"Then Jesus said to all the people: If any of you want to be my followers, you must forget about yourself. You must take up your cross each day and follow me." (Luke 9:23, CEV) Becoming a follower of Jesus is the ultimate purpose of christianity. Christ's intention is to reproduce Himself in us all. We cannot truly become "Christ like" until the fullness of Christ's life and nature is visible in us. Our true purpose of coming to Jesus, embracing His salvation and deciding to follow Him is to become His disciples. But when we are faced with the conditions for such decision, we fall shy of actualizing it. Becoming a disciple of Jesus begins with one bold step: forgetting ourselves and continues with another bold activity: carrying our cross daily. Dear, child of God, are you carrying your cross?.
There is no christianity without the cross. There is no forgiveness, no remission of sin, no grace, no eternal life, no nothing - without the cross of Jesus Christ. His eternal sacrifice on the cross of Calvary brought everything we have today. But most times, we take the cross for granted. Our problems today as christians is not in accepting the cross of Jesus; our problem is in accepting our own cross. We all believe that Jesus carried His cross and eventually died for us all; but we don't want to accept the fact that we need to carry a cross too.
Everybody wants cosmetic christianity. We all want the type of christianity where every form of difficulty has been surgically removed. We want a christianity where we don't have to do anything for God - a christianity where we are the perpetual receivers and God is the universal giver. But that is not how a relationship works. True christianity is a relationship. We receive, we give. God demands from us as much as we demand from Him. Today, we have christians who have accepted the grace of God, His love, His salvation, but have vehemently refused His cross. We have rejected the true formula for discipleship which Jesus gave us. If we say we are following Jesus, if we claim to be His disciples, Jesus is saying we have to carry a cross too, because He(Jesus) is carrying a cross. We cannot be coming behind swinging our hands lackadaisically while our beloved Master is in front carrying His own cross. True followership, true discipleship involves doing what the Master say; and He says to pick up our cross and follow Him.
To be continued...