He Bids You Come and Die

“Take up your cross and follow Him.” This far removed from the physical reality of crucifixion in 30AD, it’s simply a platitude. A Sunday School saying. Something quickly forgotten as soon as your parents don’t force you to go to church.

He invites YOU to come and DIE. How’s that for a campaign slogan?

Not dying as a suicide bomber, who in his or her delusions thinks that eternal reward awaits the violent, vile wretched death of the innocent from your hands.

He tells you that if you follow Him, it leads to a DEATH.

A death to selfishness. A death to demanding your rightful place. A death to shaming and blaming others. A death to lying to yourself. 

Sometimes it means a death to your dreams, to lay down that Isaac, that thing that you hold so dear. Sometimes it means searching for and finding the truth – a truth that causes immense pain, but is necessary. Pain is often necessary before there can be real healing. 

If He’s calling you to something, there will be a choice. Between the thing that ties you to an idol, a lesser thing, and what He’s asking you to do.

Maybe you’ve always wanted to be a writer with a wide following. You’re passionate! You’re articulate! You love Jesus!

And then your spouse gets terminal cancer. Or your beloved baby is diagnosed with a serious disability. Or your teenager, so full of promise, on the cusp of adulthood, falls into a deep depression and attempts suicide. Repeatedly.

Photo credit: The Passion of The Christ

What if this is the means that God has to get you to your dream?

That death you die, because that’s where He leads – when you willingly take that leap, choose to follow Him even though it means a death in your SOUL – will also lead to a resurrection.

Real love leads to death. Real love does not stop with death. And while the marriage covenant is completed at death – because it is fulfilled with the death of one of the parties – the love itself doesn’t die. The contract is just fulfilled.

Real love continues, in the memories that will never die, and because the fulfilled obligation makes way for something new. A resurrection of a different kind.

If you have claimed the name of Christ, and have never had to follow Him to a place where you didn’t want to go emotionally, spiritually, and sometimes physically, your relationship with Him isn’t very deep. I contend it’s not very rooted and grounded in Him, and deep roots are mandatory for the days in which we live.

Jesus is coming back soon. He declared that the generation that saw the rebirth of the nation of Israel would see His return. In the early 2030s, it will be 2000 years since His resurrection.

Stop straining at gnats and ignoring the weightier issues. So what if you’ve been offended by a Christian, or by a non-Christian, or by your employer, your neighbors, your family. News flash: we live in an offensive world. There are no sinless heroes outside of Christ.

It’s getting late.