<p>16:24&nbsp;<i>Then said Jesus to his disciples: If anyone wants to be my follower, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me</i>- The disciples had a psychological barrier in understanding the teaching of the cross, just as we can likewise. Often when He spoke of the cross and His sacrifice, His followers either changed the subject or turned away. They were even against the idea of crucifixion (Mk. 8:32; 9:32-4; 10:35-40). They failed to see the centrality of the cross. And these reactions can characterize our response to the cross, both in terms of turning away from considering its physicalities, and also in our own cross-carrying. And yet there is a sense of inevitability about the cross. We&nbsp;<i>must</i>&nbsp;face these things. Circle all the times in John 19 words like &quot;therefore&quot; occur (and cp. Acts 2:23). Consider how Luke records the indefatigable determination in the Lord's face during the final journey up to Jerusalem. There is the same inevitability about our cross carrying; even if we flunk it all the way through our lives, we eventually come to death. My name chiselled by some disinterested artist on a gravestone, with the radio playing in the background as he sits hunched up in his workshop.</p>
<p>Lk. 9:23 adds that the Lord asked us to take up our cross&nbsp;<i>daily</i>. Having spoken of the need to take up the cross daily, the Lord Jesus employed this form of logic to encourage people to really take on board what He was suggesting: &quot;Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross...&nbsp;<i>for</i>&nbsp;whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, and the gospel's, the same shall find it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own life (AV &quot;soul&quot;)? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?&quot; (Mk. 8:34-37). If we follow Christ, we must lose our natural life. If we don't, even if we gain the whole world, we will lose our natural life.&nbsp;<i>I must lose my life, one way or the other</i>. We need to go through life muttering that to ourselves. God asks our life, our all. If we hold it back in this life because we want to keep it for ourselves, He will take it anyway. The cross was a symbol of shame (Heb. 12:2 speaks of the shame of the cross). In this context verse 38 continues: &quot;Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed&quot; at the day of judgment. We either go through the shame of carrying the cross now, especially in our personal witnessing to those around us; or we will suffer the eternal shame of rejection (Dan. 12:2); our shame will then be evident to all (Rev. 16:15).</p>
<p>Mark, who as we have suggested elsewhere was effectively Peter writing, records three instances of where the Lord&rsquo;s prediction of the cross was met by the disciples&rsquo; misunderstanding, and His subsequent efforts to teach them the real meaning of discipleship, and the paradoxes which this involves:</p>
<p>
<table border="0" cellspacing="3" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
    <tbody>
        <tr>
            <td>
            <div>&nbsp;</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>Mark 8</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>Mark 9</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>Mark 10</div>
            </td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>
            <div>Geographical description</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>Mk. 8:27</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>Mk. 9:30</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>10:32</div>
            </td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>
            <div>Note that the incident took place whilst they   were on the road walking</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>8:27</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>9:31</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>10:33,34</div>
            </td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>
            <div>Misunderstanding by the disciples</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>8:32,33</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>9:32</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>10:35-41</div>
            </td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>
            <div>Jesus calls the disciples to Him, implying they   were no longer following behind Him</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>8:34</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>9:35</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>10:42</div>
            </td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>
            <div>Teaching about true cross-carrying discipleship</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>8:34-9:1</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>9:33-37</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>10:42-45</div>
            </td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>
            <div>Paradox</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>Save life / lose life</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>First / last</div>
            </td>
            <td>
            <div>Great / least</div>
            </td>
        </tr>
    </tbody>
</table>
</p>
<p></p>
