By Ife J. Ibitayo
“[Jesus] said to them all, ‘Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow Me’” (Luke 9:23).
In no starker way could Christ have highlighted the steep cost of accepting Him as both Lord and Savior. In The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer thundered, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.” Yet this truth does not resonate with my life here in America. I’ve never gone hungry or lived on the streets. I attended private schools and charter schools throughout my childhood. My greatest fear as a Christian is being criticized or ostracized not imprisonment or death. So why does Christ warn that following Him will cost us everything?
The Cross Jesus Carried
The answer lies in the very person of Jesus Christ Himself. Less than a day before His death, He said, “‘Even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many’” (Mark 10:45). Jesus’ entire life was marked by self-sacrifice. He stepped down from perfection and clothed Himself in corruption (Philippians 2:7). He was born in obscurity, lived in paucity, and died in ignominy. He chose the hard life when He could have had the high life. And as “little-Christs”, we are called to do the same.
My Cross to Carry
Even here in the most comfortable country in the world, the bid to “come and die” is both powerful and tangible. It may involve something as drastic as “selling all we have” like Jesus called the rich young ruler to do (Matthew 19:21). But it’ll often look more like the story of the Good Samaritan:
“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side…But a Samaritan, as he traveled…saw him and took pity” (Luke 10:30-33).
The call to die is often as simple as caring enough to not walk on by. I know caring is expensive in our hectic, fast-paced world. Caring may require our time, our energy, or even our money. But we can’t carry the world on one shoulder and the cross on the other. We must lay one down if we want to take up the other.
“Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
(Ephesians 5:1-2)