Fear's Solution
He who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it. Matt. 10:38, 39, RSV.
A cross was no laughing matter or casual symbol in the time of Jesus. He and His disciples knew what it stood for. In A.D. 7 Judas of Galilee had led a revolt against Rome. After the general Varus had broken the revolt, he had crucified some 2,000 Jews. So that the Jews would get the message, Varus placed their crosses along the roadside of Galilee.
The idea of being crucified doesn't do much to our twenty-first-century imaginations.
We have never seen a crucifixion. But not the disciples. When they saw a knot of Roman soldiers escorting a person through town carrying or dragging part of a cross, they recognized it as a one-way trip. They knew the cross to be the cruelest and most humiliating of death--and one that the ruling Romans were more than willing to use frequently to keep troublesome areas such as Palestine under control.
Yet here was Jesus telling His uncomprehending disciples that every Christian would have a cross. They must have wondered what He was talking about. After all, they were expecting to hold high level positions in His government, not be criminals suffering crucifixion. While at the moment they didn't understand, they would be in the years ahead.
More incomprehensible yet was Jesus telling them that taking up their cross would lead to life, that "he who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it."
But what was puzzling then would become clearer after Jesus experienced His own cross and the apostles began teaching the message of the cross. It declares not that all of us will die on literal crosses, but that our self-centered way of living and thinking will come to an end and we will live for God's kingdom rather than for our self-centered and selfish goals. Paul put it succinctly when he penned: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now life in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me" (Gal. 2:20).
One of the paradoxes of life is that by clinging to our selfish goals we lose out in the end. But by living the way of the cross we find life eternal. And it is when we recognize that fact that the despicable cross puts an end to (crucifies) all fear.
He who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it. Matt. 10:38, 39, RSV.
A cross was no laughing matter or casual symbol in the time of Jesus. He and His disciples knew what it stood for. In A.D. 7 Judas of Galilee had led a revolt against Rome. After the general Varus had broken the revolt, he had crucified some 2,000 Jews. So that the Jews would get the message, Varus placed their crosses along the roadside of Galilee.
The idea of being crucified doesn't do much to our twenty-first-century imaginations.
We have never seen a crucifixion. But not the disciples. When they saw a knot of Roman soldiers escorting a person through town carrying or dragging part of a cross, they recognized it as a one-way trip. They knew the cross to be the cruelest and most humiliating of death--and one that the ruling Romans were more than willing to use frequently to keep troublesome areas such as Palestine under control.
Yet here was Jesus telling His uncomprehending disciples that every Christian would have a cross. They must have wondered what He was talking about. After all, they were expecting to hold high level positions in His government, not be criminals suffering crucifixion. While at the moment they didn't understand, they would be in the years ahead.
More incomprehensible yet was Jesus telling them that taking up their cross would lead to life, that "he who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it."
But what was puzzling then would become clearer after Jesus experienced His own cross and the apostles began teaching the message of the cross. It declares not that all of us will die on literal crosses, but that our self-centered way of living and thinking will come to an end and we will live for God's kingdom rather than for our self-centered and selfish goals. Paul put it succinctly when he penned: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now life in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me" (Gal. 2:20).
One of the paradoxes of life is that by clinging to our selfish goals we lose out in the end. But by living the way of the cross we find life eternal. And it is when we recognize that fact that the despicable cross puts an end to (crucifies) all fear.
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