves: among other things, that every other man has to disappear. Once we lay hold of that as something that is sure to come to pass, it will help us to have a true appraisement of what may otherwise tend to loom largely before our eyes as we pass through this world.

When Peter had confessed Jesus as the Christ of God, the Lord immediately “straitly charged them and commanded them to tell no man that thing; Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day”. It is striking that He was not to be announced as the Christ of God until He had suffered, and died, and been raised again. He was made known as the Christ on the day of Pentecost; “God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ”, Acts 2: 36. God has done it, but the importance lies in this, that in the first place He is not made the Christ in relation to this present world, He is made the Christ in relation to a world that is to come. In the second place, the One whom God has made Christ is identified as the One whom the world has cast out. I believe that is why the Lord would not allow Himself to be announced as the Christ until He had suffered and died and been raised again. He is to be apprehended as cast out as worthless by men, but chosen of God and precious, and completely victorious, and hence there is a clear issue that if we are committed to the Christ of God, it involves that we are cut off from the world. The two cannot go on together.

Now the Lord counts upon there being those who would desire to come after Him. He found it in Peter, He found it in ten others of the twelve, and in many others like Mary Magdalene whom God attracted to Him. On one occasion when some who had been disciples of His left Him and walked no more with Him, the Lord turned to the twelve and asked: “Will ye also go away?” and Peter said, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life”. Where else can we get words of eternal life, if we turn away from Him There are no words of eternal life in the world, or in the religious systems of men. If we turn away from Christ we shall lose the value of words of life eternal, lose the present gain of what life eternal is. And so the Lord contemplates that there will be those who desire to come after Him, and says: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me”. If we are to understand what it is to take up our cross we must first understand the bearing of the cross of Christ. The Lord has passed out of this world by way of the cross. He was rejected and crucified. “Crucify him”, was said twice over. Now, the cross on the one hand represents the absolute contempt for Christ that the world has felt and expressed. It is a death of ignominy and shame, and expressed what the world’s attitude has been and still is in regard of the Christ of God. On the other hand the cross has expressed God’s complete judgment of man in flesh. When Christ took our place on the cross that man was judged by God, and judged ignominiously. His death was not an honourable death, it was an ignominious death. It is written, “Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree”, Gal 3: 13. So there was in the cross of Christ the expression in the most unequivocal way of God’s estimate of man in the flesh. His history had to be ended judicially by unsparing judgment, judgment that expressed God’s holy abhorrence of that man who could only be sinful in all his activities.

If I take up my cross it means, on the one hand, that I am prepared to be identified by the world as one who desires to be true to Christ. When one came out of the country as Jesus was being led to the cross, they laid the cross of Jesus on him. Every one would understand that he was identified with the Nazarene who was about to be crucified, and if I take up my cross daily, it means I desire to be identified in the world as one who belongs to the One whom the world has cast out, but whom God has chosen.

What will greatly help in regard of that is, on the other hand, that I maintain in my soul in power the other side of the truth of the cross of Christ. If I recognise how God has judged the first man, I maintain by the Spirit that same judgment as it applies to myself, and that will affect my whole bearing in the world. Without attempting to be so, I shall become different from men in the world, because I have judged in myself the man who looms so large in the world, but I have also an appreciation by the Spirit of the Man in whom God has given my life, so that as taking this up every day—“let him take up his cross daily”—I am afresh brought into the light that the day now being entered upon is to be filled out for the will and pleasure of God, and as desiring through grace to move in newness of life, and to be here pleasing to God, all the grace of Christ and the power of the Spirit are available for support.

So the Lord says: “if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me”. It is a question of having the Lord before us, and having His word continually before us, for He will indicate by a living word from Himself continually the way in which He is leading. Then the Lord adds: “Whosoever will save his life, shall lose it”. What an important word for us!

We all know the tendency when among men, to save our lives, to evade the reproach of being identified with the rejected One, but the Lord says, If you are on that line, you are on the line of losing your life. What compensation there is as we are helped of the Lord to move on the line of taking up our cross daily. “What is a man advantaged?” The Lord asks us to weigh things up. He does not give the answer, but raises the question, so that we may soberly weigh things up. “What is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?” And then He adds: “Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels”. A three-fold glory is in view. And then, in contrast with that there is a verse in chapter 12, verse 8, where the Lord, after enlarging with minuteness on the care of the blessed God in regard of each one of us, says, “Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man confess before the angels of God”. Think of the privilege of having the Lord Himself confess our names before the angels of God, for the simple reason that we have confessed Him before men.

May the Lord grant that the path of discipleship may become more attractive to us, and that we may seek, as taking it up freshly every day in the appreciation of the cross, to be true in it until the end!

LONDON

10^th April 1945

From Words of Grace and Comfort

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