<p>The point is, that following Jesus in the way involves picking up and carrying His cross. But this repeatedly wasn&rsquo;t understood by the disciples, and they seem to have stopped walking behind Him as they should&rsquo;ve done. Be aware that Mark is a transcript of Peter&rsquo;s preaching of the Gospel message; He&rsquo;s surely pointing out how terribly slow he had been himself to pick up the fact that walking behind Jesus is a call to carry a cross. And of course a glance back at our own discipleship and walk behind Jesus indicates just the same with us; and perhaps we should admit that more freely in our preaching, in order to like Peter make a stronger appeal for men to follow Jesus with no misunderstanding of what this involves.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Luke gives more detail about this saying about carrying the cross (Lk. 9:23-26). In the context of telling His followers to witness to Him, the Lord equates this with taking up their cross daily (Lk. 9:23,26). To not bear that cross is to deny the knowledge of Him before men. To live the crucifixion life is the essential witness. Every act of grace, every evident sign of self-control, every statement of forgiveness towards misunderstanding and unrepentant men... all this is showing something of the cross. And in this, painful and difficult as it is, demanding and driving-to-the-limit as it must be, lies the essence of our being the Lord&rsquo;s witnesses. To witness Christ is not to just painlessly distribute a few tracts. It is to live out the dying of the cross. Take up the cross, and follow me&quot; is inviting us to carry Christ's cross with Him - He speaks of &quot;the cross&quot; rather than 'a cross'. The Greek translated &quot;take up&quot; is that translated 'to take away' in the context of Christ taking away our sins. Strong says that it implies &quot;expiation&quot; (of sins). This connection, between our taking away / up the cross, and Christ's taking away our sins, suggests that the efficacy of His cross for us depends upon our daily 'taking up the cross'. It is vital therefore that we &quot;take up the cross&quot; if our sins are to be taken away by Him. But our taking up of the cross is a response to the taking away / up of our sins. We all know from experience that how we start each day is important. Indeed, how we start any enterprise is crucial- hence the need for a sound understanding of the basic Gospel before we're baptized. We so often meet the phrase &quot;rose early in the morning&quot; in the Hebrew Bible. Strong defines the Hebrew&nbsp;<i>shawkam&nbsp;</i>translated &quot;rose early&quot; as essentially meaning &quot;to incline the shoulder to a burden... literally to load up on the back of man&quot;. In this we see an evident connection with the Lord's thought about taking up the cross&nbsp;<i>daily</i>, for that surely implies we are to take it up each morning (Lk. 9:23). Men and women had arisen each morning for 4000 years and inclined their shoulders to the burden of the day, loaded themselves with it onto their back. And the Lord now took humanity further, in redefining that &quot;load&quot;, that burden, as His cross. Practically, does this not mean that we are to reflect as we come to consciousness each morning that we are to load ourselves with His cross? This thought need not necessarily lead to an image of having to burden ourselves with an impossible, awful weight. For again in allusion to this idea of loading oneself up each morning, the Lord spoke of how His burden is&nbsp;<i>light</i>! Here perhaps is one of the finest paradoxes of the spiritual life- that His cross, the life of self-sacrifice and self-giving unto the very end, is indeed heavy and demanding... yet in another sense it is &quot;light&quot;, far lighter than the burdens of legalism which Pharisaic religion bound [and binds] upon people. Lk. 9:23,24 describes cross carrying as a rejection of saving&nbsp;<i>our</i>&nbsp;life, of making our present life as rich and fulfilled as possible; and instead concentrating on&nbsp;<i>giving up</i>&nbsp;our lives. William Barclay comments on this passage: &ldquo;A man must spend his life, not hoard it... the Christian must realize that he is given life, not to keep it for himself, but to spend it for others; not to husband its flame, but to burn himself out for Christ and for men... the questions are not &lsquo;How much can I&nbsp;<i>get</i>?&rsquo;, but, &lsquo;How much can I&nbsp;<i>give</i>?&rsquo;. Not &lsquo;What is the&nbsp;<i>safe</i>&nbsp;thing to do?&rsquo;, but &lsquo;What is the&nbsp;<i>right</i>&nbsp;thing to do?&rdquo; (William Barclay,&nbsp;<i>The Gospel Of Luke (</i>Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975), p. 122). The threat of Lk. 9:23-25 rung in Paul&rsquo;s mind (in 1 Cor. 3:15; 2 Cor. 7:9; Phil. 3:8): If a man gains the world for Christ but does not take up the cross, or is ashamed of Christ's words and principles in this world, he will be&nbsp;<i>cast away</i>. Especially does Paul allude to these words in 1 Cor. 9:27: &quot;Lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway&quot;. Paul recognized his temptation: to think that his zeal for preaching excused him from taking up the cross. In essence, we must all see our own likely temptations: to focus on one area of spirituality, with the hope that it will excuse us from the cross.&nbsp;</p>