Are You Sure? He is

“Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:24-25ESV)

Take up your cross and follow me. The gospel is a message that goes against everything that makes up a human being. A joke, a ridiculous notion, a blaspheme in the first century, it was not and is still not an easy message to believe. In fact, without the intervention of God, you could not, would not, accept it. A God who died on the cross, a method meant for the lowest of the low, was foolishness.

To take up your cross means to be dead from everything that makes you, you, and does not glorify God. You literally commit spiritual suicide in that your existence before Jesus Christ will be obliterated, and a new heart will provide faith and salvation. Try to get someone to want to believe and do that. It is a hard sell, which is why only God can give one the ability to accept this fact, this gospel.

To become a Christian, you must die. You must die to the world around you. You must die to your personal wants and desires, self-ambition, self-promotion, self-centeredness, and self-love. You must die so that all of these things that exist in our sinful nature can be removed and replaced with a saving faith, a faith provided to you by Jesus Christ. Your life must no longer be yours; you must be willing to turn from it all. That is a hard sell to anyone.

Your life becomes like the prayer: Lord, let me find your light in my darkness, your joy in my sorrow, your grace in my sin, your riches in my poverty, your glory in my humiliation, and your life in my death.[1] We learn through paradoxes that death is life, empty is full, and up is down. This a confusing concept for those outside Christ, which is why Paul wrote, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18 ESV)

The cross is a hard message to swallow, and many will not. The cross is the only way of salvation. It is not about giving God something so He will fix your life; it is about giving Him your whole life, leaving you with nothing but God. That is a hard message to sell to anyone. It is a hard message to believe. The more I read Luther, the more his understanding astounds me. Luther’s fourth assertion in his 95 thesis was that a penitent heart was characterized by self-hatred. If you have been saved, you understand this. I hate who I was and some of who I am, now mostly my sinful self. I died spiritually only to be reborn through grace to enter the kingdom. Your worldly self must be obliterated, a hard sell for the average person.

This is why I scratch my head when I hear a self-proclaimed Christian say they wish they would never remember their sins and their life before Christ. I need that memory; I need to remember that monster, those sins; they remind me that the beast is dead.

The young, rich ruler was told to sell everything and follow Jesus, and he would not. You must be desperate, crushed by sin, denying self-righteousness, worldly riches, and your very self. Christ saves the broken, the desperate, those who have nothing left and realize they need help they cannot get anywhere else but to bow before the only Savior and beg that he would change them.

In this modern age of evangelicals, one would think that becoming a Christian would be easy. The feel-good, seeker-sensitive message should make Christians, but it does not. Becoming a Christian is not only hard but impossible. Impossible, how can I say that? To become a Christian destroys everything we are as a human. We cannot make ourselves Christians only through the gospel is this possible. Evangelicals are trying to create a feel-good, packaged nicely, giving little, getting everything, storybook idea of being a Christian, and it is wrong, and it leads people to hell thinking they are saved.

There is only one way to heaven, and it is the gospel. It is a gospel of self-denial. So, you want to be a Christian? Are you sure? Are you broken, ready to die to everything that makes you who you are? Are you ready to be tempered like steel, molded, painfully sometimes, and manipulated into something other than what you see in a mirror? I pray you are. I pray you are desperate and realize you are not all that and a cup of tea. I pray God has broken you because I know that what comes next will transform you, giving you joy and peace, comfort and confidence, and an assurance that you are loved with a love that can never be matched.

I hope that, as futile and foolish as this message may seem, you finally accept it. You believe God did die on the cross and rose again in bodily form, opening the door to heaven for all those who believe. He will give faith and salvation to all those who believe.

Do you understand what I have written? Did God enable you? You can now see the paradox: death is life; die to this world, spiritually die yourself, and you will be given a life that will never be taken from you, ever. I pray that you have, and I pray that you submit, sacrificing your old self for a new life in Christ.

Questions? Need further guidance? Reach out to us here at InMessiah. We are here to support you in your journey of faith.

Grace and Peace.

[1] The Valley of Vision, Puritan Prayers