The Second Condition of Discipleship

The Second Condition of Discipleship

Zac Poonen | 15th September?2024

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This week, we continue our study of what it means to fulfil both aspects of the Great Commission. Last week we saw the first condition of discipleship is a supreme love for Christ, where we love Christ more than our parents, more than our wives, more than our children, more than every brother and sister in our blood relationship or within the church, and more than our own life. The second condition of discipleship is mentioned in Luke 14:27: “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”?

Again, Jesus is absolute: “cannot.”? What does it mean to carry the cross every day? He said “his own cross;” I don't have to carry the cross of Jesus Christ, and I don't have to carry anybody else's cross, but I must carry my own cross. Jesus explained it like this in Luke 9:23: “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.”

“A disciple’s attitude to the Lord is, "Lord I never want to do my own will in anything"”

In Luke 9:23 the word “daily” is added, which applies to Luke 14:27 as well. If we are to take up a cross every day of our life and follow Christ, it must mean that Christ Himself carried a cross daily. Otherwise, how could He ask me to follow Him daily in taking up my cross?? There was an inward cross in the life of the Lord Jesus all through His thirty-three-and-a-half-year life, which culminated in a physical cross that He carried to Calvary. We need to understand what this inward cross was, because if I don't take up that cross in my life -- I cannot be a disciple.? Today we don't use the word "cross" much because it has become the symbol of Christianity. People have golden crosses and ivory crosses, but in the day when Jesus spoke about it, it was the most horrible means of executing people that the Romans had invented. Today a more appropriate symbol might be the hangman's rope, the electric chair, or the guillotine. The cross was a symbol of execution, of a man being put to death because he's a criminal. Only criminals were crucified. Jesus was speaking about something in us that had to be put to death every day if we are to follow Him. What is that? Jesus was referring to our self-life: “If anyone loves his own life (his self-life), he will lose it.”? This is the cross that we must take, where our self is crucified every day. Where we say, in the words of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, “not My will but Thine.” The strength of my self is found in my will. I want to do my will, whatever pleases me. This is the root of all sin, and if that is not put to death, then I'm not taking up the cross.? This is something that needs to be done every single day. It's only then that I can be a disciple. I don't have to necessarily say those words every single day, but I must have the attitude, “I'm not going to do my will this day in any area. I'm going to do the will of God.” It's one of the things that Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10) In heaven, none of the angels do their own will. They always wait upon God to see what God wants them to do, and that's what they do every single day in heaven. If our days are to be like the days of heaven on earth, if our life is to be a heavenly life, then here's the secret: “Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven.”?

In other words, a disciple’s attitude to the Lord is, "Lord I never want to do my own will in anything. I don't want to marry whom I like; I don't want to take the job I like; I don't want to live where I like; I want to know what Your will is, in every single area. When somebody treats me badly, I want to react in the way You want me to react, and not the way my flesh, my self-life, wants to react."?

This is the meaning of taking up the cross every single day, and He says if you don't do that, you absolutely "cannot be My disciple."?

Knowing that Jesus gave the other half of the Great Commission in Matthew 28, do you find that the believers you've met are walking in this way of taking up the cross every single day, of dying to themselves every single day? Are you doing that yourself? This is evidence of how little the Commission given in Matthew 28:19 is being taken seriously by Christians.