Everything uncomfortable about Christianity begins and ends at the cross. We live in a non-offensive culture: we don’t want to offend anyone. In fact, the way to stop people in their tracks these days is to say, “That offends me!” So we constantly stop ourselves and take steps back les we offend someone.

We’ve even made the cross non-offensive. Today the cross is fashionable. We’ve made it comfortable to wear and acceptable to display. Many people who do not proclaim Jesus as their Lord and Savior have no problem wearing the cross. Why? Because it hasn’t cost them anything and looks good on them. By this, we have made the cross soft, acceptable, cheap, and non-offensive. Now, please don’t think I’m saying to get rid of your crosses. I simply want to redefine what the cross is by its reality.

The cross is offensive! In fact, everything about the cross is offensive. During Jesus’s time, the cross was not something to polish and put on a chain around your neck, nor was it printed on T-shirts or displayed on bumper stickers. The cross was a demeaning, cruel, and excruciating implement of death, a punishment reserved only for the worst of criminals. It was intended to bring the bearer maximum pain and humiliation before all to see. The point was to make all who witnessed it never want to experience it. It was meant to make all who wanted to oppose Rome compliant and subject to their absolute rule.

But Jesus wants us to look at the cross and do what he did, every day, and to come under his absolute rule (not the culture and governments that surround us). This is insane to those around us. Paul said in 1 Cor. 1:18, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” He goes on to say in verse 23, “but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.” The cross is offensive!

Today, the cross is too often viewed as only a gain. In other words, because of what Jesus did on the cross, here is all you receive. But the cross represents both gain and loss. Yes, we gain so much because of Jesus’s death on the cross. But we also lose. No one really wants to discuss what we lose because, after all, we have so much to gain. But we must know what we lose in order to live into what we gain.

You really want to follow Jesus? You want to gain life with him through the resurrection? You first must join him at the uncomfortable cross! You first must be willing to lose what he was willing to lose for you. What do we lose? I’m glad you asked.

According to Jesus in Mark 8:34-36, to be his disciple we must:

1. Come after him

2. Deny ourselves

3. Take up our cross (suffering and rejection) daily (Luke 9:23)

4. Then follow him

We like to skip steps 1-3, start at step 4, and say we are okay. But Jesus requires that we start at step 1. When we choose not to relinquish the sovereignty of our lives but still opt to “follow Jesus,” then we find comfort in what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace:

Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without repentance; it is baptism without the discipline of community; it is the Lord’s Supper without confession of sin; it is absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Jesus Christ. [1]

Cheap grace is grace that we willingly accept as long as it costs us nothing, maintains our personal autonomy, and grants us comfortable living. It is grace on our terms and at our own convenience. With cheap grace there is no loss, only personal gain. But the cross does exist, and we are called to carry our own.

Now, I need to ask you a weird question: are you Peter before the cross or after? Remember Peter before the cross? Just before Jesus called his disciples to carry their cross, he told them he would have to suffer and die. It goes on to say in Mark 8:32–33,

And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

We often live as if we accepted Jesus before the cross and after the resurrection. We want to accept Jesus on our terms and with our worldly expectations of him. But that is impossible. When we do this, Jesus turns to us and tells us to get behind him with the heart of our true father, the devil (yeah, that’s tough to hear, but true nonetheless).

Here’s the deal: without the cross, Jesus is just a good teacher. Without the cross, there is no resurrection. Jesus calls us to not only accept his cross as he bore it, but also to take up our own and bear it daily. Are we willing to do that?

What does it mean to take up your cross? Here’s what C. S. Lewis said:

Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. [2]

The cross is uncomfortable! The cross is offensive! But the cross is absolutely necessary! Are you willing to carry yours?

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[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Discipleship (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 4) (p. 44). National Book Network - A. Kindle Edition.

[2] Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis Signature Classics) (pp. 226-227). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.